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The Obama administration released its formal strategy on national security today. The document reflects some changes from the Bush era, but for some of the President’s supporters on the left, it fails to go far enough. The World’s Matthew Bell reports.
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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World. The Obama administration unveiled its official strategy on national security today. The document marks the first formal update on U.S. security priorities since 2006. The Obama strategy mixes diplomatic engagement, economic discipline and military power to bolster America’s standing in the world. In some ways it marks a repudiation of Bush era policies. But as The World’s Matthew Bell reports, there is plenty of continuity as well.
MATTHEW BELL: This is a grand strategy document; 60 pages on the broad sweep of U.S. national security priorities. Zbigniew Brzezinski was national security advisor under Jimmy Carter. He says the Obama strategy represents a smarter, more complex understanding of America’s place in the world.
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: It’s more realistic. It’s less imperialistic. It is more multilateral. It is less – - in its approach.
BELL: But Peter Feaver says knocking President Bush for having a simplistic black and white view of the world is a false caricature. Feaver served on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. And he says there are many similarities between this President’s national security strategy and the last one.
PETER FEAVER: The embrace of unilateral use of force as an option, which was also of course in President Bush’s. The skeptical but necessary embrace of institutions that need to be reformed. That’s exactly from President’s Bush’s. Down the line, it’s really quite remarkable how continuous it is with the Bush National Security Strategy of 2006.
BELL: Feaver says a big difference is the way this document explicitly ties the health of the U.S. economy at home to American strategy abroad. And he applauds the administration for doing so. But international relations expert, and retired Army officer Andrew Bacevich of Boston University says that part of the Obama strategy doesn’t go far enough.
ANDREW BACEVICH: One of the most obvious results of the Bush administration’s approach to strategy is that ends and means really came to be out of whack. And most fundamentally we ended up with too much war and not enough warriors. What I don’t see in the new strategy is a clear recognition of this gap between means and ends and any clear understanding of the imperative of closing that gap.
BELL: Bacevich says the Obama strategy does represent a move away from the grandiose ideology of the Bush era and he welcomes that shift. But with trillion dollar budget deficits at home, he says, this President, too, is being overly ambitious when it comes to setting national security goals.
BACEVICH: And I’m not trying to suggest that renewal at home should see us turning our back on the problems in the world, but I do think that there needs to be a very sober recognition of the very real limits of what we can achieve.
BELL: Political scientist Michael Desch of Notre Dame University says the Obama strategy hits a lot of the right notes. But he also feels it falls short on delivering on real transformational change.
MICHAEL DESCH: The document makes a lot of hay about dealing with the world the way it is and to a realist like me that sounds good. But then after acknowledging the world the way it is the vast majority of the document is about shaping the world the way we’d like it to be.
BELL: But it’s important to keep the scope of this document in perspective says Zbigniew Brzezinski. He says the national security strategy is not a road map for specific foreign policy challenges such as North Korea or Iran or the Middle East peace process.
BRZEZINSKI: The statement of intentions is good, the broad definition. The problem is fine. But you don’t get much guidance as to what specifically the administration will be doing.
BELL: And on that score, Brzezinski says, many things are still very murky. For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.
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