“The United States has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades”
President Barack Obama
The process and practices used by President Obama to make decisions on Afghanistan is both strikingly similar and, yet, diametrically opposed to the process of President Johnson and his decisions on Vietnam. On the one hand, Johnson was presented a unique situation, one stymied by a global tension caused by the rise of communist states in the wake of World War II, but his decision-making process and grand strategy emphasized an outdated model of thinking in which states are at odds with one-and-another in a zero sum game.
Johnson, surrounded by institutional bureaucrats and their personal biases, was often troubled by the result of his …show more content…
foreign policy apparatus. The Obamians were “a new generation in American foreign policy” Mann says. They were for the most part members of Generation X and regarded Vietnam as settled history. To them, Vietnam did not induce a sense of nervousness or hesitation about overseas involvements and the use of force as it had for the liberal Democrats of the 1970s. Similarly, Afghanistan did not create a perceived need to overcome the antiwar legacy of Vietnam, as it had for the Democrats of the 1990s.
Democrats of the Clinton era, who came of age in the 1990s, remembered a series of failed cold war era elections in which members of their party were attacked for being “insufficiently hawkish.” Instead, Mann suggests, the younger Obamians tended to worry about “2002 syndrome” when leading Democrats like John Kerry, Joe Biden, and Hilary Clinton voted in favor or President Bush’s request for authorization for the use of force in …show more content…
Whether those decisions are in fact opposing or similar is only a question of time. Both President Johnson and President Obama faced incredible challenges while formulating their decisions, and oftentimes found themselves at odds with the establishment and members of their own cabinets. For President Obama, it was important to evolve and grow from the experiences the Democratic Party had in the 1970s and 1990s. On the other hand, it was more important and natural for President Obama to break from tradition. Arguably, it was the rise of the Obamians in the president’s second term that led to the end of the NATO’s combat mission in 2011. In similar fashion, it was President Obama’s own self-conscious growth that might have caused a change in counter-insurgency strategy. This new Obamian strategy, which emphasizes drones, intelligence, and technology, did not place challenges like the dismantling Al Qaeda onto an unobtainable pedestal. Instead, the Obamian’s unconventional, and arguably Johnsonian methodology, has enabled the United States to learn from experiences, and, yet, at the same time, this strategy enabled a more fluid and robust initiative which would set up the Afghan Government’s security forces for future challenges presented by the Taliban. However, both presidents reacted to
President Barack Obama
The process and practices used by President Obama to make decisions on Afghanistan is both strikingly similar and, yet, diametrically opposed to the process of President Johnson and his decisions on Vietnam. On the one hand, Johnson was presented a unique situation, one stymied by a global tension caused by the rise of communist states in the wake of World War II, but his decision-making process and grand strategy emphasized an outdated model of thinking in which states are at odds with one-and-another in a zero sum game.
Johnson, surrounded by institutional bureaucrats and their personal biases, was often troubled by the result of his …show more content…
foreign policy apparatus. The Obamians were “a new generation in American foreign policy” Mann says. They were for the most part members of Generation X and regarded Vietnam as settled history. To them, Vietnam did not induce a sense of nervousness or hesitation about overseas involvements and the use of force as it had for the liberal Democrats of the 1970s. Similarly, Afghanistan did not create a perceived need to overcome the antiwar legacy of Vietnam, as it had for the Democrats of the 1990s.
Democrats of the Clinton era, who came of age in the 1990s, remembered a series of failed cold war era elections in which members of their party were attacked for being “insufficiently hawkish.” Instead, Mann suggests, the younger Obamians tended to worry about “2002 syndrome” when leading Democrats like John Kerry, Joe Biden, and Hilary Clinton voted in favor or President Bush’s request for authorization for the use of force in …show more content…
Whether those decisions are in fact opposing or similar is only a question of time. Both President Johnson and President Obama faced incredible challenges while formulating their decisions, and oftentimes found themselves at odds with the establishment and members of their own cabinets. For President Obama, it was important to evolve and grow from the experiences the Democratic Party had in the 1970s and 1990s. On the other hand, it was more important and natural for President Obama to break from tradition. Arguably, it was the rise of the Obamians in the president’s second term that led to the end of the NATO’s combat mission in 2011. In similar fashion, it was President Obama’s own self-conscious growth that might have caused a change in counter-insurgency strategy. This new Obamian strategy, which emphasizes drones, intelligence, and technology, did not place challenges like the dismantling Al Qaeda onto an unobtainable pedestal. Instead, the Obamian’s unconventional, and arguably Johnsonian methodology, has enabled the United States to learn from experiences, and, yet, at the same time, this strategy enabled a more fluid and robust initiative which would set up the Afghan Government’s security forces for future challenges presented by the Taliban. However, both presidents reacted to