Plus Ça Change? American Foreign Policy under Obama
| DOI | 10.1111/j.2041-9066.2010.00007.x |
| Date | 01 April 2010 |
| Published date | 01 April 2010 |
| Author | Inderjeet Parmar |
| Subject Matter | Feature |
and political forces: nevertheless, the
president’s own attitudes, appoint-
ments to high offi ce, not to mention
inherited legacies from the Bush
era, and longer-term tendencies and
mindsets have all limited the poten-
tial for policy change.
Inherited Legacies
To understand contemporary Ameri-
can foreign policy fully we have to go
all the way back to the second world
war and the presidency of Franklin
Delano Roosevelt. In the aftermath
of Japan’s attacks on Pearl Harbor in
1941, a powerful – and clearly iden-
tifi able – east coast foreign policy
establishment emerged in the United
States. Comprising Wall Street bank-
ers and lawyers, Ivy League univer-
sity professors, executives of the
largest industrial corporations, the
major philanthropic foundations
like Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie,
Republican and Democratic party
insiders and key think tanks like the
Council on Foreign Relations and
Brookings, this establishment has
held sway ever since. Its composition
changes relatively slowly and oper-
ates regardless of the political party
in power – which accounts for the
foreign policy continuity between
administrations of both main par-
ties. That an American foreign policy
establishment exists with close links
to the US military is hardly news, but
the question of what it believes in
and why deserves closer scrutiny.
Plus Ça Change?
American Foreign Policy
under Obama
‘Change We Can Believe In’.
The clarion call of the Obama
presidential election cam-
paign of 2008 could not have been
more prescient: America’s global
standing had plummeted since 9/11,
and two wars and a fi nancial crisis
of global proportions ensured that,
upon entering the White House, the
newly inaugurated president would
inherit the worst elements of the leg-
acies of his predecessors, Presidents
Roosevelt (economic crisis), Johnson
(Vietnam) and Carter (Watergate and
Vietnam). Yet, many scholars, not to
mention the court of popular opin-
ion in the US and around the world,
believed that Barack Obama’s elec-
tion would lead to a very different
interpretation of American interests
and of the means to achieve them.
Given his obvious (and admirable)
personal charisma and intellect –
the new president read politics and
international relations at Columbia
University – it was widely thought
that if anyone could turn things
around for American power in the
world, Obama could.
The premature award of the
Nobel Peace Prize to the American
president merely sums up the wide-
spread, at times desperate, hopes for
a more diplomatic and multilateral
US foreign policy approach. But, a
year after Obama’s inauguration,
little has fundamentally changed
in US foreign and national security
policy. Radical change or even sig-
nifi cant policy reform is normally
unlikely due to entrenched policies
The election of Barack Obama appeared to herald a new dawn in American politics, but has US
foreign policy really changed since the Bush years? Analysing the president’s personal beliefs,
appointments to high office and inherited legacies, Inderjeet Parmar thinks not.
Pearl Harbor, among other catalytic
events such as the Chinese revolu-
tion of 1949, the outbreak of the Ko-
rean war in June 1950, the Cuban
revolution of 1959, the collapse of the
Soviet bloc in 1989–91, and 9/11, gal-
vanised the American foreign policy
establishment’s faith in liberal inter-
nationalism, a belief that has, with oc-
casional modifi cations (slightly more
or less militarist, changing blends of
multi- and unilateralism), remained
its dominant position. The differ-
ences between the leading elements
of both parties revolve around details,
rhetoric and means, not policy ends
or, indeed, interpretations of national
interest: both parties are inextricably
attached to American global hegemo-
ny. Hence, despite the popular yearn-
ing for change after eight years of the
Bush administration – the corruption
revealed by the collapse of Enron, the
deepening economic and fi nancial
crisis causing mass unemployment,
an illegal war on Iraq, a develop-
ing quagmire in Afghanistan, not to
mention the complete alienation of
the Muslim world and large swathes
of European opinion – Obama’s call
for change was bound to raise impos-
sibly high expectations.
Appointments
If Obama was serious about change,
he would have appointed to high of-
fi ce people who were not implicated
in the policies of the past or in the
mindsets of the US foreign policy
A year after
Obama’s
inauguration
little has
fundamentally
changed in
US foreign
and national
security policy
14 Political Insight
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