Note to the White House: It's the Economy Stxpxd!

(Alternative draft published @ TheWashingtonNote. January 26, 2010)

Whatever Obama says about global affairs--on virtually any issue--is not going to matter unless he starts leading a long-term recovery of the portfolio at the source of America's power: the economy.

The economy. The economy. The economy.

2009 was a year when al-Qaeda again dominated the attention of the executive office and warped what should have been a different order among America's priorities. The U.S. has played defense in preventing the worst of the financial crisis and offense against al-Qaeda in South Asia. Overall, American foreign policy victories in 2009 were muddled, non-tangible, and perhaps even non-existent.

Pursuing diplomacy abroad, creating a non-binding compact on climate-change, replacing the G-8 with the G-20, demanding that Israel must stop building settlements, and orating to the Muslim world a “new course” on U.S.-Middle East relations changed what TWN’s publisher Steve Clemons has called the “optics of power,” but these initiatives did not and cannot independently change real power.

2010 needs to be about real power: economic power.

The rise of Asia, the supposed decline of America, and all of the corresponding security concerns are first and foremost economic in nature. American military power and soft power are based on economic power, and economic power needs to be what America harnesses over the coming years to remain competitive and active in key areas of global leadership.

And let’s not forget the existential purpose of the American way of strategy abroad. In the words of Michael Lind:

The purpose of the American way of strategy has always been to defend the American way of life…Foreign policy thinkers who dismiss the idea of ‘the American way of life’ and focus on ‘vital interests’ as the basis of U.S. foreign policy are guilty of a profound philosophical and political error. For there is no interest more vital in American foreign policy and no ideal more important than the preservation of the American way of life.

Thus, to preserve America’s global posture and the strategic relevance of American foreign policy, the Obama administration must remember foremost that their administration must protect the American way of life before achieving anything else.

And the source of the American way of life and American economic power is America’s manufacturing prowess, schools, modern infrastructure, entrepreneurship, technological superiority, protection of property rights, and, most importantly, culture. As those sources of American power are continually neglected, America’s global posture will steadily erode.

Remaining chummy with Prime Minister Wen Jiaobao, President Dmitri Medvedev, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is necessary to ensure America retains a role in managing the “rise of Asia,” but it is not sufficient to protect American strategic interests. Photo-ops unaccompanied by actual policy gains can go only so far (see: nowhere).

If Obama isn’t careful, he’ll become a one-term, irrelevant president. A flash in the pan of global history and the real overseer of America’s decline. No one wants that, not least the democracy that elected him.

As the Obama administration sets the executive office agenda for 2010, they’d do well to remember that Obama’s most critical speech was held in neither Oslo or at West Point. It was at the Brookings Institution, where he outlined a plan to get America back on track economically.

That achievement of the goals in that latter speech should be the paramount objective for the Obama administration in 2010.