Vice President David Petraeus?

Posted By Paul Miller Thursday, April 26, 2012 - 9:47 AM

After Republican leaders rightly criticized Senator Obama, a former state legislator with merely two years in the U.S. Senate, for being unqualified to be commander-in-chief and leader of the free world during the 2008 campaign, it would be an irony if they selected Marco Rubio, a former state legislator with merely two years in the U.S. Senate, as vice president in the 2012 election.

Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie will almost certainly not be the vice presidential nominee for the simple reason that they don't want to be president. Both declined to run for the top job because, if rumors are to be believed, they were unwilling to undergo the rigors and personal scrutiny that a presidential campaign brings. If they were unwilling to do so for the presidency, why would they do so for the much lesser prize of the vice presidency?

Paul Ryan, meanwhile, is too valuable to the GOP in the House. As one of the more serious-minded legislators in the party, he would be wasted on the vice presidency.

Besides which, the vice presidential nominee almost never makes an actual difference in the election. The great myth is that the presidential nominee should pick a VP from a swing state in order to win more votes there. The problem is, that never happens. Perhaps once in American history has the VP delivered his state and swung an election: LBJ bringing Texas to give JFK the prize in 1960. That's it, just once.

So it comes down to this: Who is actually qualified to be president? That's the question Mitt Romney should be asking in selecting his running mate. That's the only criterion that should really matter. There are very few people in the country with a plausible claim to being qualified for the presidency. Unfortunately, Bob Gates has definitively retired, reducing the number of candidates by one.

That leaves David Petraeus. Petraeus served as commanding general of both wars the U.S. fought over the last decade, headed up central command, and is now director of the CIA. And, of course, he had the courage and professionalism to serve in a deeply unpopular war and, remarkably, come out with his reputation enhanced. Probably no person alive has a better grasp of the international situation, America's role in the world, and the limitations and capabilities of American power.

Petraeus has nearly universal name recognition and is one of the most well-respected figures in the country. A year ago only 11 percent of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of him, according to Gallup, half that of Christie. And as a non-partisan figure he has not been tarnished by the partisanship and mud-slinging of recent years. Additionally, Petraeus would bring foreign policy expertise to the ticket, balancing Romney's focus on economic issues. If Obama really intends to claim that his foreign policy accomplishments should earn voters' respect, there is no one in the country with more credibility than Petraeus to take Obama's argument apart.

He would bring gravitas and seriousness to a campaign season that, so far, has been more memorable for the parade of not serious GOP challengers who, thankfully, had the decency to drop out. His intelligence and ethic of public service would be a good match for Romney's own. I admit "Romney-Rubio" has a nice, almost poetic ring to it; it rolls off the tongue beautifully. "Romney-Petraeus" has too many syllables. It sounds like something out of a technical manual, or a nickname for a loophole in the tax code. On the other hand, they might actually govern competently, which counts for something.

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Romney must campaign successfully, but in a way that will let him govern successfully

Posted By Peter Feaver Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - 10:32 AM

Now that Governor Romney can concentrate on the general election, he would be well-advised to consider again the ways that campaigning can complicate governing when it comes to foreign policy. In this, he has no better tutor than the last challenger to successfully win the presidency.

The political process rewards hyperbolic critique of the ruling party coupled with extravagant promises of wholesale change. If candidates governed according to the letter (or perhaps even the spirit) of their campaign rhetoric, then the problems might be acute. However, the prevailing pattern of American politics is a reversion to the mean, the persistence of pragmatic continuity in defiance of flamboyant critiques from the extreme flanks.

There is still room for mischief within the boundaries of that pattern. Sometimes the mischief is minor, as when candidate Obama promised in ever-more-rigid terms to adopt a position on the Armenian genocide that all seasoned experts knew he would abandon once in office -- as he did.

Sometimes the mischief is more consequential, as when candidate Obama promised unconditional leader-to-leader talks with Iran, which led the administration to squander two extraordinary opportunities in his first year in office -- Iran's short-lived Green Revolution response to electoral fraud in June 2009 and the revelations of the illegal uranium enrichment program at Fordow in September 2009. During this crucial period, Obama failed to intensify the coercive diplomacy that they developed later.

