Sadly, Mr. Pexton, all of the presidents you mentioned engaged in precisely the type of effort Obama described as his administration’s policy; that is, intervening in the name of perfecting the human condition. It's clearly true that none of the presidents are a Stalin or a Robespierre, but just as surely they did seek to install Western/democratic/pagan values in the country in which they intervened. From Johnson's effort to build a TWA on the Mekong while killing the Vietnamese to save them; to Clinton's intervention to "perfect" Serbs by bombing them for scores of days from 20,000 feet; to Bush and Obama trying to install women's rights and democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, recent U.S. presidents have all been addicted to trying to perfect the world in the West's image and remake the world, as Obama said, the way it "ought to be." This sort of behavior leads only to war, dead Americans, absurdly high levels of wasted spending, and an outward focus that makes domestic concerns second-level priorities. At base, the problem is not the person but the policy and its goal, and when "perfectionism" is the goal in foreign policy it will yield only some dead on our side, and enormous numbers of dead on the side that is the target to be perfected. And oddly, those great champions of multiculturalism and diversity -- the Democrats -- have very often been the engine of involving America in wars to "perfect" those Kipling would have described as our "little brown brothers."

I would also disagree with Mr. Pexton regarding the place of abortion in a discussion of foreign policy. The foreign policy of every country is informed and shaped by its history, traditions, and values; America is no different in this regard. Our approach to foreign policy over the past 40 years has seen an ever increasing use of military power as the default foreign policy tool. Over the same period we have murdered 45 million unborn Americans. While the latter did not cause the former, it certainly has influenced and cheapened the bipartisan political elite's view of the value of human life -- how else to explain killing 500,000 to one million Iraqi children with sanctions -- and the near-unanimous willingness of Obama, McCain, major European leaders, and the Neocons to impose harder-than-Iraq sanctions on Iran. One wonders how many hundreds of thousands of dead Iranian children Secretary Clinton will some day explain were "worth it" in order to protect Israel?

Finally, while I won't say that anything Mr. Pexton wrote was "silly" or describe it as "bull-horn rhetoric," I would say that he is more than a bit challenged in understanding the scope of the Declaration's assertion of everyone's right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." There have been two incidents in American history in which this right was denied by legal means to whole classes of people. The Dred Scott decision not only denied that four million Blacks were American citizens, it declared them not even human, but rather chattel property. The Roe-vs-Wade decision declared the unborn both non-U.S. citizens and non-human, and it made unborn human beings the chattel property of other human beings. Dred Scott helped cause a war that killed 620,000 Americans, the full extent of the violence that Roe-vs-Wade will yield has yet to be seen.

Mr. Lincoln once said that if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. Based on the promise of the Declaration, Mr. Lincoln's reasoning, and common sense, I can only say that if abortion is not wrong, nothing is wrong, and it is a wrong that makes a bloody mockery of the Declaration.

President Obama’s speech provided us with the best glimpse so far of how he sees the world. It was an explanation of years of his careful thinking about America’s foreign policy and the experience he has recently learned from the realities of governing. As others have said, the speech reinforced the continuity of the major tenets of American foreign policy beginning from the first post-Cold War years. However, the President’s speech is unique in that, unlike the nineties when globalization promised bright economic opportunities, it is sober rather than optimistic. And it takes a different approach than during the Bush years, emphasizing moral ambiguity over moral clarity, in the wake of our national security institutions having met with full force the murky and complex realities of today.

The basic tenets of American foreign policy for the post-Cold War world persist, but the tone has changed while the experience of the execution has repeatedly fallen short. It is clear that the United States, like the “old architecture” of the global institutions, “is buckling under the weight of new threats.”

As President Obama stated, new threats of this century include terrorism, failed states, and nuclear proliferation, all occurring in a pace and in an environment of complexity with which it has become increasingly difficult to keep up.

