President Obama speaks with National Security Advisor Susan Rice aboard Air Force One on April 25, 2014.

President Obama speaks with National Security Advisor Susan Rice aboard Air Force One on April 25, 2014. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

Iraq Is the First Major Test of Obama's Revamped Foreign Policy

Obama's May speech at the National Defense University updated the world on America's post-9/11 battle space. The recent crisis in Iraq is putting those words to the test. By Major Garrett

President Obama told us this would happen. He even said U.S. policy should prepare for it.

Obama did not necessarily see the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria coming or imagine its cross-border pulverizing of Iraqi forces in Mosul and across much of north and western Iraq. He didn’t see great swaths of Syria and Iraq falling into hands of Sunni radicals too bloodthirsty for al-Qaida. Nor did he see ISIS fighters driving U.S.-made military trucks and Humvees or firing U.S.-made weapons with U.S.-made ammunition.

The particulars eluded Obama. They eluded virtually everyone who, after U.S. forces left Iraq, nonchalantly watched Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki intensify his autocratic and divisive ways in Baghdad, alienating Sunni and Kurdish leaders and the towns and territories they represented. Any critic of Obama’s Iraq policy now (the specific grievance being the lack of a U.S. residual force of some undefined number—10,000? 20,000? or 30,000?) must credibly explain how those troops would have redirected Maliki’s arrogant and mistrustful political energies toward consensus or inclusiveness. They wouldn’t have. Period. To pretend so now, after the fact, is fantasy and folly. There’s no time for either. Iraq has had enough of both—its own and imported from Washington.

Washington stood by, collectively and with bipartisan indifference, while Maliki stirred the hornet’s nest of Sunni resentment. While ISIS was fortifying itself with equipment and sharpening its fighting skills in Syria, it silently stoked Sunni grievances inside Iraq, often at the local level. When it pounced during the political transition after Iraq’s most recent election, it routed a demoralized Iraqi army and found common cause with Sunnis fed up with Maliki’s authoritarian boot and serial corruption.

But Obama saw this larger problem coming and warned the storm clouds were gathering. At least he sounded like he did. In one of the meatiest and most important military policy speeches of his presidency, Obama told the country on May 23, 2013, that it must view the war on terrorism as a new conflict—with seemingly random battlefields and disparate foes with local orientations and occasionally international ambitions. The speech’s venue was the National Defense University.

“America is at a crossroads,” Obama said. “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us. What we can do—what we must do—is dismantle networks that pose a direct danger to us, and make it less likely for new groups to gain a foothold.”

Obama then described threats outside of Afghanistan and Iraq and the need for America and its allies to nimbly respond.

“What we’ve seen is the emergence of various al-Qaida affiliates. From Yemen to Iraq, from Somalia to North Africa, the threat today is more diffuse, with al-Qaida’s affiliates in the Arabian Peninsula—AQAP—the most active in plotting against our homeland.

“Unrest in the Arab world has also allowed extremists to gain a foothold in countries like Libya and Syria.”

Aspects of ISIS’s approach can be found in what Obama said next.

“Other of these groups are simply collections of local militias or extremists interested in seizing territory. That means we’ll face more localized threats ... in which local operatives—perhaps in loose affiliation with regional networks—launch periodic attacks against Western diplomats, companies, and other soft targets, or resort to kidnapping and other criminal enterprises to fund their operations.”

ISIS or ISIL as it’s also known (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) could be described as an amalgam of all these terrorist threats—local and regional, ideological and opportunistic, methodical and criminal, militaristic and political.

“So that’s the current threat,” Obama said. “Lethal yet less capable al-Qaida affiliates; threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad; homegrown extremists. This is the future of terrorism. We have to take these threats seriously, and do all that we can to confront them.”

It was an important speech. It sought to define an end to the concept of post 9/11 warfare and explain the new battle space. It did all of those things. But it did not change policy. It did not take Obama’s strategic and operational insights—of which there were many—and usefully apply them where they belonged: Syria. It is that battle-scarred country and its ghastly three-year civil war that gave rise to ISIS/ISIL and may give rise to lone-wolf terrorists who may wreak havoc later in Europe or the U.S. (something Obama also warned of—in a generic sense—in the National Defense University speech).

The conflict now raging in Iraq and the territorial gains of ISIS/ISIL are of stupendous regional importance. Nothing on the map can compete with the potentially negative consequences of a collapsed Iraq, an ISIS/ISIL force controlling parts of Iraq and Syria, armed to the teeth and financed with millions. This is all imaginable now. It’s beyond a pity that what Obama said in 2013 roused neither him nor his national security team to apply its laudable insights in Syria or Iraq.

Obama’s speech was the best and worst of his presidency. It brimmed with nuanced and thoughtful rhetoric and offered a keen perspective on future threats and lofted many emphatic words about new policies ... and accomplished precisely nothing. The speech did not yield new and creative thinking within the Pentagon or State Department, at least that is evidenced by any productive work preparing for or dealing with ISIS/ISIL. It did not sensitize the Obama team to the growing menace--along an east-west continuum in Syria and Iraq--that might arise from the Syrian civil war, Sunni militancy, and Iraqi political grievance and alienation.

The acid test of this Obama speech must be ISIS/ISIL. The speech asked the country and Obama’s team to view the global terrorism threat anew and to gather intelligence--which the Kurds were trying to provide about ISIS/ISIL, by the way--about perils unforeseen. Obama said it. It ought to have mattered in Syria and Iraq. There’s scant evidence it did.

Even those who wish Obama well have noted a White House tendency to devote far more energy to the development of a big speech than the follow-up to enforce or alter policy afterward. In the Obama White House, there’s always another big speech.

Obama is not the first president to find policy implementation harder than rhetorical flourish. But it borders on malpractice that a speech as big as this one didn’t reverberate. More than most presidents, Obama knows words matter. How much different things might be now if Obama’s words had mattered to his national security team months ago.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.