The Obama Moment. European and American Perspectives

John Bruton
Domestic US politics also constrains the President’s foreign policy options in other
ways. As Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus of the US Council on Foreign Relations,
said in a recent article: ‘Politics is at once integral to the democratic process in the
United States and the cause of politicians’ acting against the national interest in
order to win or stay in public office.’ 4
This is because politics has a short-term focus. Electoral opinion is not constant in
its willingness to see a policy through. One has only to note that many politicians,
who initially supported the invasion of Iraq, later became strong opponents of the
policy they had espoused.
There is also a tendency in a highly politicised foreign policy debate to frame complex
foreign policy decisions in simplified moral terms, to exaggerate the nature of
threats and to argue for bold but unattainable foreign policy goals. This is a reflection
of the remarkable optimism of the United States, of its sense that if one can
describe a goal, one can achieve it – abroad, just as much as at home. This disposition
makes life difficult for those who want to follow a modest policy of temperate
realism about what the United States really can, and cannot, do. The present dilemma
in Afghanistan is an example. The real goal may just be to police or contain
al-Qaeda, but to be acceptable it has to be presented in much loftier terms.
Finally, the constraints imposed by the separation of powers on the President’s freedom
of action must be recognised. It could be argued that the entire American Constitutional
system, with its finely balanced separation of powers of the President, the
Houses of Congress and the Judiciary, was actually designed to prevent a President
(or for that matter a House of Congress) taking precipitate action on any issue. Any
treaty signed by an American President can only come into force if it is supported by
a two-thirds majority in the Senate, which is an increasingly difficult goal to attain
in the partisan state of US politics. The President does not even have control over
the majorities of his own party in either House and nor does he have complete control
over the budget they will send him to sign. He does have a veto, but that power
is a very blunt instrument that it is being used less frequently.
These then are some of the constraints applying to the United States in its interaction
with the countries of the European Union on foreign policy questions.
4. Leslie H. Gelb, ‘Necessity, Choice and Common Sense – A Policy for a Bewildering World’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 5,
no. 88, May/June 2009.
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