The art of declining politely: Obama's prudent presidency and the waning of American power

Abstract

The story of American foreign policy in the present era can be characterized as the unfolding of two plots, intertwined yet distinct. One focuses on the presidency of Barack Obama, and consists of efforts to locate his approach within the intellectual historical context of US policy-making and evaluate its wisdom. The other concerns the status of the United States within the international order, and consists of debate over the sustainability of US primacy. These discussions are distinct in terms of both level of analysis and the timeframe with which they concern themselves. The story of the Obama presidency is focused upon the ends and means adopted by a single administration, in power for a maximum of eight years; the larger American story concerns the trajectory of the nation over a generational timescale. They also differ in the core question with which they grapple: the former concerns the question of how America's leadership deploys the nation's power; the latter concerns the quantity of power the nation possesses to be deployed.Nevertheless, these stories are connected, in three ways. First, to the extent that the relative power of the United States declines, its ability to affect its environment through its actions must decrease, with implications for what it can realistically hope to achieve through any strategy. Second, the actions of a nation's leadersif, say, they contribute to bringing about fiscal insolvency, military defeat or political failure-may have consequences over time for its relative power. Even if a single president's choices are unlikely on their own to determine the nation's long-term trajectory, wise or foolish policy can influence the speed and character of an upward or downward journey. Third, a responsible leadership must formulate its policy on the basis of some estimation of the nation's existing relative power resources and their expected future level. If there is a significant mismatch between the capacities assumed by a government's policies and the contextual reality, one can expect the policies in question to end badly.

Britain and the Crisis of the European Union

“…The USA was the clear winner of the Cold War and emerged in 1989 as the sole remaining superpower, which at first sight confirmed the relevance of the original British choice. Yet hopes for a relatively stabilised, US-sponsored liberal order after the end of the Cold War proved short-lived as new conflicts and threats emerged, including on European soil with the break-up of Yugoslavia and the failure of Bush's neo-Conservative foreign policy after the attacks of 11 September 2001(Quinn 2011, Rachman 2011. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq illustrated the USA's relative impotence in trade, especially when compared with China which doubled its market share between 1995 and 2008, reaching 14% of world trade , European Commission 2008, Van Ark et al 2008.…”

Geopolitics and A Realist Turn of US Foreign Policy Toward North Korea

“…Primacists further argue that the US should have preponderance powers to promote its own national interests and preempt any competitors and adversaries from erupting the liberal order (Dueck, 2005;Huntington, 1993). ment to ensure the longevity of US primacy (Quinn, 2011). In addition, the administration maintained a more reserved posture of examplarists in advancing American exceptionalism abroad (Drezner, 2011).…”

“…Furthermore, what has been most overlooked in grasping President Trump's approach toward the North is the grand strategic context in which his policy over the North is nested. As many realists of different variants have pointed out, the US grand strategy under retrenchment is now transforming from decline management of the Obama administration to decline denial of the Trump administration in their attempts to maintain US primacy (Quinn, 2011;Clarke and Ricketts, 2017). Behind such a realist shift lies the Trump administration's understanding that the perception of American decline has widely diffused in spite of the costly overextension of American resources across the globe and America is no longer respected by allies and adversaries alike (Tillerson, 2017;Trump, 2016).…”

Hans Morgenthau, Realist Theory of International Leadership, and the Future of Global Order

“…However, he did see that political leadership played a decisive role in sustaining international leadership. Morgenthau insisted that the qualities of political leadership could almost determine the fate of international leadership (see similarly the literature on the influence of political leadership on foreign policy, institutional bargaining, and power redistribution in Byman and Pollack 2001;Greenstein 2000;Ikenberry 1996, 395-8;Quinn 2011;Yan 2016;Young 1991).…”