Georg Löfflmann
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474419765
- eISBN:
- 9781474435192
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474419765.003.0008
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
The chapter explores how as President of the United States, Barack Obama was in a constant exchange with both political opponents and diverging voices within his own administration over defining ...
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The chapter explores how as President of the United States, Barack Obama was in a constant exchange with both political opponents and diverging voices within his own administration over defining America’s world political role and the purpose behind American power. The chapter describes how Obama’s strategic vision not only informed the political debate and determined policy, but also represented the central hub in an intertextual network of grand strategy discourses, providing the focus for the policy advice and criticism of Washington think tanks, the reporting and commentary of the media, and the intellectual attention of academic researchers interested in the study of US foreign and security policy. The chapter examines how Obama reconfirmed a national and bipartisan consensus, -the ideational dimension of American exceptionalism, liberal hegemony, and military supremacy-, while linking this identity to a pragmatic policy course of cooperative engagement and military restraint that large segments of the Washington establishment rejected for challenging the elite consensus on liberal hegemony.Less
The chapter explores how as President of the United States, Barack Obama was in a constant exchange with both political opponents and diverging voices within his own administration over defining America’s world political role and the purpose behind American power. The chapter describes how Obama’s strategic vision not only informed the political debate and determined policy, but also represented the central hub in an intertextual network of grand strategy discourses, providing the focus for the policy advice and criticism of Washington think tanks, the reporting and commentary of the media, and the intellectual attention of academic researchers interested in the study of US foreign and security policy. The chapter examines how Obama reconfirmed a national and bipartisan consensus, -the ideational dimension of American exceptionalism, liberal hegemony, and military supremacy-, while linking this identity to a pragmatic policy course of cooperative engagement and military restraint that large segments of the Washington establishment rejected for challenging the elite consensus on liberal hegemony.
Carl Pedersen
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638949
- eISBN:
- 9780748672059
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638949.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
The year 2008 will be remembered as the moment when the United States elected its first African American president. This book seeks to place the extraordinary rise of Barack Obama within the larger ...
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The year 2008 will be remembered as the moment when the United States elected its first African American president. This book seeks to place the extraordinary rise of Barack Obama within the larger context of a possible historic political realignment in the U.S. and of limits to U.S. power in the world. For 2008 also offered a number of history lessons that will surely inform studies of the election and its aftermath. This book is an attempt to engage with these history lessons. It examines the demographic changes that will likely change the nature of American national identity. It also assesses the extent to which the grassroots organisations that were crucial in winning the election for Obama may influence the way he governs the nation. Moreover, the book maps the contours of an Obama Doctrine in foreign policy by looking at how his identity has shaped his views on the role of the U.S. in the world and how he, in turn, has been influenced by his foreign policy advisers. It examines the challenges Obama faces in confronting a post-American world in which the U.S. is no longer the sole superpower. Will Obama be a transformative president?Less
The year 2008 will be remembered as the moment when the United States elected its first African American president. This book seeks to place the extraordinary rise of Barack Obama within the larger context of a possible historic political realignment in the U.S. and of limits to U.S. power in the world. For 2008 also offered a number of history lessons that will surely inform studies of the election and its aftermath. This book is an attempt to engage with these history lessons. It examines the demographic changes that will likely change the nature of American national identity. It also assesses the extent to which the grassroots organisations that were crucial in winning the election for Obama may influence the way he governs the nation. Moreover, the book maps the contours of an Obama Doctrine in foreign policy by looking at how his identity has shaped his views on the role of the U.S. in the world and how he, in turn, has been influenced by his foreign policy advisers. It examines the challenges Obama faces in confronting a post-American world in which the U.S. is no longer the sole superpower. Will Obama be a transformative president?
Robert G. Kaufman
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780813167206
- eISBN:
- 9780813167749
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813167206.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
The main argument is that President Obama’s foreign and national security policy reflects a coherent set of assumptions and premises constituting a Doctrine. The book argues further that the Obama ...
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The main argument is that President Obama’s foreign and national security policy reflects a coherent set of assumptions and premises constituting a Doctrine. The book argues further that the Obama Doctrine dangerously repudiates the legacy of robust internationalism that has successfully guided American foreign policy since World War II. It argues the Obama Doctrine has made matters significantly worse in the world’s three most important geopolitical regions: Europe; the Middle East, and East Asia. It advocates some version of moral democratic realism, most characteristic of the presidencies of Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush, as the most prudent alternative that is consistent with American ideals and self-interest.Less
The main argument is that President Obama’s foreign and national security policy reflects a coherent set of assumptions and premises constituting a Doctrine. The book argues further that the Obama Doctrine dangerously repudiates the legacy of robust internationalism that has successfully guided American foreign policy since World War II. It argues the Obama Doctrine has made matters significantly worse in the world’s three most important geopolitical regions: Europe; the Middle East, and East Asia. It advocates some version of moral democratic realism, most characteristic of the presidencies of Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush, as the most prudent alternative that is consistent with American ideals and self-interest.
