The Long Game (29 page)

17
. Quote from Jo Becker and Scott Shane, “In Their Own Words: The Libya Tragedy,”
New York Times
(February 27, 2016).

18
. Ben Fishman, “How We Can Still Fix Libya,”
Politico,
February 28, 2016.

19
. See Robert D. Kaplan,
Mediterranean Winter
(New York: Vintage, 2005), p 27.

20
. Quote from Jon Lee Anderson, “The Unravelling,”
The New Yorker
(February 23 & March 2, 2015).

21
. See Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine.”

22
. Quotes from John Lewis Gaddis,
Strategies of Containment
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p 128; Fred Greenstein,
The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower As Leader
(New York: Basic Books, 1982).

23
. Clinton,
Hard Choices,
p 375.

24
. Michael Crowley, “We Caved,”
Politico Magazine
(January/February 2016).

CHAPTER 5

1
. Hillary Clinton,
Hard Choices,
p 461.

2
. Quote from Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine.”

3
. Quotes from Franklin Foer and Chris Hughes, “Barack Obama Is Not Pleased,”
The New Republic,
January 27, 2013; and Jeffrey Goldberg, “Obama to Israel—Time Is Running Out,”
The Atlantic,
March 2, 2014.

4
.
The Audacity of Hope,
p 308; Thom Shanker, “Warning Against Wars Like Iraq and Afghanistan,”
New York Times,
February 25, 2011.

5
. This draws on Derek Chollet, “The Shame of Srebrenica,”
Foreign Policy,
July 9, 2015.

6
. George Packer, “The Liberal Quandary Over Iraq,”
New York Times Magazine,
December 8, 2002.

7
. Philip Gordon, “The Middle East Is Falling Apart,”
Politico,
June 4, 2015.

8
. Quote from Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine.”

9
. See
https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/09/15/what-you-need-know-about-syrian-refugee-crisis-and-what-us-doing-help

10
. Hendrick Simoes, “US to keep some F-16s, Patriot missiles in Jordan post exercise,”
Stars and Stripes,
June 16, 2013.

11
. Clinton,
Hard Choices,
p. 463.

12
. Clinton,
Hard Choices,
pp 461-464; Panetta,
Worthy Fights,
pp 449-450.

13
. See, for example, Mark Mazzetti, Michael R. Gordon, and Mark Landler, “U.S. Is Said to Plan to Send Weapons to Syrian Rebels,”
New York Times,
June 14, 2013; and Michele Kelemen, “U.S. to Provide Military Support to Opposition in Syria,” NPR, June 14, 2013.

14
. See “On-the-Record Conference Call by Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes on Syria,” June 13, 2013.

15
. This section draws on Derek Chollet, “We Never Thought Training Syrians Would Be Easy,”
Defense One,
September 22, 2015.

16
. Remnick, “Going the Distance.”

17
. Quote from Greg Jaffe, “Hope fades on Obama's vow to bring troops home before presidency ends,”
Washington Post,
October 12, 2015.

18
. Goldberg, “Hillary Clinton: ‘Failure' to Help Syrian Rebels Led to the Rise of ISIS.”

19
. Peter Bergen,
The United States of Jihad: Investigating America's Homegrown Terrorists
(New York: Crown, 2016).

20
. For an accurate summation of Obama's view of the ISIS threat, see Peter Beinart, “How Obama Thinks About Terrorism,”
The Atlantic,
December 7, 2015.

21
. Quote from Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine.”

22
. Roger Cohen, “Obama's Syria Nightmare,”
New York Times,
September 10, 2015.

CHAPTER 6

1
. See Kathryn Stoner and Michael McFaul, “Who Lost Russia (This Time)? Vladimir Putin,”
The Washington Quarterly
(Summer 2015), pp 170–171.

2
. See Angela Stent,
The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).

3
. Clinton,
Hard Choices,
pp 236–237.

4
. Quote from Kaplan, “Obama's Way.”

5
. See White House Fact Sheet, “U.S. Assistance to Ukraine,” December 7, 2015.

6
. Stoner and McFaul, p 182.

7
. See Michael McFaul, “The Myth of Putin's Strategic Genius,”
New York Times,
October 23, 2015.

8
. Obama Press Conference, February 16, 2016.

9
. Quote from Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine.”

10
. Obama Press Conference, October 2, 2015.

11
. Quote from Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine.”

CHAPTER 7

1
. Gates,
Duty,
p 387.

