The Realist Prism: Obama’s Appointments Offer New Paths for Power Projection

Back in January, writing in these pages, I wondered whether the appointment of John Kerry as secretary of state and Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense heralded “the third installment of President Barack Obama’s approach to national security,” an Obama Doctrine 3.0 characterized by “retrenchment and rebuilding” rather than intervention. Kerry and Hagel seemed to complement National Security Adviser Tom Donilon’s perspective on foreign affairs; Steve Clemons, back in 2010, had described Donilon as a “realist” and as a “skeptic of many of the military’s grand schemes in which large resources are given [and] big promises made.” Obama’s decision this […]

In a May 23 speech at the National Defense University, President Barack Obama announced a shift in U.S. national security strategy. Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and Washington, he noted, the United States “went to war.” After 12 years, al-Qaida has been decimated. Those of its leaders still alive spend more effort hiding than plotting new attacks. The American homeland “is more secure,” the president said. And the United States had ended or is ending large-scale military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Terrorism still threatens, Obama argued, but the nature of the threat has changed […]

At this weekend’s Shangri-La Dialogue, the annual International Institute of Strategic Studies Asia Security Summit in Singapore, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel delivered a well-crafted speech that reaffirmed the core tenets of the Obama administration’s Asia Pivot and showed how the Pentagon was still executing the strategy despite budgetary constraints and the departure from the administration of some of the strategy’s key architects. Yet the reactions to the speech from the senior Asian defense officials present made clear that the pivot continues to face serious obstacles. Hagel underscored the United States’ enduring security ties with the Asia-Pacific region in […]

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