ArticlePublisher preview available

From the Obama Doctrine to America First: the erosion of the Washington consensus on grand strategy

Authors:
Georg Löfflmann
Georg Löfflmann
Georg Löfflmann
  • This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.
Read publisher preview
Download citation
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the author.

Abstract

This article explores the social construction of American grand strategy as nexus of identity and national security. The article first highlights how the identity construct of American exceptionalism has underwritten a grand strategy of global leadership and military interventionism since the end of the Cold War, constituting liberal hegemony as dominant position within the bipartisan US foreign policy establishment. The article then explores the political impact of counter-hegemonic discourses of restraint and offshore balancing under the Obama presidency. It argues that in ‘leading from behind’ the Obama Doctrine represented a moderate intra-elite challenge to the status quo. Obama’s use of exceptionalist rhetoric to legitimate restraint simultaneously exposed the political limits of this strategic paradigm shift, which oscillated between continuity and change. Finally, the article examines Trump’s ‘America First’ stance, concluding that its combination of nationalism, nativism, and protectionism has resulted in the erosion of the Washington consensus on liberal hegemony.
A preview of this full-text is provided by Springer Nature.
Learn more
Content available from International Politics
This content is subject to copyright. Terms and conditions apply.
Vol:.(1234567890)
International Politics (2020) 57:588–605
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-019-00172-0
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
From theObama Doctrine toAmerica First: theerosion
oftheWashington consensus ongrand strategy
GeorgLömann1
Published online: 20 February 2019
© Springer Nature Limited 2019
Abstract
This article explores the social construction of American grand strategy as nexus of
identity and national security. The article first highlights how the identity construct
of American exceptionalism has underwritten a grand strategy of global leader-
ship and military interventionism since the end of the Cold War, constituting liberal
hegemony as dominant position within the bipartisan US foreign policy establish-
ment. The article then explores the political impact of counter-hegemonic discourses
of restraint and offshore balancing under the Obama presidency. It argues that in
‘leading from behind’ the Obama Doctrine represented a moderate intra-elite chal-
lenge to the status quo. Obama’s use of exceptionalist rhetoric to legitimate restraint
simultaneously exposed the political limits of this strategic paradigm shift, which
oscillated between continuity and change. Finally, the article examines Trump’s
‘America First’ stance, concluding that its combination of nationalism, nativism, and
protectionism has resulted in the erosion of the Washington consensus on liberal
hegemony.
Keywords Grand strategy· US foreign policy· Discourse· American
exceptionalism· Barack Obama· Donald Trump
Introduction
In April 2016, the magazine Atlantic featured the ‘Obama Doctrine’ on its cover.
President Obama used this popular media outlet to once again place his foreign policy
course between ‘internationalism’ and ‘realism,’ laying out an American grand strat-
egy of engaged multilateralism and military restraint (Goldberg 2016). At the same
time, Obama declared that in 2013 over Syria he had finally thrown out a ‘Washing-
ton playbook’ of intervening militarily to demonstrate American resolve to the world.
The American president pointedly criticized the US foreign policy establishment and
* Georg Löfflmann
g.lofflmann@warwick.ac.uk
1 University ofWarwick, Coventry, UK
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... The intersection of identity and nostalgia also applies in U.S. foreign policy. On a discursive level, America First is a mixture of American exceptionalism and historical amnesia (Braunstein, 2021;Löfflmann, 2020). The rhetoric of MAGA is underpinned by the historical construction-not just by Trump-of the United States as "a City upon a Hill" or a "unique, " superior, singular, and "God-favored" country, which is integral to its grand strategy in a post-Cold-War world (Löfflmann, 2020). ...
... As a code for nativism and white nationalism, according to Sarah Churchwell (2018), America First, which Trump repeatedly employed in his inaugural speech, is a phrase and ideal historically entangled with the country's brutal legacy of slavery, xenophobia, and isolationism, exemplified by its early appearance in 1884 as a slogan to fight trade wars with the British and the America First Committee formed in 1940 by a coalition of Americans against U.S. entry into World War II. On a practical level, the Trump administration's retreat from multilateralism-exemplified by its role in eroding the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement-not only contributes to and reinforces the multiple real crises faced by the world in the present; it also endangers the system of "the liberal world order" in the future (Larik, 2018;Löfflmann, 2020). ...