2
. On the Qom facility discovery and its exposure, see Clinton,
Hard Choices,
pp 424–425; and Sanger,
Confront and Conceal,
pp 179–183.

3
. Clinton,
Hard Choices,
p 433.

4
. Gates,
Duty,
p 391.

5
. Gates,
Duty,
pp 391-392; Dennis Ross,
Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israel Relationship From Truman to Obama,
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015) p 367.

6
. For Carter quotes, see Jeffrey Goldberg, “Can the U.S. Military Help the White House and Israel Move Beyond Iran?”
Defense One,
November 3, 2015; Michael Crowley, “Plan B for Iran,”
Politico Magazine,
June 24, 2015; and Deena Zaru, “Carter: Bunker Busting Bomb Against Iran Ready To Go,”
CNN
(April 30, 2015). Also see Julian Barnes and Adam Entous, “Pentagon Upgraded Biggest ‘Bunker Buster' Bomb as Iran Talks Unfolded,”
Wall Street Journal,
April 3, 2015.

7
. Ross,
Doomed to Succeed,
p 362.

8
. Gates,
Duty,
p 397; Ross,
Doomed to Succeed,
p 350.

9
. Michael Oren,
Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide
(New York: Random House, 2015), p 179.

10
. Panetta,
Worthy Fights,
p 404.

11
. Gates,
Duty,
pp 396-397; Oren,
Ally,
pp 179–182.

CONCLUSION

1
. Reinhold Niebuhr,
The World Crisis and American Responsibility
(Association Press, 1958), p 81.

2
. Franklin Foer and Chris Hughes, “Barack Obama Is Not Pleased,”
New Republic,
January 27, 2013.

3
. See Kagan's comment in
Has Obama Made the World a More Dangerous Place? The Munk Debate on U.S. Foreign Policy
(Anansi, 2015), p 68.

4
. Obama's maternal grandparents, who raised him for several years, were from Kansas.

5
. See Sestanovich,
Maximalist,
pp 66–90.

6
. Evan Thomas,
Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World
(New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2012), p 416; Peter Beinart, “He's Like Ike,”
The Atlantic,
May 29, 2014; James Traub, “Obama's Not Carter—He's Eisenhower,”
Foreign Policy,
March 7, 2014; Fareed Zakaria, “On Foreign Policy, Why Barack is Like Ike,”
Time,
December 19, 2012.

7
. Gaddis,
Strategies of Containment,
p 151.

8
. David Brooks, “Obama Admires Bush,”
New York Times,
May 16, 2008; Lizza, “The Consequentialist.”

9
. Jon Meacham,
Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush
(Random House, 2015), pp 585–588.

10
. Quote from Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine.”

11
. Meacham, p 599.

12
. See Joe Scarborough,
The Right Path: From Ike to Reagan, How Republicans Once Mastered Politics—And Can Agai
n (Random House, 2013); and E.J. Dionne,
Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond
(Simon and Schuster, 2016), pp 464–465.

13
. Quote from Meacham, p 217.

14
. On the “transformational” aspects of Obama's ambitions compared to the “incremental” approaches of Eisenhower and Bush, see Joseph Nye,
Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era
(Princeton University Press, 2013), pp 144–146.

15
. Quotes from Sestanovich,
Maximalist,
pp 168–169.

16
. Ibid, p 170.

17
. John Lewis Gaddis,
Surprise, Security, and the American Experience
(Harvard University Press, 2004), p 15.

18
. See Charles Edsel,
Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic
(Harvard University Press, 2014); James Traub,
John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit
(Basic Books, 2016); and Robert Kagan,
Dangerous Nation
(Knopf, 2006), pp 198–199.

19
.
The Audacity of Hope,
p 281.

20
. Sestanovich,
Maximalist.

21
. See Sestanovich, “The Long History of Leading From Behind,”
The Atlantic
(January/February 2016).

22
. Eisenhower farewell address, January 17, 1961.

23
. Quote from Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine.”

24
. Quote from Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine.”

25
. Henry Kissinger,
A World Restored
(Houghton Mifflin, 1957), p 317.

26
. See Obama speech at VFW National Convention, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 21, 2015.

27
. Eisenhower farewell address.

28
. Derek Chollet, “Altered State,”
Washington Post,
April 17, 2005; John Lewis Gaddis, “The Gardener,” The New Republic, October 16, 2006; and Nye,
Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era,
p 151.

