How to explain a recent poll, cited by The Hill, that showed a nearly 10-point deficit in President Obama's foreign policy approval rating? In a post titled "The Obama unDoctrine," from more than three years ago, I gave it my best. And since circumstances are little changed, I'll repeat myself: "Obama is the near textbook embodiment of complex policies that meet the needs of reality and the moment, rather than what the body politic and the commentariat so often pine for, which is abundant simplicity and tidy slogans."
If I was, and am, correct in that assessment, the paradox is that the outcome of Obama's complexities are pragmatically pined for by the body politic as well. They just don't seem to realize it. Did they desire a prolonged intervention in Iraq? A re-escalation, presently, in Afghanistan? A Syrian intervention? A Crimean intervention? An eastern Ukrainian intervention? Boots on Libyan ground? A war with Iran over a yet-developed nuclear program or with China over some western Pacific rock?
Obama has consistently straddled thoughtful involvement in the world versus military interventionism, which post-W. America demanded as much as desired. And yet, a 10-point deficit--explainable only by an uncomprehending, democratic capriciousness susceptible to propagandistic sloganeering about "weakness" and vacillation. The concomitant paradox: In the oppressive face of such shabby, unthinking criticism about weakness, Obama has stayed tough. He'll take the deficit over some momentary bounce from neocon stupidity.
In the end, on foreign policy we come to back to Obama's broader, and characteristic, pragmatism--which just happens to be America's defining philosophy, too, even though we sometimes forget it. "Obama's UnDoctrine," I wrote in 2011, "is a universe away from the uniform simplicity of Wilsonian or Bushian idealism.... Idealism is a word closely aligned with ideology, and for good reason: It is a straitjacketing term that, once out of the bag and affixed to its proponent, too often coerces that proponent into grossly ill-advised actions for consistency's sake."
Therein is the neoconservative weakness: a martial consistency for consistency's sake.
Obama's consistency? Agility applied to circumstances. If there's a foreign policy doctrine announced by the president in his West Point speech today, that's the one I expect: the Obama unDoctrine. It may not reverse his second-term deficit, but I further expect that foreign policy historians will someday see it as his greatest achievement.