The President talked about balancing engagement, pressure, isolation, incentives, and war and peace. Yet, our mechanisms for integrating all the elements of national power are far too weak to achieve the level of ambidexterity required to advance our national security interests today. Too often, events on the ground outpace interagency decisions that take months to settle in Washington.

The President stated development “is not mere charity,” but is critical for our national security. Yet, our foreign aid instruments of national power are incredibly slow, clumsy, and feeble. It can take a year for Washington to provide conflict prevention funding requested by an embassy in a frail state to avert a crisis. Several studies have shown that by the time it arrives, it is often too late.

The President emphasized the importance of the impact of tribal, religious, and civil conflict to national security. Yet, our feel for these diffuse sources of conflict is hampered by poor information sharing and overwhelmed decision-makers who often do not have the time to develop the deep understanding required to address these problems.

The President exhorted us to reach for the world that ought to be. Yet, the crisis-management culture of our government often focuses decision-makers on preventing the world as it is from getting worse, while overlooking the initiatives that advance the opportunities for achieving what ought to be.

President Obama is right to say this new era “will require the same vision, hard work, and persistence of those men and women who acted so boldly decades ago.” As many of us work through and ponder America’s vision for the 21st century, adaptations in our national security institutions must follow.

President Obama gave a very unusual lecture upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. His lecture was far more a justification of war than a vision of peace. If the Nobel Committee selected Obama for the prize because of his vision and their hopes, its members must have been sorely disappointed. Under any circumstances, the Nobel Peace Lecture would be a strange setting in which to set forth a doctrine on war, and particularly one that sought to justify US wars, past and present.

When the president speaks of America helping to "underwrite global security for more than six decades," is he putting his stamp of approval on the disastrous American wars in Vietnam and Iraq? Is he suggesting that all US wars, including these, "have a role to play in preserving peace"?

The president stated, "I believe the United States must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war." But what kind of standards does he have in mind? We went to war illegally against Iraq. We were responsible there for massive civilian deaths, injuries and dislocations -- largely replaying the US role in Vietnam. President Obama has decided to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, a decision that is likely to result in increased civilian deaths, injuries and dislocations in that country. He continues to authorize drone attacks against targets in Pakistan, also resulting in civilian deaths. Is this the standard he has in mind?

"Peace," the president says, "must encompass economic security and opportunity." If he really believed this, wouldn't he be transferring a large percentage of the current military budget, some $700 billion, to programs designed to actually provide economic security and opportunity? For 10 to 20 percent of the US military budget, it would be possible to largely fulfill the eight Millennium Development Goals concerned with ending poverty and hunger and providing basic health care and education to all the world's people. That would reflect the use of US resources for peace rather than war. That would build true friendship for the US throughout the world.

Sadly, the president delivered a tone deaf speech in Oslo, one touting militarism and war in the name of peace. One wonders why he would go to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize and deliver a speech in praise of war? If there was a doctrine in his speech, it sounded to me far too similar to those of past American presidents that have sought peace by engaging in war. This doctrine has not been sound in the past, as is unlikely to be effective now.

I want to respond to Mike Scheuer’s last comment, parts of which I am disturbed by. And I am speaking for myself, and not for National Journal. I defend Mike’s right to say or write anything here or anywhere else. Indeed I encourage it. But I have a right and duty to strongly disagree and to say so forthrightly.

Mike criticized Barack Obama’s statement in his Oslo speech that “we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected.” In Mike’s words, “Obama’s assertion that ‘the human condition can be perfected’ is, of course, the belief born in the French Revolution that brought the world the Directory's terror, Adolph Hitler, the Khmer Rouge, and Joseph Stalin.”

I think that comparing Barack Obama, or any recent U.S. president, to Hitler or Stalin or the Khmer Rouge--ugly and brutal dictatorships that systematically and intentionally murdered millions of innocent people--is unfair and unhelpful to any sort of reasonable discourse on the strengths and weaknesses of this president or to American foreign and defense policy in general.