29
. Quote from “President Obama and Bill Simmons: The GQ Interview,” GQ, November 17, 2015.

30
.
The Audacity of Hope,
p 280.

31
. David Brooks, “Obama, Gospel and Verse,”
New York Times,
April 26, 2007; and David Brooks,
The Road To Character
(Random House, 2015), p149.

32
. Reinhold Niebuhr,
The Irony of American History
(Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952), p133. See also Ross Douthat, “Obama the Theologian,”
New York Times,
February 7, 2015.

33
. James T. Kloppenberg,
Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition
(Princeton University Press, 2011), p xxxv.

34
. See President Obama press conference with Benigno Aquino, April 28, 2014.

35
. The is the core concept explained in Joe Nye's 2002 book,
The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone
(Oxford University Press).

36
. See Greg Jaffe, “Obama's New Patriotism,”
Washington Post,
June 3, 2015.

37
. “President Obama and Marilynne Robinson: A Conversation in Iowa,”
New York Review of Books,
November 5, 2015.

38
. Joseph Nye,
Is the American Century Over?
(Malden, MA: Polity Press) 2015; and Leslie Picker, “Warren Buffett, in Annual Letter, Rejects Candidates' Message of US Decline,”
New York Times,
February 27, 2016.

39
.
Our Own Worst Enemy,
pp 261–262.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This book draws on my experiences during over six years in the Obama administration, starting with the 2008 presidential transition. Most of the issues covered are ones in which I had a direct, if sometimes modest, role. To refresh my memory and provide additional recollections, I have also consulted with many of my former government colleagues, as well as talked with numerous outside analysts, including journalists, who followed these events closely and provide a unique perspective.

To understand Obama's approach to the world, there is no better place to start than Barack Obama himself—his speeches, writings, and interviews over the years are an indispensable resource. Too often, analysts dismiss presidential rhetoric as ghostwritten spin, expecting the truth to be something that remains secret or unsaid. But Obama is a remarkably open and clear thinker; his foreign policy views are hidden in plain sight. His words, especially those from the many interviews he has given over the years (with everyone from political journalists and foreign policy thinkers to comedians and sportswriters), provide a unique window into how he has wrestled with issues, answered his critics, and explained the logic behind his decisions. The same is true for his most important national security advisors—especially Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and Leon Panetta—whose own memoirs are essential for insight into the Obama era.

Along with these direct sources, this book is informed by the many other thoughtful books and articles already written about the Obama presidency, the recent history of US politics and foreign policy, and the current debate about America's role in the world. In addition to the sources cited in the notes, these are the books I found most useful.

Axelrod, David.
Believer: My Forty Years in Politics.
New York: Penguin, 2015.

Beinart, Peter.
The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris.
New York: HarperCollins, 2010.

Bergen, Peter.
The United States of Jihad.
New York: Crown, 2016.

Betts, Richard K.
American Force: Dangers, Delusions, and Dilemmas in National Security.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.

Brands, Hal.
What Good Is Grand Strategy?
:
Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014.

Bremmer, Ian.
Superpower: Three Choices for America's Role in the World.
New York: Penguin, 2015.

Brooks, David.
The Road to Character.
New York: Random House, 2015.

Brzezinski, Zbiginew.
Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower.
New York: Basic Books, 2007.

Chivvis, Christopher S.
Toppling Qaddafi: Libya and the Limits of Liberal Intervention.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Chollet, Derek and James Goldgeier.
America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11.
New York: Public Affairs, 2008.

Clinton, Hillary Rodham.
Hard Choices.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Destler, I.M., Leslie H. Gelb, and Anthony Lake.
Our Own Worst Enemy: The Unmaking of American Foreign
Policy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984.

Dionne, E.J.
Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016.

Dueck, Colin.
The Obama Doctrine: American Grand Strategy Today.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Edsel, Charles.
Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.

Gaddis, John Lewis.
Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

_____.
Surprise, Security, and the American Experience.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Gates, Robert M.
Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.
New York: Knopf, 2014.

Gawande, Atul.
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.
New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009.

Geithner, Timothy F.
Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises.
New York: Crown, 2014.

George, Alexander L. and William E. Simons.
The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy.
Boulder: Westview Press, 1994.

Gelb, Leslie H.
Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy.
New York: HarperCollins, 2009.

Ghattas, Kim.
The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power.
New York: Times Books, 2013.

Gordon, Michael R. and Bernard E. Trainor.
The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, From George W. Bush to Barack Obama.
New York: Vintage Books, 2012.

