Is America Safer Under Barack Obama? >
Obama Learned From Bush's Mistakes and Successes
Obama smartly built his national security strategy on the lessons of his predecessors
May 2, 2012
About James Dobbins:
James Dobbins, a former U.S. assistant secretary of State, is director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decision-making through research and analysis.
Neophyte presidents of either party often make grievous early mistakes in the national security realm. John F. Kennedy was humiliated by Nikita Khrushchev in their first encounter and then launched the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Bill Clinton stumbled badly in Somalia, failed to stop the genocide in Rwanda, and pulled U.S. troops out of Haiti long before any lasting effect could be achieved. George W. Bush can't be blamed for 9/11 but shoulders substantial responsibility for the failure to stabilize Afghanistan and Iraq once the regimes there had been overthrown.
[Check out our editorial cartoons on President Obama.]
Given time, presidential performance usually improves. Kennedy went on to skillfully defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis. Clinton achieved more enduring results in Bosnia and Kosovo. George W. Bush went a long way in his second term toward retrieving the missteps of his first, particularly in Iraq.
What is unusual with Obama is that he did not start at the bottom of the presidential learning curve. To the discomfort of many within his own constituency, he emphasized continuity over change in the national security realm. He chose to keep a Republican, Bob Gates, as his secretary of defense and Gen. David Petraeus as his principal military commander. He retained the staff of Defense, State, and CIA professionals on the White House staff, under Lt. Gen. Doug Lute, who had been managing both the Iraq and Afghan wars for George W. Bush. Obama executed Bush's announced withdrawal schedule in Iraq, tripled the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and sought to apply many of the lessons learned during Bush's second term in that former conflict to the latter. Obama similarly built on and significantly escalated the war against al Qaeda.
On-the-job training is a necessary element of the American presidency, but so should be learning from the accomplishments, as well as the mistakes, of one's predecessor.
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- Other Arguments
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No — Threats to national security have grown more dangerous under Obama
EDWARD A. TURZANSKI, National Security Analyst at La Salle University
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No — The president's promise of a "peace dividend" is illusory
JAMES JAY CARAFANO, Director of the Heritage Foundation's Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies
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No — Treating terrorists like common criminals, and softening interrogation techniques, is playing with fire
NATHAN SALES, Law Professor at George Mason University School of Law
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Yes — Flaws of TSA, Homeland Security are a reminder that America and the president has also been lucky
LAWRENCE HUSICK, Co-chairman of the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Center for the Study of Terrorism
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Yes — Obama's national security staff appointments have made America safer
WILLIAM F. DADDIO, Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University
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Yes — The Obama administration's capable handling of national security policy has certainly made America safer
LAWRENCE J. KORB, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress
