Why Fareed Zakaria Likes Barack Obama

Too many years of hanging with American Republicans have brought Fareed Zakaria partway to sanity:

Fareed Zakaria: I never thought I'd be in this position. There's a debate taking place about what matters most when making judgments about foreign policy— experience and expertise on the one hand, or personal identity on the other. And I find myself coming down on the side of identity.

Throughout the campaign, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been squabbling over who has the better qualifications to lead the world's only superpower. Obama's argument is about more than identity... father—and later an Indonesian stepfather—who spent four years growing up in Indonesia, and who lived in the multicultural swirl of Hawaii.

I never thought I'd agree with Obama. I've spent my life acquiring formal expertise on foreign policy. I've got fancy degrees, have run research projects, taught in colleges and graduate schools, edited a foreign-affairs journal, advised politicians and businessmen, written columns and cover stories, and traveled hundreds of thousands of miles all over the world. I've never thought of my identity as any kind of qualification. I've never written an article that contains the phrase "As an Indian-American ..." or "As a person of color ..."

But when I think about what is truly distinctive about the way I look at the world, about the advantage that I may have... it is that I know what it means not to be an American.... I know it because for a good part of my life, I wasn't an American. I was the outsider, growing up 8,000 miles away from the centers of power....

When I hear confident claims about liberty and democracy in the Third World, I always think about rural India, where I spent a great deal of time when I was young, and wonder what those peasants struggling to survive would make of the abstractions of the American Enterprise Institute. When I read commentators fulminating about women wearing the burqa—which I don't much like either—I think about one of my aunts, who has always worn one, and of the many complex reasons she keeps it on, none of which involves approval of misogyny or support for suicide bombers. When I talk to people in a foreign country, no matter how strange, they are always, at some level, familiar to me....

We're moving into a very new world, one in which countries from Brazil to South Africa to India and China are getting richer, stronger and prouder. For America to thrive, we will have to develop a much deeper, richer, more intuitive understanding of them and their peoples. There are many ways to attain this, but certainly being able to feel it in your bones is one powerful way. Trust me on this. As a Ph.D. in international relations, I know what I'm talking about.

Comments

[paul]

Um, do these people have their self-awareness put in a blind trust or what? I'm partly persuaded that someone might bury their personal knowledge of the world in pursuit of a seat at what they perceive to be the big kids' table. But didn't anyone teach them "to thine own self be true?" All these various Kagans and Podhoretzes and Feith and Wolfowitzes, playing at a game of Risk or Monopoly ("New 21st century edition: with real money and real lives to spend!!"), and someone with his education and an outsider's perspective couldn't see it for what it is?

Better late than never, I suppose.

[Cal]

The best thing about my year spent studying abroad was learning that lots of people have other problems to worry about than America but that America in many ways intrudes upon them when they really don't want to deal with us. BushCo doesn't care. They have the Imperialist's mentality. It was also initially disorienting to be instantly disliked because I was American. Not having said a word other than hello and being introduced as being from the States, I would get immediate negative comments about the US and myself as a citizen. I don't think someone has to grow up in a developing country to have the sensibilitie that Zakaria writing about. People can be educated to be culturally sensitive. But that would require actually caring that no child is to be left behind, not mere Orwellian frostings on what amounts to rote learning.

[bigTom]

Given that it appears that the Washington Foreign policy aparatus has nearly totally bought into the prevailing imperialistic way of doing things, we are in serious need of
some outside wisdom. We've been trying to dominate a world we don't know (or careto) understand at any level other than the Risk game piece level. Basic questions, like why
are we doing this? And to for what ends? Go unasked. Indeed, to even pose such questions is regarded as naive, and disloyal. And well, seeing ourselves as the rest of the world does has been lacking for so long, that the apparatus doesn't even realize the "unknown unknowns".

[kusaka]

> and of the many complex reasons she keeps it on

Mustache

[TS]

Prof. DeLong - the link to the articles by Zakaria is broken. It points into your gmail account, which most of us do not have access to.

Concerning Zakaria's column, I think part of the problem is the definition of relevant expertise. Zakaria may have an academic background, but the people running against Obama do not. Their expertise consists mainly of experience in committees in Congress and interactions with people in State and selected foreign leaders. Most of them do not even have experience with the mechanics of international organizations and diplomacy. It seems foreign policy expertise in the US has become largely divorced from the actual facts on the ground, beyond the embassies, hotels, and airport lounges. Being originally from outside the US myself, I am amazed by the way foreign policy is seen here as some sort of game between the US and other countries that does not require actual deep knowledge about what happens within those other countries.

So it seems to me this is not really about identity versus expertise. It is about different types of experience and expertise. Obama and Zakaria, due to their origins, were able to acquire relevant knowledge that many other people who claim experience and expertise on foreign policy do not have. So let's keep identity out of it. Our model of foreign policy expertise is broken, that's all.

[Julian Elson]

That's interesting, because as an Obama supporter, that's not really how I think of the Clinton/Obama foreign policy divide at all. In fact, reading Zakaria's column, in some ways I found myself repelled by it, although as an Obamabot, I'll take help from any quarter I can find.

I think of Clinton as having a certain judgment and approach toward foreign policy issues. This judgment isn't Bushian craziness, but it generally takes a militaristic, confrontational approach toward the world. There are people with cosmopolitan, character-forming life stories who have a foreign policy judgment and perspective like hers, or one far worse than hers.

