2008: The Obama Doctrine

For anyone even vaguely interested in how a prospective Obama administration would approach democracy promotion (and foreign policy more broadly), Spencer Ackerman has a must-read article in the National Interest detailing “The Obama Doctrine”. Using the quickest-way-to-a-candidate’s-heart-is-through-their-advisors’-hearts method, Ackerman unpacks the Obama team’s vision for “a doctrine that first ends the politics of fear and then moves beyond a hollow, sloganeering ‘democracy promotion’ agenda in favor of ‘dignity promotion,’ to fix the conditions of misery that breed anti-Americanism and prevent liberty, justice, and prosperity from taking root.” Ackerman observes that for Obama, democracy promotion is not about proving you can hold an election in a place like Baghdad or Gaza; it’s going much deeper than that. It’s helping people meet their basic needs and providing them with a sense of dignity, which concurrently moderates “pools of potential terrorism around the globe”–constituencies ripe for the exploitative tactics of demagogue extremists.