I can’t think of a single U.S. president in my lifetime who has not made serious mistakes in foreign policy. And sure, we can all cite our favorite “war crime” by recent presidents—Johnson’s napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam, or alternatively his failure to try to win there decisively; Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia and continuing an Asian war for seven more wars; Clinton’s idleness during the genocide in Rwanda and Burundi, or failure to get Osama bin Laden earlier; George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, his torture and rendition, or perhaps his absence of commitment to Afghanistan. Regardless of your favorite, I think that none of these sins approach the universe of Hitler or Stalin.

Mike and I would probably agree on the mistakes made by the last president in the early weeks and months after 9/11. I think getting bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri should have been nearly the only goal and we should have pursued it relentlessly with every soldier, airplane, helicopter and bomb in our arsenal in those early weeks with little mercy and little regard for national borders, Pakistan or Afghanistan. And then we should have gone home after we had caught or killed them.

But Mike do you seriously think that George W. Bush then, or Barack Obama now, or Bill Clinton in Kosovo, or George H.W. Bush in Kuwait, pursued their wars to bring “pagan” Western values and climate justice to the Hindu Kush, the Balkans, or to Mesopotamia? That is just plain silly.

As Mike indicates, we have a government based on the balance of powers because in part the founding fathers were cynics with no great faith in humanity. But they were also idealists, and idealism and human rights has been a part of U.S. foreign policy from the country’s earliest days. They believed in a “more perfect” union. And what exactly is pagan about “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Pagan indeed.

And finally, Mike, I think this is the second or third time you’ve mentioned abortion in your posts this year. I personally think this is out of bounds for this blog.

I will yield to you in matters of South Asia and Osama bin Laden. But this is an area I know a lot about, as a reporter earlier in my career in three states covering this issue. I have attended far more pro-life and pro-choice rallies than I suspect you have. Both sides talk past each other on this issue. What the left misses is the sincere fervor of those who believe abortion is murder and the passion with which they hold their beliefs. These are good Americans who believe strongly, they’re not nutcases or wackos. A few extremists, however, do resort to murder and bombings to obtain their objectives.

But I have also spent many hours interviewing abortion providers and the women who have sought and obtained abortions. What the right misses about abortion, in practice, is that in every abortion clinic I have been in, the physicians who do abortions do it on a volunteer basis, usually taking no pay whatsoever, or a nominal basic fee. In most clinics, physicians volunteer a day, or half a day, a week to do the procedure because they believe it should be safe and legal. In return, the doctors endure picketers at their houses, ugly and threatening mail and emails, and bombs and bullets that sometimes result in death.

In the clinics I visited, women pay a small flat fee, or pay on a sliding scale according to their ability to pay. Most such clinics survive, not on profit, but by donations from individuals and non-profits like Planned Parenthood. I saw no hint of profit motive in any of the clinics I visited by doctors, nurses, or anyone else.

Nor did the women seeking abortions at these clinics appear to me to be people who should be sitting on death row. I didn’t talk to a single woman, whether age 14 to 40 who had made their decision lightly, or made it without searching their consciences, without debate and consultation with parents, sexual partners, counselors, and clergy. The youngest women I interviewed were almost always there with their mothers, and if not that, then always an older adult. Other women came from all walks of life and from all stations, professional women to welfare recipients. The reasons for their decisions ran the gamut, sometimes for serious medical issues of life and health, others because they sincerely believed having a child would so alter their lives as to be impossible to manage.

You can still declare and believe that abortion is murder. But “slaughtering the unborn for profit” is just so much bull-horn rhetoric designed to raise the blood pressure, and discourage any thoughtful discussion of a difficult issue.

It is in the same vein as saying that Obama is one more Democratic leader “deliberately destroying the weak and the innocent.” It is thoughtless blather, designed to inflame and obfuscate, never to elucidate.

Let's take each section of this separately and then add in a wrap up statement:

(1) Continued American military superiority

"The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.... So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace."

