Like the Bourbons, Barack Obama and his national security advisers have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. They have not forgotten that they were first elected in 2008 to “end” Middle East wars, and the administration’s response to the attacks in Paris last week reveals that they have yet to learn any different.
Thus Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser and the president’s strategic id, instructed ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos that the United States would have to be “nimble” in attacking the Islamic State. This has been a consistent theme of administration talking points since Obama launched his anti-ISIS campaign back in September 2014.
But if the goal is to “ultimately destroy” ISIS – as, of course, it must be – being nimble is not the way to go about it. And so it should hardly be surprising that the administration’s “light footprint” approach has not prevented ISIS from holding its ground or expanding its reach outside of Iraq and Syria. Indeed, it’s convinced everyone from our Sunni allies to the Iranians and the Russians that we’re not serious. Whatever order there was in the region is dying in large measure from American nimbleness.
Rhodes’s prescription for “nimble power” is much like its predecessors “soft power” and “smart power” in that it doesn’t reflect much in the way of actual power. At this point, it can only be understood as a fig leaf for retreat and disengagement; its purpose, however, is not simply to give the illusion of action but to discredit actions, especially the use of substantial U.S. land forces, that might reverse the outcome. Only in an Obama era can the death of a single American soldier or the commitment of a few dozen special operations forces be considered an “escalation.” Dean Rusk, this ain’t.
The Paris attacks, and the tide of refugees now flooding into Europe, are reminders that the wars of the Middle East are neither over, nor are they “contained.” The full consequences of the Obama retreat have yet to be felt here at home, but they’re coming, whether they come in the form of a particular terrorist wave or, ultimately more profoundly, in the form of a further disintegration of international order. America has been at the center of this order, and when the center does not hold, things do fall apart.
