Crowley - Red line: American foreign policy in a time of fractured politics and failing states

Philip J. (P. J.) Crowley served as a spokesperson for the U.S. government for thirty years. He is a Professor of Practice and Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication at The George Washington University and a member of the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group.

He served as the assistant secretary for public affairs and spokesman for the U.S. Department of State between 2009 and 2011 and was the primary U.S. government interlocutor with major media regarding WikiLeaks. He resigned after making public comments critical of the governments pretrial treatment of Private First Class Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning. Atlantic magazine named him as one of 21 Brave Thinkers in 2011.

P. J. is a retired Air Force colonel and veteran of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. He served on the National Security Council staff at the White House as a special assistant to President Clinton and deputy press secretary. He deployed to NATO Headquarters in Brussels during the 1999 Kosovo crisis.

Between 2002 and 2009, P. J. was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and authored several studies on national and homeland security issues. He appears frequently as a national security commentator on national and global television networks, including BBC and Al Jazeera.

P. J. is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross. He and his spouse, Paula Kougeas, also a retired Air Force colonel, have two children and live in Alexandria, Virginia.

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To Paula, Mary, and Chris
With All My Love

O n the twelfth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, Russian president Vladimir Putin wrote in the New York Times , It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.

Putin was reacting to comments U.S. president Barack Obama made the day before, defending his decision to take military action to hold Bashar al-Assad accountable for the use of chemical weapons in the deepening Syrian civil war.

While pledging not to become the worlds policeman, Obama believed the willingness of the United States to serve for nearly seven decades as the anchor of global security and enforce international norms is what makes us exceptional. He still hoped Congress would agree to support limited air strikes against Syria.

Putin linked Obamas assertion of exceptionalism with Bushs narrative from the war on terroryoure either with us or against usand asked why the United States would want to make the same mistake in Syria that it did in Iraq, intervening without the approval of the United Nations and increasing the risk the conflict would spread beyond Syrias borders.

Five months later, with no small irony, Putin would make a much different argument regarding Russias prerogatives in Ukraine. Later, he would also intervene in Syria to save the Assad regime from collapse.

Obama did believe in American exceptionalismthe liberal international system that the United States largely constructed and sustained has made the world more stable, peaceful, and prosperous even with the vexing challenges it confronts today. What Obama questioned was American indispensabilitythat the United States has the responsibility, the ability, or the resources to right global wrongs not linked to vital U.S. national interests.

Late in his presidency, Obama told cadets at the Air Force Academy that oftentimes the greatest damage to American credibility comes when we overreach. He believed it was important to learn from our history.

During his two terms, Obama narrowed what he considered vital. After the overreach in Iraq, he sought to preserve American power by employing it more judiciously and, given his reliance on drones, less overtly. But the president would also learn that American credibility can be affected not just from aiming too high, but also too low.

Obama was elected as an idealist but operated far more as a realist, strongly identifying with Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and George H. W. Bush. Like Eisenhower, he feared how the use of overt force could draw the United States into escalating and costly military adventures and preferred covert action. Like Bush, he was prepared to use decisive force for a limited purpose, preferably with international support and allies.

Of course, such comparisons are always imperfect. In the early stages of the Cold War, Eisenhower counterbalanced a rising Soviet adversary with a broad array of security alliances. He also supported the overthrow of a populist government in Iran, blocked a prospective national election in Vietnam, and chose not to intervene to defend a popular revolt in Hungary.

In the early stages of the postCold War new world order, Bush deftly managed the Soviet collapse and began the restructuring of Americas global military posture. He fought a war over international principle and oilspecifically who controlled the supplyand in the process deepened the U.S. presence in the Middle East. He used military force to overthrow a government in Panama, but not Iraq, although he launched an open-ended air campaign to preserve a safe haven for the Iraqi Kurds.

Obama came to office seven years into a war on terror that he thoughtand a clear majority of American voters agreedhad veered off course. Like Eisenhower with Korea and Bush with Vietnam, Obama had to deal with the legacy and politics of an unpopular war. What he lacked was the national sense of urgency that accompanied the Cold Warthe world did seem on the precipice during the 1950sor the sense of possibility that accompanied its endthe world could be reshaped less by our fears and more by our hopes.

Obama may have been elected with the mantra of the audacity of hope, but he was caught between the noble aspirations of what the United States could do in the world at a strategic levelthe exceptional nation that had supported a more integrated, market-oriented, and democratic world over decadesand the sober history of how it had consistently become ensnared in costly and intractable local conflicts along the way. While his rhetoric spoke to a world as it should be, his policies struggled with the world as it is and the limited politics of the moment.

Putins criticism notwithstanding, Obama was actually not contemplating an expansive or transformative mission in Syria. He had a policyAssad needed to step down to end the conflict that had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the displacement of millionsbut he wrestled with its implications. What did it obligate the United States to do?