Comment:

If the world were perfect and morality, ethics and decency ruled the planet than there would be no need for war. If all in the world were completely satisfied with their resources, hopes, dreams and sense of power or, on the other side, humility, then there would be no need for war. If greed, corruption, ignorance and avarice were absent then there would be no need for war. If all belief systems were understood and were accepted as what they are and not used to justify violence even in cases when it was not justified then there would be no need for war.

All that is fine in a Pangliossian vision intermixed with a bit of Pollyanna in the "best of all possible worlds". However, this is not the best of all possible worlds and there is greed, avarice, hunger, corruption, bigotry, poverty, hatred, resource competition, unemployment, ruined hopes, long lasting grievances, historical hatred, ignorance and more.

What would the world be without the instruments of war given the way the world is? How many of us would leave our doors open at night in the worst and most violent of slums and ghettos of the world. There is the ideal and then there is the real. The real determines that the instruments of war are required to have a role in preserving the peace. However, this is only the case if those instruments of war are used solely to preserve the peace. That has surely not been the case. The logic of this statement may seem like good rhetoric at first, but there are other assumptions that need to be added in to make this fully valid. I am certain the President understands the complexity of the assumptions that are required.

A rejection of national exceptionalism, not just America's

"Even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war."

"America--in fact, no nation--can insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves."

Comment:

War can be a very messy and ugly business. Retaining one's values in the midst of war and the fog of war can be near impossible sometimes. However, surely most would agree that even in the ugly face of war values need to give some backbone to behavior. Otherwise, we are lost. Then how can we distinguish ourselves from the enemy? If we do not retain our values then our greatest enemy becomes ourselves in our loss of moral compass. We also can lose the respect of the world. It is time to get back on track. Let us remember what are American values, human values, and basic decency. Then we apply them. The truly strong are those who retain their values in the most challenging of times.

"America cannot act alone to secure the peace."

Comment:

Of course this is the case. Go back into the wars in conflicts in the past of this country. Where we acting alone? Note that the French helped us in the American Revolution. Then go from there.

A defense of preemptive war and human rights

"I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans.... Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later."

"Only a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting."

Peace "must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want."

Comment:

This does not seem to be a defense of preemptive war.

Wrap up comment:

A good part of his speech seems to be a discussion with himself about what he really thinks "Just War" is. I have the feeling the President is struggling with this idea on many levels. His thinking seems to be more at the beginning to middle stages, rather than at the doctrinal stages. The President will need to work out a lot more issues before he defines, if he ever does, an "Obama Doctrine". He is a thinker and can carry many ideas at once. Don't expect one speech to define his ideas. This man is a lot more complex than that. Expect surprises on many issues. Trying to analogize his thinking with Presidents of the past could prove to be an error in logic. These are different times. He is working at the cusp of history on many issues. He may be challenged in many different ways in the future. He will need to develop his thinking on his own and in his own way. It is good to hear that he listens to many different viewpoints before making a decision. That shows he is willing to learn. In this world that is a key skill to have.

Winston Churchill is purported to have said that politicians tell the people what they want to hear, and statesmen tell the people what they need to hear. President Obama the Democrat-politician gave a speech at West Point which tried to please everyone in making the right decision about American involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan. President Obama the democrat-Statesman gave a speech in Oslo that echoed the finest of American leadership.

The Oslo speech was not, however, a doctrine. The speech merely represents the process of a politician becoming a president, of realizing that reality sucks. What was “new” in the Oslo speech was that Obama put in one place his thoughts on balancing interests and values, engagement and ends. In so doing, he echoes the beliefs, delivery, and even the same words, of Lincoln’s second inaugural, FDR’s Four Freedoms speech, JFK’s inaugural, and, gasp, George W. Bush’s second inaugural. This common and historic approach of principled pragmatism is the only way for America to do the most good for the most people, including its own, in a fallen world.