And sometimes the mischief is potentially quite profound, as when the Obama administration acted on their campaign belief that the way to leverage better cooperation from the Iraqi government was to underscore our determination to abandon them rather than to follow the Bush practice of hugging Maliki as closely as possible.

So far, Governor Romney has avoided these kinds of self-inflicted wounds. The closest he has come is calling Russia our "No. 1 geopolitical foe," which is a bit of hyperbole that the candidate probably wishes he had phrased differently.

His stance on the Chinese currency also might be a candidate for campaigning vs. governing scrutiny. He has promised to quickly declare it a currency manipulator. While many experts might agree that China has been manipulating its currency, successive administrations have shrunk from making that declaratory step because of concern about the significant repercussions of a trade/currency war that might ensue. Romney might be following a sophisticated strategy of jawboning, however, hoping to cajole China into taking more steps of their own to address the situation so that Romney's threatened step does not need to be taken. If China calls the bluff, however, a President Romney would have a difficult choice to make.

A successful Romney would probably walk back from reckless campaign promises when confronted with the stark responsibilities of governing. But better to avoid the recklessness in the first place.

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Sorry Charlie Kupchan, America's still not in decline

Posted By Will Inboden Tuesday, February 7, 2012 - 5:53 PM

Charlie Kupchan is both a first-rate scholar and a generally insightful commentator on foreign policy. This makes his FP article yesterday ("Sorry Mitt, It Won't Be an American Century") all the more puzzling and, frankly, disappointing. Navigating the article's internal contradictions can be a head-snapping experience. Kupchan begins with a snide dismissal of Mitt Romney's calls for renewed American global leadership as "hackneyed rhetoric," since in Kupchan's telling the U.S. is an exhausted, overstretched nation that needs to curtail its commitments abroad and "focus on the home front." Having described a diminished America, Kupchan then pivots and applauds President Obama's chest-thumping defiance that those who think America is in decline "don't know what they're talking about." But to back up his praise for Obama, Kupchan describes a world in which America's economy will soon be eclipsed by China, American capacity to project power is diminishing, America is overextended in the Middle East and Europe, and the American ability to influence global events is being overtaken by other rising powers. If that doesn't amount to American decline, I would hate to see what does.

What is going on here? I wrote last week about the confusions that seem to beset the "American decline" debate and the Obama administration's opportunistic political tactics of rhetorically rejecting American decline while implementing policies that assume (and advance) said decline. It is true that the global distribution of power is shifting towards the likes of China, India, Brazil, and other emerging powers. But -- and here is the key point -- these power shifts are not (yet) coming at the expense of the United States but rather primarily come at the expense of the European Union and Japan. For example, American share of global GDP for the last four decades has stayed relatively constant at 25-28 percent of global GDP, whereas the core EU and Japan's shares of global GDP have both declined by over 25 percent from their peaks. Defense budgets tell a similar story. The American share of global military spending has stayed roughly constant over the past decade, while the defense budgets of the United Kingdom, France, and Japan have declined substantially relative to China. So yes, the U.S. needs to adjust to shifts in the global balance of power -- but Mitt Romney is correct that these shifts do not need to come at the expense of American primacy.

This might well be the crux of the difference between the Obama administration and its Republican critics on the decline debate. Both sides agree that global power dynamics are shifting. But President Obama, at least in Kupchan's analysis, sees the shifts as cause to dial back American leadership, whereas Romney and many other Republicans see the shifts as an opportunity for renewed American leadership in helping shape the emerging order.

Yet as Bob Kagan and others have pointed out, while the U.S. is not yet in decline, there is a worrisome possibility that some of the Obama administration's policies are putting the U.S. on a path to decline. Kupchan actually applauds a series of Obama policies -- such as slashing future defense budgets, pulling back from Iraq and Afghanistan with outcomes still uncertain, and conceding that authoritarian capitalism is the model of the future -- that in fact risk diminishing America's standing in the world and cede global leadership to other emerging powers. To that list should be added Obama's exorbitant expansion of the national debt to the tipping point of parity with our national GDP, and a persistent unwillingness to reform the real drivers of our indebtedness: domestic welfare-state entitlement programs. (As just about everyone who follows this issue has pointed out, Obama's blithe disregard for his own Simpson-Bowles debt commission shows just how little entitlement reform seems to matter to this White House). This makes the Obama campaign's talking point, echoed by Kupchan, that it will focus on "nation-building here at home" sound like, well, hackneyed rhetoric.

