The Obama Presidency: Is “King Log” Really Better than “King Stork?”

There is no doubt that President Obama faces a host of challenges that are not of his making, and where the United States does not have easy or good options. He must deal with an ongoing political crisis over domestic spending, a slow U.S. recovery from recession, and a still uncertain recovery in Europe and other states. He faces a paralytic growth in partisanship within the U.S. Congress, and the constant burden of dealing with the legacy of sequestration and the budget control act.

This leaves him with no clear domestic base to deal with a list of issues that includes growing tensions of Chinese and other claims to islands and areas in the Pacific, and between key US allies like Japan and South Korea. He faces upheavals in the Arab world that are the produce of decades of poor governance and economic development and in nations that lack the political structure and unity to deal with the resulting forces of change. The new upheavals in the Ukraine have made it clear that NATO is still all too relevant, and that Europe is collectively failing to sustain the military capabilities it may force the future.

Africa and Latin American pose their own challenges. So does a “clash within a civilization” in an Islam increasingly divided between a moderate majority focused on real world issues and economic constrains, and extremists pursuing a vision that cannot survive an encounter with reality but can easily lead to civil violence and terrorism, and which is dividing the sects of Islam as the Reformation and counterreformation once divided Christianity. The inability to implement a meaningful U.S. trade policy is far more the fault of Congress than the Administration.

Even Presidents need luck as well as power, and this President is singularly lacking in luck. But, this does not excuse the failure to act where only the President can act, and the constant use of the National Security Council (NSC) to generate more options without making hard decisions.

The United States does not need to wait for an Afghan government to make its position on Afghanistan clear. In fact, it needed to make its choices regarding a future U.S. military and civil presence – and its conditions for staying in Afghanistan – over a year ago. The President does not need still more options. He needs to make the hard choice as to whether to stay in Afghanistan with the kind of presence and resources that the past and current commander of the NATO/ISAF forces– General Allen and General Dunford – have recommended. He needs to justify this level of effort – and the cost in dollar terms – to the American people and Congress. He needs to lead where he can lead, and be decisive where he can be decisive.

The same is true of Syria. There may a case for doing nothing more than provide limited humanitarian relief and simply letting Assad gradually win or divide the country so that the rebels are contained (and increasing dominated by radical extremists) in the East. Syria is a case where failing to take decision and inaction does increasingly make the case for further inaction by default.

But nine million Syrians displaced out of what the CIA estimates is a total population of 18 million? A rising threat of extremism to Iraq and the region? An economic and political burden on Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan?  Three years and counting without any decisive action to back moderate rebel elements even to the point of carefully tailored U.S. anti-tank guided weapons, man-portable air defense missiles, and other weapons? A continuing failure to even back our regional allies in providing such support?

And what about Iraq? Is a half-hearted backing of an increasingly authoritarian Maliki – a leader whose repression has re-empowered Al Qaeda in Iraq – the way to deal with a crisis that involved a power whose oil resources and geography make it far more strategically important to the United States than Syria? Can’t we set conditions that push the regime back towards national unity? Can’t we make it clear that we do not support Maliki, but we do support a unified and stronger Iraq?

More broadly, the Administration announced new strategic guidance in January 2012. Yet, the new QDR and FY2015 budget requests it issued in April 2014 still did not define credible force postures, explain how the United States could create better strategic partnerships in the Middle East or Asia. In fairness, the Administration cannot be blamed for failing to anticipate the scale of the crisis in the Ukraine, but it certainly had no clear plans for strengthen NATO or for enhancing the security of Europe in spite years of studies and rhetoric.

The “good news” may be that the United States never really decided how to “rebalance” to Asia before the crisis in the Ukraine. The bad news is that the more one actually reads the new QDR and the FY2015 budget submission, the clearer the lack of any clear plan for action becomes.

Put simply, the President can’t be accused of failing to act where he really doesn’t have options. The problem is that he can be accused of failing to act where he not only has options but also needs to act. In fact, if one goes back to Aesop’s fables, President Obama may leave office as being remember as the President that showed that being “King Log” was not always better than being President Bush’s “King Stork.”

Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

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