Robert G. Kaufman
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780813167206
- eISBN:
- 9780813167749
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813167206.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
This chapter compares and contrasts the Obama Doctrine with various foreign policy traditions. The Obama Doctrine is in many ways unique, approximating most closely the foreign policy of President ...
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This chapter compares and contrasts the Obama Doctrine with various foreign policy traditions. The Obama Doctrine is in many ways unique, approximating most closely the foreign policy of President Carter during his first three years in office. The Obama Doctrine stands furthest from the foreign policies characteristic of Truman, Reagan, and George W. Bush. None of the traditional formulations of American foreign policy fully captures President Obama’s unique synthesis. Ironically, the Obama Doctrine is most closely aligned with the outlook of Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who also advocates a substantial devolution of American power and discounts ideology and regime type as key variables for identifying friends and foes.Less
This chapter compares and contrasts the Obama Doctrine with various foreign policy traditions. The Obama Doctrine is in many ways unique, approximating most closely the foreign policy of President Carter during his first three years in office. The Obama Doctrine stands furthest from the foreign policies characteristic of Truman, Reagan, and George W. Bush. None of the traditional formulations of American foreign policy fully captures President Obama’s unique synthesis. Ironically, the Obama Doctrine is most closely aligned with the outlook of Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who also advocates a substantial devolution of American power and discounts ideology and regime type as key variables for identifying friends and foes.
Carl Pedersen
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638949
- eISBN:
- 9780748672059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638949.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
The Obama Doctrine, defined as a coherent worldview informing the formulation of a twenty-first-century foreign policy, can be traced back to Barack Obama's formative years and is linked with the ...
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The Obama Doctrine, defined as a coherent worldview informing the formulation of a twenty-first-century foreign policy, can be traced back to Barack Obama's formative years and is linked with the development of his identity. Obama himself has often made the connection between his life story and his foreign policy views. Obama gave his first interview as president to the Arabic television news channel network Al-Arabiya. He was the first president to mention Muslims in his inaugural address, and in the interview he reiterated his desire for outreach to the Muslim world. Obama's background and intellectual development attest to an experience with foreign cultures and a keen interest in foreign policy issues. He represents a break both with the transatlantic focus of the Eastern Establishment and the unilateralism and Pacific and Caribbean imperialist orientation of Southern and Western conservatism. In his autobiography, Obama recorded his first impressions of Indonesia and recounts his childhood in Hawaii in terms of his search for identity. He also traces his roots to Africa.Less
The Obama Doctrine, defined as a coherent worldview informing the formulation of a twenty-first-century foreign policy, can be traced back to Barack Obama's formative years and is linked with the development of his identity. Obama himself has often made the connection between his life story and his foreign policy views. Obama gave his first interview as president to the Arabic television news channel network Al-Arabiya. He was the first president to mention Muslims in his inaugural address, and in the interview he reiterated his desire for outreach to the Muslim world. Obama's background and intellectual development attest to an experience with foreign cultures and a keen interest in foreign policy issues. He represents a break both with the transatlantic focus of the Eastern Establishment and the unilateralism and Pacific and Caribbean imperialist orientation of Southern and Western conservatism. In his autobiography, Obama recorded his first impressions of Indonesia and recounts his childhood in Hawaii in terms of his search for identity. He also traces his roots to Africa.
Mehran Kamrava
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781501720352
- eISBN:
- 9781501720369
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501720352.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Middle Eastern Politics
This chapter examines the foreign policies of six key actors in the Persian Gulf in light of middle power rivalries and sectarian tensions. The actors include Iran and Saudi Arabia, which the chapter ...
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This chapter examines the foreign policies of six key actors in the Persian Gulf in light of middle power rivalries and sectarian tensions. The actors include Iran and Saudi Arabia, which the chapter argues are today perhaps the Middle East’s most significant middle powers, in addition to Turkey of course. There are two other states in the area with aspirations of being middle powers, namely Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, despite their small geographic size and equally small populations.Less
This chapter examines the foreign policies of six key actors in the Persian Gulf in light of middle power rivalries and sectarian tensions. The actors include Iran and Saudi Arabia, which the chapter argues are today perhaps the Middle East’s most significant middle powers, in addition to Turkey of course. There are two other states in the area with aspirations of being middle powers, namely Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, despite their small geographic size and equally small populations.
Georg Löfflmann
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474419765
- eISBN:
- 9781474435192
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474419765.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
The book explores the breakdown of the elite consensus on America's role in the world. By emphasising military restraint and 'leading from behind' President Obama challenged the Washington foreign ...
