Obama the Carpenter: The President's National Security Legacy

By the standards he has set out for himself, President Barack Obama's foreign policy has fallen considerably short of expectations and aspirations. By the standards of his critics, of course, the performance has been even worse—with the American commander-in-chief now accused of fecklessness and irresoluteness as global crises multiply on his watch. Even two of his former secretaries of defense have written fairly harsh verdicts on what they saw while serving in his administration.

Gauged by more reasonable and normal standards, however, Mr. Obama has in fact done acceptably well. Both his critics and his defenders tend to use unrealistic benchmarks in grading his presidency. If we use the kinds of standards that are applied to most American leaders, things look quite different.

Obama's presidency will not go down as a hugely positive watershed period in American foreign policy.I do not mean to overstate. Obama's presidency will not go down as a hugely positive watershed period in American foreign policy. He ran for election in 2007 and 2008 promising to mend the West’s breach with the Islamic world, repair the nation's image abroad, reset relations with Russia, move toward a world free of nuclear weapons, avoid "stupid wars" while winning the "right war," combat climate change, and do all of this with a post-partisan style of leadership that brought Americans themselves together in the process.[i] He ran for reelection in 2012 with the additional pledges of ending the nation's wars and completing the decimation of al Qaeda. Six years into his presidency, almost none of these lofty aspirations has been achieved.[ii] There has not been, and likely will not be, any durable Obama doctrine of particular positive note. The recent progress toward a nuclear deal with Iran, while preferable to any alternative if it actually happens, is probably too limited in duration and overall effect to count as a historic breakthrough (even if Obama shares a second Nobel Prize as a result).

But the harsh verdict of many of the president’s critics as well as his supporters goes too far. Most of today's problems were not Obama's creations. Others were mishandled, but generally in ways that could have been far worse. He also managed to avoid a second great recession.[iii]