I think of Obama as also having a certain judgment and approach toward foreign policy issues. It's not pacifism, or even the view that the only acceptable use of force is in direct American self-defense, but it's an approach that's wary of what military action can actually accomplish given the gritty political and cultural realities on the ground, and has fewer moral qualms about negotiating with people, even ones neocons deem to be evil. There are corn-fed, white midwesterners who have never set foot outside of American soil who share Obama's skeptical perspective.

In short, I don't think this is really an identity vs. experience issue as Zakaria frames. The campaign as a whole may be (or perhaps "charisma vs. experience"), but on foreign policy in particular, it seems to me that it's just an issue of two different, if not radically different, approaches to how foreign policy ought to be conducted.

[anne]

"When I read commentators fulminating about women wearing the burqa—which I don't much like either—I think about one of my aunts, who has always worn one, and of the many complex reasons she keeps it on, none of which involves approval of misogyny or support for suicide bombers."

What a thoroughly bizarre sentence. This is supposed to show what it is to understand others than oneself? Huh?

[anne]

"When I read commentators fulminating about women wearing the burqa—which I don't much like either—I think about one of my aunts, who has always worn one, and of the many complex reasons she keeps it on, none of which involves approval of misogyny or support for suicide bombers."

"When I read commentators fulminating about women smoking cigars—which I don't much like either—I think about one of my aunts, who has always smoked them, and of the many complex reasons she smokes them, none of which involves approval of misandrogyny or support for suicide bombers."

Now, if I ever begin smoking cigars it will be solely because I wish to make men miserable is not necessarily become a suicide bomber since I am afraid of loud noises.

[anne]

Me, I know one thing for sure which is that I do not ever want to identify with Faree Zakaria. Cigars? Cubans? Who knows.

[CJColucci]

In the context of persons actually electable to high public office, what is "foreign policy experience" or "expertise"? I understand that someone who has been an assistant deputy undersecretary to a deputy assistant undersecretary in a prior administration's State or Defense Department or the UN has some idea about foreign policy mechanics and protocol, and that is desirable, but as long as the candidate (whose political profile rarely includes such experience) is willing to listen critically but respectfully to those who do know this stuff, not particularly important. Same with area knowledge. I wouldn't blame even GW Bush for not knowing anything going in about the ongoing struggle between shi'a and sunni and its implications for Middle East policy, but Presidents "have people for that" and can pick up what they need to know if they are smart, energetic, and curious. So what is this expertise or experience, where do you get it, and how does it manifest itself? How is it different from plain old historically-informed good judgment?

[TS]

CJCollucci -- yes, of course a president cannot know all the details and be familiar with the whole world, and has to be willing to listen to experts. But I think there is often a link between some amount of expertise and being open minded, curious, and willing to listen to experts. It is not a coincidence that people who know nothing are often not willing to listen to anyone else.

Putting it another way: knowledge of details and factoids may not be worth much on its own, but is is often a by-product of having at some point seriously studied something. Knowledge of geography may not be that useful on its own, and being able to read a map and look up stuff might be more useful instead. But of course in reality, people who know geographic facts have probably at some point learned how to use a map, while people who don't know anything have not. (Ignoring the fact that some people may be better than others at retaining facts once they come across them.) Same for foreign (incl. foreign policy) expertise. Is it useful in the US to the able to, e.g., speak say Korean or know factoids about Korea? Not much, but it is a by-product of having at some point encountered or studied a different country and culture, which can have a profound influence on you no matter how "useful" the particular language is. So even if no particular piece of expertise (geography, economics, history) is really needed, it is important to have at some point seriously studied a few topics. Almost doesn't matter which topics.

The idea that a person who has no detailed knowledge of anything, and who somehow has made it far enough to be considered for high office, will turn out to be very open minded, seems far fetched to me. Yes, it could happen, but not very likely. If a person is "smart, energetic, and curious", they probably will know something at this point, unless they are faking it.

[Mark]

As a white Southerner, I'm always amazed by how naive the neocon set was in believing that it would be possible to engineer cultural transformation through white papers and opinion columns. Somethings just time time, generations, even to take root and grow. Certainly the southern experience with race shows that. The North may have won the Civil War militarilly, and their troops may have ended slavery as an institution. But the North was pretty much powerless to end slavery's cultural and economic effects as well as the ideology of race that had undergirded slavery. That didn't begin to happen until nearly a century later when the southern-born, black-led civil rights movement got underway, and even then change proved to be a slow and often painful process. It will be the same in Iraq (assuming change will ever come).

[Red Herring]

What's the source for this quote?

[CJColucci]

TS:
I agree with you. I think my disagreement is with something else, the notion that there is some relevant type of "experience" that a person following a standard career path to high electoral office can claim that is separate from being thoughtful and knowledgeable (however that knowledge is gained) about foreign affairs issues and usefully separates one candidate from another. For concrete examples: both Presidents Roosevelt spent some time in the Navy Department. I would consider that a relevant piece of "experience" separate from whether either of them, or their opponents, was well-informed and thoughtful, and showed good judgement on foreign policy issues. It wouldn't outweigh what I thought of the respective candidates' foreign policy judgment, but as between two reasonable candidates it would certainly be a plus for the Roosevelts. Taking the current crop of candidates, I could evaluate the foreign policy judgment of any of them, but I don't see where anyone other than Bill Richardson, or, to a significantly lesser degree, Joe Biden, had any particular claim to "experience" or documentable "expertise." My issue is that most people who run for President rarely have anything in their backgrounds that, in a resume sense, makes them especially "qualified" to do foreign policy. Let them debate who has the best ideas, soundest judgment, and most relevant knowledge. I'm just not impressed by what they seem to count as "experience."