Finally, if Obama is to be truly presidential, he needs to stop using the George W. Bush years as a simplistic and monolithic foil to define himself against. He does America—and those who serve in our national security establishment, military and civilian—a disservice by suggesting that torture was systematic, especially at Guantanamo Bay, and that he stopped it. Heinous acts did take place in our fight against the terrorists, but they remain the exception to a system that exposed these acts and called for self-correction, long before he became president. After all, and back to Churchill, democracy is the worst system of governance, except for all the others.

Barack Obama’s performance solidified his status as the leader of modern, war-causing Western imperialism. He also reinforced the reality of his almost complete lack of concern for genuine U.S. national interests, notwithstanding his unconvincing talk about the use of military force. At Oslo, Obama performed as cheerleader-in-chief for all those extremely well-educated Americans and Europeans who foam at the mouth with eagerness to intervene in matters that are none of their concern, and to impose on the victims of their intervention Western “values” and “human rights” and “climate justice” that are largely pagan and so are repugnant to their faith, ways of life, and/or tribal customs. From Zimbabwe to Iran and from Burma to the Congo, Obama stands ready to lead Western intervention to make the world, as he said, into the place “it ought to be”; that is, U.S. lives, prestige, and money will be spent on such indefensible U.S. interventions as freeing poets in Burma and writing rape laws in Africa. Likewise, Obama’s assertion that “the human condition can be perfected” is, of course, the belief born in the French Revolution that brought the world the Directory's terror, Adolph Hitler, the Khmer Rouge, and Joseph Stalin. It is an idea that is -- not surprisingly for Obama -- as far away from the sentiments, beliefs, and principles of America‘s founders as it is possible for a human being to be.

Obama’s psuedo-intellectual discussion of the “Just War” also is adjusted to fit his needs. The principles of Just War are not only the three he cites. There are several others, the most important of which is, when going to war, there must be a reasonable expectation of success of a kind that will leave things better off than when the war began. Clearly, this means winning in a definitive way, but Obama has no intention at all of doing so in either Iraq or Afghanistan. The price Obama is willing to pay to remain the leader of Western imperialism is -- as it was for Bush, Clinton, and Bush -- more wasted American money and lives, as well as a growing list of half-fought, never-ending wars that do little to eliminate genuine threats to U.S. national security.

Finally, it is interesting to note that Obama in Oslo proved that no Democratic politician can or even wants to steer away from the dark shadow of his party’s long history of deliberate violence against those least able to defend themselves. The only point in Obama’s Nobel speech in which he sounded bloodthirsty was when he snarlingly demanded that the Western community “develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to change behavior.… Sanctions must exact a real price.” One must assume that Obama is here referring to the type sanctions used against Iraq, which caused -- according to who’s numbers you use -- the death of 500,000 to one million Iraqi children, a price you will recall that Democratic Secretary of State Madeline Albright was “worth it.”

With his call for more-lethal sanctions that unavoidably will fall on those who can neither defend themselves nor strike back, Barack Obama enters the Pantheon of Democratic heroes. From the genocidal Trail of Tears, to slavery, to secession, to civil war, to segregation, to socialism, to slaughtering the unborn for profit, Democratic leaders have always been at the forefront of American history when it comes to deliberately destroying the weak and the innocent. In that niche, Obama has now found a truly comfortable home.

Great speech, but not yet a doctrine. Larry Korb made the excellent point that the President has said all of this before, albeit not in one string. Moreover, his Oslo remarks suggest many qualifications of his pursuit of martial glory and national security. My Republican bubbas suggested that he sounded like George W. Bush, but he did not. He did sound a lot like George H. W. Bush or Colin Powell; prudence was present and accounted for in Oslo.

Right now, before we have an Obama doctrine, we need to hear more. We need to see the (overdue) national security strategy, which would be another step in the creation of a doctrine. In particular, Obama needs to define or perhaps redefine his stance on human rights, which he blows hot and cold over. He has on a few occasions turned a blind eye toward it, but has recently made strong statements in favor of human rights promotion. How will this work? Realism rules in Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon, but there are pockets of muscular internationalist activism in his UN mission. He may well find that he is a great believer in the "responsibility to protect" the populations of states under pressure.