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Is the White House trying to turn America into France?

Posted By Will Inboden Monday, January 23, 2012 - 11:42 AM

On the campaign trail, Republican candidates such as Gov. Mitt Romney frequently criticize President Obama for moving America towards a "European-style entitlement society" with sclerotic social welfare programs and crushing debt burdens. Two recent decisions by the Obama administration raise the prospect that the White House might also be following the European ethos -- or at least the prevailing French model of "laicite" and aggressive secularism -- on religious liberty. With apologies to historic French America-philes such as Lafayette and de Tocqueville, this is not the direction our country should go.

Normally domestic policy developments like Obamacare insurance mandates and school employment disputes in Michigan wouldn't be of much relevance for a foreign policy forum like Shadow Government. But the administration's position on the recent Supreme Court case on Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran School and Friday's Obamacare mandate eviscerating conscience provisions for religious institutions providing healthcare -- while appalling in their own right -- might also help explain a foreign policy puzzle that I have raised before -- why this administration has been so indifferent to the promotion of religious liberty abroad.

To briefly recap, on the Hosanna-Tabor case, the Obama Justice Department took the position that religious liberty does not protect the right of religious institutions to hire their own employees in accordance with the organization's faith commitments. And the Obama Health and Human Services Department mandated that religious institutions such as hospitals and schools need to fund and include sterilization, contraceptive, and abortifacient coverage in their health insurance plans regardless of any doctrinal convictions otherwise. Just how bad for religious liberty were these two positions that the White House took? So bad that the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the White House on Hosanna-Tabor in a 9-0 smackdown (those votes included Obama appointees Justices Sotomayor and Kagan), and the normally understated US Conference of Catholic Bishops denounced the HHS decision as "literally unconscionable" and "a direct attack on religion and First Amendment rights."

The Obama Justice and Health and Human Services Departments -- with at least a green light if not a strong push from the White House -- embraced positions on religious liberty that can only be described as extreme. Religious believers may disagree among themselves on any number of theological, moral, and political issues, but they hold near unanimity on the imperative and importance of religious freedom -- in part precisely because religious freedom preserves the space for diversity and tolerance of differing opinions.

Why does this matter for foreign policy? Because it might help explain the Obama administration's otherwise baffling apathy on international religious freedom. I have lamented previously the administration's negligence on this issue, including the delay until over halfway through its first term to even put in place an Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, and the complete omission of religious freedom from the 2010 National Security Strategy. When seen alongside the administration's myopic positions on the two domestic policies mentioned above, it is hard to escape the conclusion that this White House sees religious liberty with indifference.

Read on

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What do the Iowa results say about Republican foreign policy?

Posted By Peter Feaver Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - 11:16 AM

The Iowa results probably indicate that there will not be a big crack-up within the Republican party on foreign policy because the caucus returns are likely to be the high-water mark for the candidate with the most distinctive foreign policy platform in the field: Ron Paul. He did well enough to gain another week of press attention. But in the one contest best-suited to his unusual political operation, Paul did not beat expectations. He would have to really surprise in New Hampshire in order to remain relevant in the later primaries, and those are likely to be even tougher terrain for him.

Paul is no longer likely to be a spoiler within the party. He can still play the spoiler in the general election, if he runs a Ross Perot-style third party campaign and siphons off enough of the anti-incumbent vote to re-elect President Obama. There will be many Obama supporters cheering him on to do just that, but at least one influential Paul supporter argues compellingly against it.

Jon Huntsman is the other candidate who tried to capitalize on foreign policy divisions within the party, but he avoided Iowa altogether, thus delaying his moment of truth until next week's primary in New Hampshire. Predictions in this campaign season have been notoriously unreliable, but I am willing to bet that New Hampshire will be more of a Waterloo than a surge for Huntsman.