Greenberg, David.
Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency.
New York: W.W. Norton, 2016.

Greenstein, Fred I.
The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader.
New York: Basic Books, 1982.

Haass, Richard N.
Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America's House in Order.
New York: Basic Books, 2013.

Hill, Christopher R.
Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy: A Memoir.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Holbrooke, Richard.
To End a War.
New York: Random House, 1998.

Indyk, Martin S., Kenneth G. Lieberthal, and Michael E. O'Hanlon.
Bending History: Barack Obama's Foreign Policy.
Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2012.

Joffe, Josef.
The Myth of America's Decline: Politics, Economics, and a Half Century of False Prophecies.
New York: W.W. Norton, 2014.

Kagan, Robert.
Dangerous Nation: America's Foreign Policy from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century.
New York: Knopf, 2006.

______ .
The World America Made.
New York: Knopf, 2012.

Kaplan, Robert.
Mediterranean Winter: The Pleasures of History and Landscape in Tunisia, Sicily, Dalmatia, and the Peloponnese.
New York: Vintage Books, 2004.

______ .
The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate.
New York: Random House, 2012.

Kennan, George F.
Memoirs 1925–1950.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1967.

Kissinger, Henry.
A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace.
Brattleboro: Echo Point Books & Media, 1957.

______ .
White House Years.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979.

______
.Diplomacy.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.

______ .
On China.
New York: Penguin, 2012.

______ .
World Order.
New York: Penguin, 2014.

Kloppenberg, James T.
Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.

LaFeber, Walter.
The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad since 1750
. New York: W.W. Norton, 1989.

Lewis, Michael.
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.
New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.

Loomis, Carol.
Tap Dancing To Work: Warren Buffett on Practically Everything.
New York: Penguin, 2012.

Mann, James.
The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power.
New York: Penguin, 2012.

Meacham, Jon.
Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush.
New York: Random House, 2015.

Milne, David.
Worldmaking: The Art and Science of American Diplomacy.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.

Morell, Michael.
The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism From al Qa'ida to ISIS.
New York: Twelve, 2015.

Nasr, Vali.
The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat.
New York: Anchor Books, 2013.

Niebuhr, Reinhold.
The Irony of American History.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952.

______ .
The World Crisis and American Responsibility.
New York: Association Press, 1958.

Nye, Joseph.
The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

__ .
Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.

______ .
Is the American Century Over?
Malden: Policy Press, 2015.

Obama, Barack.
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.
New York: Random House, 2006.

Oren, Michael B.
Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide.
New York: Random House, 2015.

Panetta, Leon.
Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace.
New York: Penguin, 2015.

Plouffe, David.
The Audacity to Win: How Obama Won and How We Can Beat the Party of Limbaugh, Beck, and Palin.
New York: Penguin, 2010.

Rodman, Peter W.
Presidential Command: Power, Leadership, and the Making of Foreign Policy from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush.
New York: Vintage Books, 2009.

Ross, Dennis.
Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israel Relationship from Truman to Obama.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.

Rothkopf, David J.
National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear.
New York: PublicAffairs, 2014.

Sanger, David.
Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power.
New York: Random House, 2012.

Savage, Charlie.
Power Wars: Inside Obama's Post-9/11 Presidency.
New York: Little, Brown & Company 2015.

Scarborough, Joe.
The Right Path: From Ike to Reagan, How Republicans Once Mastered Politics – And Can Again.
New York: Random House, 2013.

Schell, Jonathan.
The Time of Illusion.
New York: Random House, 1975.

Scoblic, J. Peter.
U.S. vs. Them: How Conservatism Has Undermined America's Security.
New York: Penguin, 2008.

Sestanovich, Stephen.
Maximalist: America in the World From Truman to Obama.
New York: Knopf, 2014.

Sky, Emma.
The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq.
New York: PublicAffairs, 2015.

Stent, Angela E.
The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Stephens, Bret.
America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder.
New York: Penguin, 2014.

Stephens, Bret, Robert Kagan, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Fareed Zakaria.
Has Obama Made the World a More Dangerous Place?: The Munk Debate on U.S. Foreign Policy.
Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2015.

Thomas, Evan.
Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World.
New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2012.

Todd, Chuck.
The Stranger: Barack Obama in the White House.
New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2014.

Traub, James.
John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit.
New York: Basic Books, 2016.

Woodward, Bob.
Obama's Wars.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010.