Another issue is whether he will emphasize international engagement or cost avoidance strategies. For example, are there future interventions in our future ---- Yemen, Somalia, Darfur, e.g. -- or will he use lesser tools such as diplomacy, security assistance, and economic aid to deal with those circumstances? Here, he is likely --- a la Nixon, Ford, and Carter after the war in Vietnam--- to feel a resource limitation that has been absent for decades.

In the end, we also have to remember that even the President of the United States is both actor and acted upon. He too will be subject to the tyrrany (or the bounty) of events. For example, if Israel decides to attack Iran (with or without our help), President Obama will spend the rest of his Administration putting that issue back in the box. He may then add a third set of wars to his plate. Absent an Iran crisis, if he achieves relative peace in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama may in a potential second term realize his original goal of being a domestically focused president. Time will tell and serve as the co-author of the real Obama doctrine.

The Obama doctrine, which the President laid out in his Oslo speech, came as a surprise to many conservative supporters of the Bush National Security Strategy, like Robert Kagan, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin, who praised the speech. It should not have surprised them. In his campaign, Obama made many of these points. For example, he said he would withdraw our combat troops from Iraq (the dumb war, or the unjust or unnecessary war, that did not have the support of the international community), increase forces in Afghanistan (the just war that had been legitimized by the UN and NATO and was supported by 40,000 troops from other nations), and take military action against Al-Qaeda and their Taliban supporters in Pakistan’s frontier areas if Pakistan would not.

Moreover, Obama’s speech was a direct repudiation of the Bush National Security Strategy, which assumed that because of American exceptionalism and American power, this nation could and should wage unilateral, preventive wars to shape the international environment to its liking, and in so doing could ignore international standards like the Geneva Conventions. Obama said just the opposite.

While Obama argues that military force is justified in self defense and to confront evil like Hitler or Al-Qaeda, or on humanitarian grounds, like the Balkans, it should only be a last resort. Moreover, in waging war the U.S. must adhere to the international standards that govern the use of force and must act with our allies. In other words, we must lead by example and recognize the limits of American power.

While the Obama approach or doctrine is revolutionary when compared to that of his immediate predecessor, it is in keeping with the policies of many of his predecessors. Eisenhower rejected rollback in favor of containment; Kennedy embraced a test ban treaty; Nixon reached out to communist China and began strategic arms control negotiations with the evil empire; Ford signed the Helsinki Accords and limited ABM systems; Carter and Reagan continued the Nixon-Ford initiatives with China and the USSR; George H.W. Bush went to war with Iraq only after the UN authorized it and we received military and financial support from dozens of other nations; and Clinton used military force for humanitarian purposes in the Balkans, and in a limited effort against Al-Qaeda.

Coming to grips, or at least partially coming to grips, with reality is hardly a doctrine. There is nothing new or different in what the President said from the policies of his rpedecessors. What is new is that it was he who said it. And that appears to have come as a shock to those who would view the world through their own rose-tinted ideological spectacles rather than as it actually is.

Is it really a great surprise that the leader of the world's only superpower, with interests--and citizens--worldwide, declares that he is ready to fight to preserve those interests and those of his friends and allies? Or is it surprising that the President, having articulated the need for America to confront the world as it is, not as some might have it be, would also seek to reconcile hard-headed realpolitik with its own lofty ideals? Even Henry Kissinger, that supposed archdeacon of realism, has always asserted that his policies, and those of the people who have emulated him, always reflected an element of American idealism. For that too is essentially not only what America is about, but how America defines her interests. There are very few American policy makers, or policy maker wannabes, who believe that our ideals are not some component of our interests. Those who define themselves as realists, however, reeocgnize that we cannot always act on those ideals in ways that we would prefer. The world is full of constraints, even on the world's only superpower.

