There is a gaping hole separating what the Obama administration wants to say it achieved and what it has actually accomplished (an analysis of the Obama Doctrine).

Brian Katulis is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He is on Twitter: @katulis.
Jeffrey Goldberg’s analysis of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy (“The Obama Doctrine“) is required reading for those looking at the big picture on U.S. national security.

The article reveals a striking lack of clarity in Mr. Obama’s vision for his positive legacy on the global stage. This piece was informed by a great deal of access to senior administration officials who aim to burnish Mr. Obama’s national security achievements. Yet there is a gaping hole: what the Obama administration wants to say it achieved and what it will leave behind. The officials’ primary mode is defensive, not assertive.

Certainly, the Obama administration touts its major accomplishments: the agreement over Iran’s nuclear program, the climate deal reached in Paris, and the trade deal with Asian nations. But nowhere in the article does the administration articulate a clear argument for why all of these issues matter to advance U.S. national security interests and values and the greater cause of global order.
The closest officials get to defining a positive legacy is on engagement in Asia and Latin America–but then they don’t define how that engagement will enhance U.S. and global security. What comes across is a vague, gauzy notion not dissimilar to the “bumper sticker” that deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes offered during Mr. Obama’s first term: “Wind down these two wars, reestablish American standing and leadership in the world, and focus on a broader set of priorities, from Asia and the global economy to a nuclear-nonproliferation regime.”

While the administration is imprecise about the rationale for its proactive foreign policy agenda, it is clearer in presenting its case for what the president chose not to do (intervene in Syria, follow through in Libya), all under the banner of “don’t do stupid stuff.”  A secondary focus is knocking back critics of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy at home and abroad.

This points to a problem with how President Obama has articulated his national security agenda: He has spent much more energy defining what his administration would not do and what it sought to avoid, as opposed to what he wants to get done and, most important, why those things would benefit the United States. This failure to clearly communicate the positive benefits is part of the reason recent polling has found that a majority of the public disapproves of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy.

With less than a year left in his presidency, Mr. Obama faces a world with numerous national security challenges. He acknowledges in the Atlantic article that U.S. leadership is essential to getting things done. This critical question remains unanswered: What would President Obama like to say he achieved in the big picture to advance U.S. national security interests and values, and how is the world safer as a result? There is a case to be made for what he has done–and a strong one if it is linked to focused action in the next 10 months on key challenges to global order from Russia, China, and Islamic State. So far, however, the administration has not offered the best argument that it could.