View
... Second, we reveal how regions within a nation react to Chinese MNCs differently. The investigation of intra-national regional variations is especially imperative during a time when polarized political views emerge and interrupt the moderate consensus across regions at different levels [41]. Both findings help Chinese MNCs and US policy makers to accurately gauge local constituents' sentiments in pushing their economic and social, including sustainability, agenda. ...
American Economic Stakeholder Sentiments towards Chinese Firms’ Innovation Capability: The Role of State Political Environment and Firm Ownership
Article
Full-text available
  • Sep 2023
Outward foreign direct investments from innovative Chinese firms pose challenges to American stakeholders regarding how to balance economic gains and nationalistic sentiment. Relying on the stakeholder management framework, we analyze the dual nature of American economic stakeholders’ sentiments towards innovative Chinese firms. Both positive and negative sentiments increase as Chinese companies’ innovative capability improves. While stakeholders in conservative-leaning states may temper their positive sentiment, their negative sentiment is mainly directed at Chinese state-owned companies. Our findings help to gain particular insight into the complex nature of stakeholder sentiment, a key element shaping multinational companies’ operating environment.
View
... The Presidency of Barack Obama (2009-2017) emphasized the continuity in its foreign policy priorities from the Bush era (Parmar, 2009, p. 203). The "Obama doctrine" combined the liberal idea of the value of internationalism with conservative realist thinking, resulting in a foreign policy strategy that accommodated engaged multilateralism and military restraint (Löfflmann, 2020). In the 2015 National Security Strategy, President Obama repeated, "strong and sustained American leadership is essential to a rules-based international order….The question is not whether America should lead, but how we lead" (Löfflmann, 2020, p. 592;White House, 2015). ...
View
... Donald Trump elnökké választásáig ez az irányzat döntő befolyást gyakorolt az amerikai külpolitikai döntéshozatalra. 20 A két csoport (az unilateralista és a Scoop Jackson-demokrata) alapvetően csak a javasolt eszközök tekintetében tért el egymástól, a céljaik jobbára megegyeztek. 21 Bár Bill Clinton elnöksége még nem számít neokonzervatív időszaknak, az 1995-től republikánus irányítású Kongresszus befolyása miatt a Clinton-adminisztrációhoz köthető számos olyan folyamat kezdődött el, amely később, George W. Bush elnöksége alatt teljesedett ki. ...
Külpolitikai törésvonalak az Amerikai Egyesült Államokban az orosz–ukrán háború kapcsán
Article
  • Jan 2023
A 2022 óta zajló orosz–ukrán háborúban az Egyesült Államok Ukrajna kulcsfontosságú gazdasági és katonai szövetségeseként lépett fel. Bár a Biden-adminisztráció határozottan kiállt Ukrajna győzelemig tartó támogatása mellett, döntését a politikai eliten belül nem övezte teljes konszenzus. Tanulmányunk az amerikai külpolitikai ideológiák és politikai polarizáció szakirodalmára építve a politikai eliten belüli geopolitikai törésvonalakat vizsgálja. Ennek kapcsán a 2024-es elnökjelöltek megszólalásait, valamint a 118. Kongresszus Ukrajnával kapcsolatos törvényjavaslatait és törvényjavaslat-módosításait elemezzük. A jelöltek és képviselők három fő csoportját azonosítjuk a háború kapcsán (héják, mérsékeltek, izolacionisták), valamint a Republikánus Pártra jellemző alacsonyabb külpolitikai frakciófegyelem és nagyobb ideológiai eltérések okait is értékeljük.