Obama has some ways to go before he can be classed with realist policy makers like George H.W. Bush. He still seems to desire to reach out to America's enemies, often to the frustration of her friends. His nuclear dreams are just that, dreams, but they nourish the fantasies of many on the American and European Left. HIs evocation of American power in support of its ideals, as in the Balkans, is indeed a reflection of the Clinton approach to international security. Nevertheless, even his reference to the Balkans is also an expression of American exceptionalism. After all, it was Madeline Albright who declared America ot be the 'indispensable power." No doubt many left-leaning Europeans and "progressivers" in the Democratic Party shuddered to hear him extol the use of force under any circumstances.

All in all, the Presdient is clearly reflecting an increasingly sober understanding of America's place and role in the world. While some, myself included, might take issue with many of the specifics of his policies, his somewhat more muscular approach is one that should be welcomed in a world that is both turbulent and, as the President himself has indicated, plagued by forces that can only be termed "evil."

I think with his West Point speech President Obama has begun to lay down his markers for a doctrine -- he not yet acted to make a doctrine. It is equally clear that in the arena of foreign policy, we are seeing a slow, cautious evolutionary approach to American foreign policy and not a revolutionary one.

In the fashion of most Democratic presidents, Obama is going to take a more bilateral or multilateral approach to international challenges. A more cynical person would suggest that will be the standard up to the moment another approach favoring us is needed. For the meantime, however, we will see a series of international engagements from the handling of Iran to the approach to global climate change. How long before the frustration sets in is up for debate.

In terms of past administrations, it is clear that no President wishes to be perceived as weak. The willingness of the President to stick it out in Afghanistan reflects that basic premise. This is not a war we can afford to lose and he knows. The stability of the area depends on at least our stabilizing influence in the area. And, you'll also notice that no one is beating a quick path out of Iraq.

Obama is, however, going to try to push the use of "soft power" in Afghanistan along with traditional "hard" power -- a definite change from the previous administration. It also appears to be a more aggressive version of soft power. I would suggest, however, that the metrics of soft power are going to be hard for anyone to determine and may quickly fall victim to impatience -- blood and treasure spilled with the vaguest of results.

Bottom line: The Obama Administration is still feeling its way quite cautiously in its foreign policy. It is currently a series of policy decisions rather than a comprehensive doctrine.

Don't think it's a doctrine and don't think it was intended to be. It was, however, a damned impressive tutorial about the challenges of reconciling power and principle in an imperfect world, especially from a relative neophyte in foreign affairs. And it also was a much needed if very graceful finger-wagging at our European allies.

As for precedents, in tone, and in my judgment in substance as well, it certainly reflected a significant departure from Obama's predecessor, devoid of the latter's chest-thumping unilateralism, claims of American supremacy, and disparagement of diplomacy. All in all, the president about whom it reminded me most was Richard Nixon (which might make Mr. Obama uncomfortable, but me not at all).

Trying to discern in Obama’s address at Oslo the contours of a coherent foreign policy is likely to prove futile. For the elucidation of a strategic design was not the purpose. The aim was political – in two senses. The first, primary consideration was to create favorable impressions among the American public - especially the political class – of Obama’s stewardship and the country’s exalted standing in the world. The secondary objective, I believe, was to shape perceptions of the United States as a sober, responsible and ‘humane’ leader of the global community. Satisfying both audiences required that he at once justify the ready resort to military force, the outstanding feature of America’s international actions in recent years, and to stake a claim to the moral high ground. The coincidence of the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony with the escalation of the war in Afghan/Pakistan was the inescapable occasion to accomplish these purposes.

