“The Final Year,” a documentary covering former President Barack Obama’s final year in office, should be required watching for foreign policy students and policymakers.
I have five main takeaways.
1) Don’t put unqualified people into positions of national security importance
Ben Rhodes comes across even worse in this documentary than he came across in the infamous New York Times profile, which is saying something. The major issue with Rhodes is not just that he’s floundering out of his depth, but that he thinks he’s the only Olympic swimmer on the team.
He proudly asserts, “On Cuba, I was the principal negotiator.” Which figures, because the Obama rapprochement with Cuba gave the Castros a whole lot while doing nothing to improve that nation’s human rights record.
As if it’s an obvious truth, Rhodes says that it’s in Russia’s interest to get a near-term political solution in Syria. Of course, Vladimir Putin actually saw Syria as a way to drown U.S. credibility and subject John Kerry to a relentless cycle of jet lag. At one point, when the Russians bomb an aid convoy, Rhodes says, “This is fucking sick even by their standards.” As Rhodes’ team all shake their heads in disbelief, I was shouting at my computer screen. After all, the Russians had been playing this game in Syria the whole time.
Team Obama just didn’t get it.
Still, what’s amazing about Rhodes though is that even when he gets something right, he gets it wrong. Correctly identifying China’s island construction campaign as the major foreign policy issue no one is paying attention to, Rhodes seems ignorant to the fact that the Obama administration is doing very little to obstruct that campaign.
By the end of the documentary, Trump has just won the election and Rhodes sits outside a building repeating like a heartbroken drunk, “I can’t even. I can’t … I can’t put it into words.”
He’s finally out of words. Good.
2) Tangible action is a critical ingredient for strategic effect
A striking moment in “The Final Year” comes when Rhodes is explaining why Obama’s foreign policy is the superior servant for U.S. interests to Bush’s foreign policy. Rhodes suggests that the Iraq War was a mistake because “We didn’t fix that country.”
Now whatever you think about the Iraq War, and with hindsight it seems pretty clear that the war may well have been a poor strategic choice, the truth of why Iraq nearly fell apart in the 2012-2013 period is the absence of U.S. consolidation of the Iraqi government. In 2011, after all, Iraq was making progress toward multi-sectarian cooperation. But then Rhodes and Obama decided to pull out so they could run for re-election on that narrative. That acquiescence of U.S. levers of influence in Iraq and handed over the influence to Iran, which in turn led Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to smash the Sunnis and spark the rise of the Islamic State.
3) Dealing with adversaries, diplomatic effort cannot co-exist without coercive resolve
Secretary of State John Kerry comes across as a moral and hard-working man. He is traveling all the time and when not traveling he’s in meetings trying to serve U.S. interests.
Yet the unfortunate measure of Kerry’s tenure is Russia. Specifically, Kerry’s unending efforts to “get the Russians to get aligned better” on Syria. It’s unfortunate because Kerry’s Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, sees it as his duty to waste Kerry’s time.
This speaks to something broader about statecraft.
What the Obama administration never realized is that the Russians thought they were pathetic and thus pliable. They thought that, because team Obama was incapable of showing resolve and pushback to Russian aggression against U.S. interests. For Kerry, that meant Lavrov and Putin had absolutely no interest in cutting deals that served U.S. or humanitarian interests. This is much more Obama and Rhodes’ responsibility than it is Kerry, but in the end Kerry was the face of the failure.
4) Samantha Power should have resigned over Syria
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power is shown to be the most realistic about Russia but also the most isolated in the White House. She correctly notes that the Russians “bully” until they are stopped from doing so. But she doesn’t have the means to stop them. And so Power is left to an eloquent address on the role of immigrants in American society.
On Syria, Power’s former academic commitment against genocide is abandoned at the locked door of the Oval Office.
At one point Power says that Obama’s “heart is breaking for the people in Aleppo right now.” My response was, “who cares?” Obama’s emotions are not instruments of foreign policy and only the instruments — sanctions, intelligence operations, miliary power, aid support, etc. — could have achieved relief for those people.
We see Power left outside U.N. headquarters in New York City, begging the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.N. to put on some virtual reality goggles that show the inside of a Syrian refugee camp. This is what Obama’s policy has become.
Even then, Power retains too much deference to the Obama notion of talking at all costs. Recognizing Kerry’s struggles with Russia, Power reluctantly suggests that there’s nothing else to be done but talk and try for the best. There’s no sense that walking away from the Russians might actually introduce a little constructive pressure.
As I say, she should have resigned in protest over the Syria-policy dysfunction.
5) Obama read too much Cicero but not enough Carl von Clausewitz
The documentary’s beautiful concluding scene at the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, is a somber nod to the Obama administration’s tenure. Yes, more so than his successor, Obama recognizes the importance of institutions and history to the fabric of democracy.
But “The Final Year” shows that Obama had no real grasp of the exigency of the moment. For Obama, policy is always measured by well-crafted words and hours spent in meetings, not results. And as the world burns in 2016, Obama only finds reinforcement in his pre-existing beliefs. There’s no desire to recognize a change in course might be necessary. Where Bush found the courage to change course with a successful surge in Iraq, Obama leaves office with just one major foreign policy success: his strengthening of relations with Vietnam.
Anyway, as I say, “The Final Year” is worth watching.
