By L.C. Johnson (blog/bio)
Bill Clinton may have run a dandy domestic policy during his first term, but his foreign policy was a bust. Somalia and Rwanda were two of his worst moments. The appointments of Les Aspin as Secretary of Defense and James Woolsey as Director of CIA, in retrospect, were busts. And then there was the debacle of National Security Adviser Tony Lake (who so happens to be Obama's foreign policy guru) who reprised the role of Nero and fiddled while Rwanda was consumed in an inferno of ethnic cleansing.
Barack Obama may be scoring some debating points when he quotes Bill Clinton defending himself against charges that he lacked experience to run for President (e.g., "The same old experience is not relevant: You can have the right kind of experience and the wrong kind of experience,") But the question of experience in organizing and managing a foreign policy team is relevant.
Can we afford the learning curve of foreign policy naif like Obama? History tells us no. (For more on the Hillary vs. Bill re Rwanda, please read this AFP article.)
Regardless of party affiliation, it is time we admit that putting amateurs with limited foreign policy experience in charge of U.S. foreign policy usually causes more harm than good.
What do I mean by experience? We are not talking posting a good SAT score. Yes, knowledge of international geography, the names of foreign leaders and cultural and religious differences is helpful, but it is not the "experience" that is relevant to running a sound foreign and national security policy. It is more important that our next leader fully understand the bureaucratic resources he or she will control--this includes the full panoply of diplomatic, law enforcement, military, intelligence, trade, and financial capabilities. It also is essential that the President appoint competent people to administer those agencies and effectively coordinate their activities thru the National Security Council.
Sounds easy but this has rarely happened. With the exception of Harry Truman, every first term president with no significant prior foreign policy experience who has served in the last fifty years has created a mess of things during their first term. With John Kennedy you got the Bay of Pigs. Lyndon Johnson mired the United States in Vietnam. Jimmy Carter lives with the legacy of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the rise of the Islamic Republic in Iran. Even the sainted Ronald Reagan failed to devise an effective counterterrorism strategy until well into his second term. And George Bush has shown us that a weak, not-too-bright leader, can really cock things up on the foreign policy front even when surrounded by senior folks with scads of foreign policy experience. (How can a team comprised of Don Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Dick Cheney mess things up so badly?)
The presidencies of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush--all who brought fairly significant prior experience working on foreign policy issues--generally avoided the problems that plagued the administrations of the other presidents.
On the Democratic side of the ledger, the most experienced candidates who understand the foreign policy/national security bells and whistles are Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, and Hillary Clinton. Only Richardson and Clinton have experience on both the executive and legislative sides of government. Richardson, hands down, has more foreign policy experience than any candidate in the race. While Clinton's role in her husband's administration was limited on foreign policy issues, she did play a positive role in the Northern Ireland peace process. Senator Biden's lack of executive experience is offset by his long tenure with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. You cannot sit through as many briefings as he has, chair as many hearings, and visit as many countries without picking up some useful knowledge.
I put Chris Dodd and John Edwards in the second tier. Dodd's time in the peace corps makes him a great travel guide in the Dominican Republic, but he has had no practical experience managing anything comparable to the national security bureaucracy. Edwards is a knowledgeable guy but also has limited experience on this front. Dodd has far more experience in the Senae than Edwards, so the edge to Dodd on the foreign policy/national security side.
Dennis Kucinich and Barack Obama are unqualified. Period. Making a speech opposing an invasion of Iraq does not constitute qualification for understanding how to organize and implement a foreign policy. Barack is a gifted politician, but his knowledge of the workings of the State Department, the Pentagon, the U.S. Army and Marines, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, DIA, DEA, NRO, Treasury, and Commerce is deficient.
Even more worrisome for me is the foreign policy team he has assembled. Tony Lake and Susan Rice--his top two advisers--were not the stars of the Clinton Administration. In fact, both demonstrated a remarkable ineptness in dealing with the genocide in Rwanda. They did nothing. While Bill Clinton was the President and commander-in-chief at the time (and ultimately responsible) it also is true that his staff failed him. Presidents cannot know everything and must rely on senior staff to monitor problems, identify developing threats, and propose courses of action. Lake and Rice failed Clinton on this front and there is no evidence that either learned anything in the interim. If so, where were they in opposing the invasion of Iraq? Quiet, insignificant voices.
Who ever is selected as the next President, restoring order and competence to the National Security Council must be a priority. The President's National Security adviser is first and foremost a traffic cop--identifying priorities and forcing the bureaucracies to reach decisions in timely fashion. The Clinton Administration stumbled significantly during the first two years. For example, the National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) governing the organization of counter terrorism policy was not acted on until after the bombing of the Okalahoma City Federal Building in April of 1995. But when historians compare the Clinton NSC to the fiasco that has been Bush's, the Clinton era appears as a veritable golden age.
The next President must enter office ready to take control of a foreign policy and national security bureaucracy that is in shambles. Giving the reins to well-meaning, inexperienced novices like Barack Obama would be a mistake that will only be appreciated after the fact.