That means that Romney will very likely be the nominee, and whichever runners-up remain in the race to challenge him through a few more primaries will be doing so on the basis of domestic or economic policies or personality, not national security and foreign policy. Romney already had the strongest foreign policy platform of the field, and, if I am right about the fading of Paul and Huntsman, any remaining rivals -- even a surprise new not-Romney drafted from the bench -- will largely echo him on foreign policy.

There had always been a chance that the primaries would exacerbate the within-party divisions on national security, which are wider today than they have been since Reagan. A majority of Republican voters continue support the traditional "peace through strength" posture of muscular internationalism that characterized the tenures of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush (yes, there were differences across those administrations, but I would argue far more continuity than is popularly credited). A sizable minority shows more sympathy for steps ranging from retrenchment to neo-isolationism. Paul was the candidate that resonated most effectively with the latter group, but his positions were probably too extreme to serve as the foundation for a new Republican consensus. In any case, he would have to be considered a plausible candidate to win the nomination to further that debate, and I think that moment has passed.

There are still policy divisions: some Republicans think there should be essentially no cuts in defense spending, while others are willing to live with the first round of Obama cuts; some Republicans want more of a populist message on Chinese trade policy, while others want more of a traditional free trade posture; and so on.

But I think the big intra-party fight over foreign policy is over, if it ever really began.

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What, me worry? About foreign-policy?

Posted By Peter Feaver Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - 3:41 PM

Getting a shout-out on Drezner's blog can now be crossed off my bucket list. (What's next? Ed. After Dr...comes Du...Dunking in a basketball game.) The New York Times quoted me as worrying that Republican candidates were in danger of surrendering issue ownership on national security. Dan, a.k.a. the Maestro (but not that Maestro), wrote reassuringly that the Republicans were likely to nominate someone like Romney, who has shown himself to be fairly adept on foreign policy. I almost always agree with Dan, and when I don't I usually come to regret it, so let me state up front, I agree with him. But I still think it is worth reminding the Republican primary candidates to do their homework.

The general election may be decided on domestic policy and the economy, but it would be no bad thing if the Republican primary was decided on national security. By this I mean that Republicans should quickly jettison anyone who flunks the commander-in-chief test: can you trust this man or woman with the life and death decisions that land on the president's desk in the Oval Office? That is more important than whether the candidate signed this or that pledge, or whether the candidate compromised to get half-loaf policy decisions through a balky legislature. As disenchanted as the American electorate may be with President Obama, they are not going to vote for a Republican whom they believe cannot be trusted to fulfill the commander-in-chief duties responsibly.

This is good advice any year. It is especially true when the country is still at war. And it may be extra-especially true this year, which could be a man-bites-dog year in terms of the issue advantages of the parties. The Republicans are doing pretty well on all the issues, including many domestic issues where Democrats usually have the advantage. But when it comes to candidate-specific trust, this may be the first election in decades that the Democrats have a comparative advantage on national security, not the economy.

I say comparative advantage, because Republicans could well have an absolute advantage on both. But if I remember my Ricardo (this Ricardo, not that Ricardo), comparative advantage drives trade. Obama's 49-44 approval rating on foreign policy looks much better than his 30-67 approval rating on the economy and so he is likely to play up the former rather than the latter. Put it this way, do you think Obama's speechwriters will write more applause lines containing the words "health care reform" or "Osama Bin Laden"?

I have heard Republicans tell me that Obama won't be able to run on national security experience because no Republican candidate will be as inexperienced as candidate Obama was in 2008. I can think of a candidate or two who could give Obama of 2008 a run for his money on the inexperience contest, but that is the wrong way to think about the matter anyway. Republicans aren't running against Obama of 2008. They are running against Obama of 2012 and Obama of 2012 has had quite a lot of national security and foreign policy experience.

Not all of the experience is good, of course, but it is substantial nonetheless. And already, White House spinners are straight-facedly leveling the same not-ready-for-the-job critiques at Republicans that Hillary Clinton leveled at Obama four years ago.

So yes, Dan, if Republicans nominate Romney, I can rest easy about the Republican brand. But all of the candidates, including the eventual losers, could help matters by doing their part to reassure voters that Republicans have earned their trust in this vital area.

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Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.