View
View
Partisanship, Military Constituencies, and District Competitiveness: Explaining Congressional Opposition to the International Criminal Court
Article
  • Jan 2025
In May 2020, bipartisan groups of US representatives and senators joined public letters criticizing the International Criminal Court (ICC) after it opened an investigation in Afghanistan and moved toward opening an investigation in Palestine. Why did some members of Congress join these letters, while others did not? This paper develops and tests a theory focusing on two factors to address this question: partisanship and the interaction between electoral competitiveness and military constituencies. First, building on literature identifying partisan differences in attitudes toward the ICC and international organizations more generally, we first expect that Democrats should have been less likely to sign these letters. However, partisanship is insufficient to explain intraparty variation among Democrats in joining these letters. To this end, we propose that Democrats representing electorally competitive constituencies with a significant military presence should have been more likely to join these letters in order to appeal to military voters with concerns about ICC prosecutions targeting US military personnel in Afghanistan (and elsewhere). We test this theory with respect to the House letter, and we find evidence supporting our hypotheses. We also find that representatives of districts with substantial Jewish populations were more likely to join the letter, which also called for action to protect Israeli nationals from prosecution in the situation in Palestine. These findings provide insight into not only individual representatives’ positions on the ICC but also the role of partisanship and sources of bipartisan agreement on US foreign policy.
View
2001-2020 Yılları Arasında ABD’nin Güç Unsurlarının Değişimi ve Bu Değişimin Uluslararası Sistemin Yapısına Etkileri
Article
Full-text available
  • Oct 2024
Güç ve liderlik, çok katmanlı ve ilişkisel bir süreç olarak görülmelidir. Ancak, politik karar alıcılar genellikle gücü sahip olunan kaynaklar ve bunlarla elde edilebilecek sonuçlara indirgeme eğilimindedir. Bu tek boyutlu bakış açısı, baskı, kontrol ve tahakküm gibi sert güç unsurlarına dayalı bir güç anlayışı doğurmaktadır. Gücünü korumak veya artırmak isteyen bir aktörün, diğer aktörler üzerinde güç ve tahakküm kurma amacıyla sahip olduğu güç unsurlarına yüklenmesi, “güç yorgunluğu” olarak adlandırılabilecek bir duruma yol açabilmektedir. Güç yorgunluğu, başat aktörün çözüm üretme kapasitesini sınırlayarak birim ve sistem düzeyinde krizlere neden olmaktadır. Bu çerçevede çalışma, güç yorgunluğu kavramsallaştırmasını Soğuk Savaş sonrasında şekillenen uluslararası sistemde ABD’nin başat rolüyle ilişkilendirerek, Bush, Obama ve Trump dönemleri üzerinden analiz etmeyi amaçlamaktadır.
View
Entrepreneurial Frame Alignment: Framing Foreign Policy Change under a Veil of Continuity
Article
  • Aug 2024
How can entrepreneurs frame foreign policy change so it forces political opposition into acquiescence? In this article, I show how foreign policy entrepreneurs use six frame alignment strategies to situate policy within the confines of the dominating discourse in ways that generate political support, exploit windows of opportunity, and manage coalitions. This contributes to our knowledge of the available framing tools for entrepreneurs and advances our understanding of the relationship between change and continuity in foreign policy. In the empirical analysis, based predominantly on twenty-three in-depth interviews, I show how a new venture of Swedish foreign policy, the deployment of Special Forces to Afghanistan, was successfully framed firmly within the confines of the foreign policy orientation and in line with previous policies. The analysis demonstrates how potential opposition was forestalled through the use of alignment strategies as sensitive and controversial aspects were masked as foreign policy continuity.
View
References
Chapter
  • Jul 2024
View
Whitewashing American Exceptionalism: Racialized Subject-Positioning and US Foreign Policy
Article
  • Jun 2024
Abstracts American exceptionalism is enjoying a revival of scholarly interest amid new approaches to studying foreign policy narratives and unease regarding how US policymakers will manage a less unipolar international system. That revival coincides temporally, though not yet substantively, with growing attention to racialized dynamics and Eurocentrism within international relations. This article examines how core strands of American exceptionalism—the prevailing narrative framing of US foreign policy—reflect a whitewashed understanding of US foreign policy that can best be understood as the product of racialized subject-positioning that saturated its historical development. After conceptualizing American exceptionalism, it develops a theoretical framework to capture how racialized subject-positioning stratifies understandings of a nation’s role in the world. It proceeds to investigate how this process shaped the development of American exceptionalism in line with epistemologies of immanence, ignorance, and innocence, producing exceptionalist narratives that neglect non-white populations as meaningful others in the construction of US national identity and that negate US interactions with those groups as relevant evidence that might undercut its exceptionalism. These whitewashing effects remained embedded even as overtly racist discourse became delegitimized, posing enduring obstacles for US diplomacy today.
