Mark Landler

This was a useful book. Landler compares the foreign policy styles of Clinton and Obama. Although the book is largely about their differences, Landler starts and ends the book with a reminder that the differences between the two are more a difference of degree than direction. From early in the book,

Clinton and Obama, it must be said, agreed more than they disagreed. Both preferred diplomacy to brute force. Both shunned the unilateralism of the Bush years. Both are lawyers committed to preserving the rules-based order that the United States put in place after 1945. Yet as that order has begun to fracture, they have shown very different instincts for how to save it.

That said, it is instructive to look at their differences, which is what Landler does in this book. Landler's central thesis is that the central divide between Clinton and Obama on foreign policy is not so much a bias toward vs against war. Rather it's that Clinton sees American power as a force for international good and Obama sees it as at best risky. This includes military intervention but it also includes other more peaceful forms of intervention, some of which, the ones with a more humanitarian motivation, are generally considered good by many of the folks who consider the military interventions bad.

The strength of Landler's analysis is that he doesn't try to make this thesis carry more than it is able. He notes that both Clinton and Obama have regularly strayed from this summarized view during their years in the spotlight. Rather, his claim is that this view is more of a tendency that is altered by the specific circumstances.

After laying out this perspective, the bulk of the book goes into the major foreign policy initiatives that overlapped with Clinton's tenure as Obama's Secretary of State. These overviews provided support for Landler's thesis but overall were more summaries than insightful analysis of foreign policy during the Obama/Clinton era. Landler did include some interesting reflections on the foreign policy insularity of the White House which helped them sometimes modify conventional wisdom but also makes "business as usual" more likely when Obama leaves office, whoever his successor.

Overall, this book is likely worth reading if you're interested in the topic but don't follow foreign policy at more than a mass media level.… (más)