Retrenchment Begins at Home: Barack Obama and the Politics of Restraint (Pre-Recorded)

• In Event: US Retrenchment in the Middle East: Prospects and Implications

Abstract

In developing and executing grand strategy, leaders must balance competing geopolitical and domestic political priorities. While most of the literature examining the case for the United States doing less in the Middle East emphasises the former, this article argues that the latter has proven to be the primary impediment to the pursuit of a coherent programme of retrenchment in the region. As such, the critical question is not whether the US should right-size its commitment, but whether it could even if it wanted to, given the enduring political disincentives to do so. The record of the Obama administration serves as an illuminating test case for this proposition. Despite entering office amid conditions favourable to the adoption of a more restrained approach, public opinion, interest groups and path dependent thinking in the national security bureaucracy combined to limit Obama's efforts to reorient US policy in the Middle East. Drawing on elite interviews with senior administration officials and military leaders, this article demonstrates how Obama opted for a series of policy compromises, from efforts to end “endless” war to attempted rapprochement with Iran, designed to stay within the bounds of domestic political acceptability. The paper concludes with reflections on the prospects for retrenchment under President Biden, arguing that while a shift of attitudes on the threat posed by China and greater attention to domestic priorities may help facilitate partial retrenchment, a meaningful course-correction is likely to fall prey to similar pressures as those faced by Obama.

Authors

• Andrew Payne, University of Oxford

• William D James, University of Oxford