The Decider

by Michael Crowley
Who runs U.S. foreign policy?
Post Date Wednesday, August 12, 2009

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On the evening of Saturday, June 13, a day after the Iranian presidential election, Vice President Joe Biden was preparing for an appearance the next morning on NBC's "Meet the Press." Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian incumbent, was already claiming a preposterously large margin of victory, and reformist protesters were clashing with basiij thugs in Tehran. The Obama administration faced a delicate and fluid situation, and it was far from clear what Biden should say. In circumstances like these, the vice president--especially this vice president--could not simply wing it. The administration needed to present a united front buttressed by clear talking points.


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In the normal course of Washington events, the creation of talking points often involves several aides, who bicker and rewrite for hours until they've come up with a simple message for their boss. In the Bush administration, that process might have been perverted so that the vice president was telling his nominal boss what to say. But the Obama administration apparently operates differently. Rather than calling in his top foreign policy aides or formulating a stance that advanced his own agenda, Biden turned directly to Barack Obama. "The vice president said, 'What do you want me to say?' And the president and the vice president sat down and did them together," explains a senior White House aide. "And then they presented them to us."

When Obama came to office six months ago, he seemed likely to be consumed by domestic politics: The economy was on the brink of collapse, and health care and global warming bills were urgent priorities. His high-powered foreign policy team, led by Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and a holdover defense secretary in Robert Gates, suggested that Obama was prepared to outsource the management of world affairs to people with something more than his four years of experience on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Indeed, the composition of his diplomatic team--filled with egos as large as Richard Holbrooke's--suggested that, even if the president wanted to personally manage foreign policy, he wouldn't be able to.

Six months later, however, these assumptions have been shattered. Whether he is shaping the White House's message on Iran, or personally cajoling Asian leaders to crack down on North Korea, or brokering power deals among NATO allies, Obama has, in effect, been his own national security advisor and secretary of state. Unlike Bill Clinton or George W. Bush, who had world events thrust upon them, Obama seems to be more in the mold of Richard Nixon or George H.W. Bush--a president involved in foreign policy because of, not in spite of, his priorities and personal interest. "He's very engaged, very hands-on," says his longtime foreign policy adviser, Mark Lippert, now chief of staff at the National Security Council (NSC).

Obama brought to the presidency a set of clear strategic goals: He wanted to engage Iran and restart negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians; he wanted to pull back from Iraq and ramp up efforts in Afghanistan; he wanted to reach out to the Muslim world and burnish America's reputation abroad. But, when you talk to the president's senior staff, you find that, much as they like touting Obama's wisdom on the global chessboard, they are just as proud of how his administration has handled the process of foreign policy. They are the ultimate organization men and women.

To this administration, process is not simply the poor cousin of strategy. Process is what allows harmony and progress amid multiple challenges and viewpoints. Senior Obama aides call it "regular order"--a system that gives the president a diversity of views with minimal infighting and back-channel maneuvering, little leaking to the press, and no public airing of dirty laundry. "Regular order is your friend," says Denis McDonough, director of strategic communications for the NSC. "The system only works if you have adult behavior."