IT'S WORTH EXTENDING MR. MEAD'S ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK A BIT FURTHER AND CONSIDERING THE DELICIOUS IRONY...:

The Carter Syndrome: Barack Obama might yet revolutionize America's foreign policy. But if he can't reconcile his inner Thomas Jefferson with his inner Woodrow Wilson, the 44th president could end up like No. 39. (WALTER RUSSELL MEAD, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010, Foreign Policy)

Obama seeks a quiet world in order to focus his efforts on domestic reform -- and to create conditions that would allow him to dismantle some of the national-security state inherited from the Cold War and given new life and vigor after 9/11. Preferring disarmament agreements to military buildups and hoping to substitute regional balance-of-power arrangements for massive unilateral U.S. force commitments all over the globe, the president wishes ultimately for an orderly world in which burdens are shared and the military power of the United States is a less prominent feature on the international scene.

While Wilsonians believe that no lasting stability is possible in a world filled with dictatorships, Jeffersonians like Obama argue that even bad regimes can be orderly international citizens if the incentives are properly aligned. Syria and Iran don't need to become democratic states for the United States to reach long-term, mutually beneficial arrangements with them. And it is North Korea's policies, not the character of its regime, that pose a threat to the Pacific region.

At this strategic level, Obama's foreign policy looks a little bit like that of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.

...that Mr. Obama would have been indifferent to slavery, while W would have been an abolitionist.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 5, 2010 7:31 PM