View
The US foreign policy establishment and grand strategy: how American elites obstruct strategic adjustment
Article
Full-text available
  • May 2017
  • Int Polit
In this article, I demonstrate that there are compelling reasons why the USA should reconsider its current grand strategy—variously described as primacy or deep engagement—and, instead, adopt a less activist strategy such as offshore balancing, or restraint. The most salient reason for the USA to make a change of direction is that its current strategy has set the USA on a collision course with China. Nevertheless, the American foreign policy establishment is resistant to strategic adjustment. In this article, I offer a two-pronged explanation for this resistance. First, the American foreign policy establishment imposes a broadly uniform world view on those who comprise it. In this sense, the foreign policy establishment’s very existence is a barrier to strategic adjustment. Second, the foreign policy establishment’s preferences invariably prevail because it exercises discourse dominance, which allows it to frame issues, and to set the bounds of discussion by signaling to a wider audience what policy positions are legitimate, and, perhaps even more important, which are not. In this article, I begin by discussing how the American foreign policy establishment’s members are recruited, and focus on its links to America’s corporate and financial elite. Then, I lay out the key elements of the foreign policy establishment’s world views. I show how the foreign policy establishment uses discourse dominance to ensure that US grand strategy reflects its core beliefs about America’s international political role. Finally, I demonstrate that with respect to China, the foreign policy establishment’s world view, and the discursive practices it employs, make it unlikely that the USA will be able peacefully to accommodate China’s rise.
View
Make no exception, save one: American exceptionalism, the American presidency, and the age of Obama
Article
Full-text available
  • May 2016
This paper explores the circumstances under which U.S. presidents have invoked American exceptionalism in major speeches and how this concept has culminated in the Obama presidency. We find that U.S. presidents have increased their invocations of American exceptionalism since the Second World War and that they have relied heavily on this concept in times of national crises. Moreover, we demonstrate the overwhelming propensity of President Obama, relative to his predecessors, to emphasize American exceptionalism. We argue that this is due to the double-crisis nature of his presidency – two major wars and a recession – in addition to the racial bind that he has endured throughout his presidency. We reflect on the implications for other minority politicians and the broader American public.
View
View
View
View
Retreat and its Consequences: American Foreign Policy and the Problem of World Order
Book
  • May 2016
What are the consequences of retreat and retrenchment in foreign policy? In recent years, America has pulled back from its longtime role of international leadership. In doing so, the Obama administration has sought to conciliate adversaries; shown indifference to allies; called upon the international community to step in; proclaimed and then disavowed “red lines”; and preferred to lead from behind in the face of catastrophic civil war in Syria, ISIS barbarism in the Middle East and North Africa, Russia’s predatory behavior in Eastern Europe, and China’s muscle-flexing in East Asia. The consequences of this “realist” experiment have been costly and painful, and it has caused the United States to lose credibility with friends and foes. America retains the capacity to lead, but unless it resumes a more robust role, the world is likely to become a more dangerous place, with mounting threats not only to regional stability and international order, but to the country’s own national interests.
View
Special providence : American foreign policy and how it changed the world
Book
  • Jan 2001
Four schools: Hamiltonians (money), Wilson (morals), Jefferson (democracy fragile), jacksonians (ass kicking- no substitute for victory, as a folk community).
View
Stress-Testing American Grand Strategy
Article
  • Nov 2016
US officials will have to get used to operating in a world in which they can take less for granted.
View
Conclusions: American Exceptionalism and the Legacy of Vietnam
Chapter
  • Jan 2003
The terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001 were carried out exactly eleven years to the day that George W. Bush’s father first proclaimed his vision of a New World Order to the US Congress. Like his father and other presidents before him, George W. Bush responded to this crisis using words and phrases familiar to the American public. He claimed the US had been attacked because ‘we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world’.1 Bush was evoking the belief in American exceptionalism that, as we have seen, has persisted throughout American history. The belief has been perceived and expressed in different ways by different people at different times, but the basic premise has remained constant: the United States is a special nation with a special destiny, not only unique but superior among nations. This belief has survived and flourished despite the ample evidence available to Americans that suggests their nation is no more exceptional than any other nation.
View
View