Toward that end, Obama took a dual approach. The first element was casting the discourse at a high level of abstraction: ‘just war’ theory, community of nations, the human condition, the age old struggle to reconcile right and might, means and ends. The other element was stylistic. Rather than seek to formulate an elaborate intellectual argument whose parts were integrated into a logically rigorous analysis, Obama chose to present a sort of collage or, perhaps more accurately, a modernistic painting a la Kandinsky. That involved displaying on the canvas (the minds of his audience) arresting splashes in various shapes and colors along with stray lines, vaguely connected to each other, that commented upon the bright passages. All the components were chosen with care to evoke certain impressions and images. References to the pantheon of the virtuous – Gandhi, Martin Luther King; conjuring evil in vivid terms – 9/11, al-Qaida, the spectre of nuclear war; pious allusion to the Divine (spark) and our eternal longing to comport with our better angels; presenting America in its Sunday best – the indispensable nation with the means and will to defend everyone’s enlightened interests, to ‘remain the standard bearer in the conduct of war’, to keep the world order from ‘buckling.’ In short, the one best hope of mankind. These unoriginal materials were speckled throughout the speech, suitably attired for grand occasions. They give tone and were meant to be felt as tokens of earnestness while creating a mood of uplift.

The overall composition, as well as its individual ingredients, is designed to play on feeling rather than to engage thought. Certainly not critical cognition. These are not dots, data points, encouraging you to connect them by your own applied intellect. They are an invitation to see reality in the speaker’s terms without the audience’s feeling the artist’s guiding hand. This is the way non-representational art works, when there is intelligent intent behind its creation. The splotches of paint or sound or word symbol are meant to generate affect. They entice rather than direct. The tangible recognizable bits (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Darfur) are interspersed throughout not for the purpose of instruction. Rather, it is intended that your thoughts/feelings about the speaker’s take on them should be made favorable by the composition of evocative symbols that surrounds it. In plain English, you agree that Obama is right about all those problematic places and issues because he and they have acquired a halo.

Skillful oratory of this nature is meant to leave a lasting impression. An impression of the person and his imagery whose afterglow will cast in a becoming light all else that will emanate from him. It burnishes his persona. Oslo is but a highlight in a campaign – a campaign to make politically real, at home and abroad, what is now a virtual reality. The one hard element is the preoccupation with terrorism. Fear and dread are the verities. What was so prominent in the Nobel speech is also manifest in American policy and diplomacy. A grammatically correct war against terror is the lodestone. India we tell to make peace in Kashmir so as to free Pakistani military resources for an all-out war on the Northwest frontier. Europeans we tell to send more troops. Russia we tell to give us transit rights to reinforce Afghanistan (in addition to sanctioning Iran). The African Union we tell to support the suppression of Islamic radicals in Mali, Somalia, Chad. The Latin Americans we warn not to let drug money find its way into the terrorism arena. All else is overshadowed. Those hundred al-Qaida in the Hindu Kush can undo all the arduous work of the past sixty years. For better or worse, that is the one anchor in Obama’s worldview – Albert Schweitzer, Nelson Mandela, and Gandhi notwithstanding.

I offer these remarks as a cautionary tale against being over eager to find understanding of the taproots for Obama’s foreign policy in his Oslo speech. What he decided to do in AfPak, in Palestine, in Somalia, on extraordinary rendition and open-ended detention did not arise from some philosophy. This will be no different when he makes his fateful decision about Iran. Let’s look instead at the interplay of pressures - whether originating out there or, equally important, among some of his strong willed advisers - especially those now in the ascendancy in the Pentagon. That interplay will take place within a presidential mental space that is responsive and adaptive. It lacks a fine grained cognitive map that has fixed markers. Obama’s conviction is a constant; its content is in perpetual flux.

I believe that's an accurate depiction, but there's certainly little that is innovative. I'd be hard pressed to distinguish this from the Clinton strategy. Most importantly, this steady-as-she goes approach does nothing to avert the upcoming train wreck resulting from the fact that the United States, unlike most of history's other great powers, has banished the concepts of efficiency and affordability from its strategy. The strategy is thus based on wildly inefficient notions like attempting to alter the systemic conditions that give rise to violent extremism, and pursuing counterterrorism via counterinsurgency. In the past the United States could afford a deeply inefficient strategy, but those days are nearing an end. America faces a dangerous mismatch between the ends and means of its strategy, and the Obama Doctrine does not address it.