More
The book explores the breakdown of the elite consensus on America's role in the world. By emphasising military restraint and 'leading from behind' President Obama challenged the Washington foreign policy establishment and its strategic vision of liberal hegemony from within.Highlighting the identity performing function and discursive construction of grand strategy, the book demonstrates how the geopolitical identity of American exceptionalism is linked to the conduct of an activist and interventionist foreign policy, resulting in a dominant grand strategy of American primacy and global military pre-eminence. An intertextual framework of analysis is used to examine the political performance and validity of this dominant identity-policy link, and the success of countering discourses of cooperative engagement and restraint under the Obama presidency. The nexus of geopolitical identity and national security is traced through a multidimensional perspective that considers the common sense status of popular culture and media, the expertise of Washington think tanks and foreign policy experts, and the political decisions taken in the White House and the Pentagon.From an in-depth analysis of various competing discourses of national security and foreign policy, the book concludes that American grand strategy under Obama no longer represented a coherent and consistent equation of material resources and political ends, but a contested discursive space, where identity and policy no longer matched. This resulted in the conflicted and contradictory nature of the Obama Doctrine.Less
The book explores the breakdown of the elite consensus on America's role in the world. By emphasising military restraint and 'leading from behind' President Obama challenged the Washington foreign policy establishment and its strategic vision of liberal hegemony from within.Highlighting the identity performing function and discursive construction of grand strategy, the book demonstrates how the geopolitical identity of American exceptionalism is linked to the conduct of an activist and interventionist foreign policy, resulting in a dominant grand strategy of American primacy and global military pre-eminence. An intertextual framework of analysis is used to examine the political performance and validity of this dominant identity-policy link, and the success of countering discourses of cooperative engagement and restraint under the Obama presidency. The nexus of geopolitical identity and national security is traced through a multidimensional perspective that considers the common sense status of popular culture and media, the expertise of Washington think tanks and foreign policy experts, and the political decisions taken in the White House and the Pentagon.From an in-depth analysis of various competing discourses of national security and foreign policy, the book concludes that American grand strategy under Obama no longer represented a coherent and consistent equation of material resources and political ends, but a contested discursive space, where identity and policy no longer matched. This resulted in the conflicted and contradictory nature of the Obama Doctrine.
Georg Löfflmann
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474419765
- eISBN:
- 9781474435192
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474419765.003.0009
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
This chapter provides a summary of the book’s findings. The chapter argues that the geopolitical vision of a more restrained leadership role and more cautious global engagement Obama formulated was ...
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This chapter provides a summary of the book’s findings. The chapter argues that the geopolitical vision of a more restrained leadership role and more cautious global engagement Obama formulated was reflecting the post-American future rather than the hegemonic past of America’s role in world politics. It assesses that most influential scholars, pundits and policy makers in turn remained embedded in the Washington consensus of hegemony and mired in a unipolar worldview. The chapter identifies a further fracturing of the grand strategy consensus, between elite opinion and the foreign policy establishment denouncing ‘isolationist’ tendencies, and an American public increasingly in favour of non-interventionism and in acceptance of a less singular hegemonic role. The chapter briefly reviews how this conflict was also encapsulated in the contest for Obama’s succession between Hillary Clinton, a quintessential Washington insider and firm believer in America’s role as the world’s indispensable nation and Donald Trump, an anti-establishment populist that had aggressively questioned the elite consensus on US foreign and economic policy.Less
This chapter provides a summary of the book’s findings. The chapter argues that the geopolitical vision of a more restrained leadership role and more cautious global engagement Obama formulated was reflecting the post-American future rather than the hegemonic past of America’s role in world politics. It assesses that most influential scholars, pundits and policy makers in turn remained embedded in the Washington consensus of hegemony and mired in a unipolar worldview. The chapter identifies a further fracturing of the grand strategy consensus, between elite opinion and the foreign policy establishment denouncing ‘isolationist’ tendencies, and an American public increasingly in favour of non-interventionism and in acceptance of a less singular hegemonic role. The chapter briefly reviews how this conflict was also encapsulated in the contest for Obama’s succession between Hillary Clinton, a quintessential Washington insider and firm believer in America’s role as the world’s indispensable nation and Donald Trump, an anti-establishment populist that had aggressively questioned the elite consensus on US foreign and economic policy.
Mehran Kamrava
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781501720352
- eISBN:
- 9781501720369
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501720352.003.0006
- Subject:
- Political Science, Middle Eastern Politics
Since the early years of the twentieth century, the Persian Gulf has been viewed as a strategically vital waterway, both for the global economy in general and for the continued prosperity of advanced ...
More
Since the early years of the twentieth century, the Persian Gulf has been viewed as a strategically vital waterway, both for the global economy in general and for the continued prosperity of advanced economies in particular. In the process, the region has become an arena for the emergence of multiple and often overlapping security challenges, many of them indigenous to the area and many imported from abroad. Up until the 2011 Arab uprisings, most of these security challenges revolved around territorial, political, and military competitions and conflicts within and between actors from the region itself and from the outside. While threats and challenges to human security were also present, they were often overshadowed by more immediate and more tangible threats to territorial sovereignty and those posed by various forms of political and military competition between state actors.Less
Since the early years of the twentieth century, the Persian Gulf has been viewed as a strategically vital waterway, both for the global economy in general and for the continued prosperity of advanced economies in particular. In the process, the region has become an arena for the emergence of multiple and often overlapping security challenges, many of them indigenous to the area and many imported from abroad. Up until the 2011 Arab uprisings, most of these security challenges revolved around territorial, political, and military competitions and conflicts within and between actors from the region itself and from the outside. While threats and challenges to human security were also present, they were often overshadowed by more immediate and more tangible threats to territorial sovereignty and those posed by various forms of political and military competition between state actors.
