Word: effort
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Obama, this is the original sin whose consequences must now be repaired. His foreign policy in the greater Middle East amounts to an elaborate effort to peel back eight years of onion in hopes of finding the war on terrorism's lost inner core: the struggle against al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda alone. That's the subtext underlying his new Afghan strategy. He's raising troop levels, but less to vanquish the Taliban than to gain the leverage to effectively negotiate with them - in hopes of isolating alQaeda from its Afghan allies. He's boosting America's means but narrowing...
...Omnipotence Obama's effort to downsize the war on terrorism is partly a function of personality and mostly a function of circumstance. George W. Bush loathed what he called "small ball." He saw both his father's presidency and Bill Clinton's as inconsequential and yearned to invest his own with world-historical significance. After 9/11, he immediately began comparing the war on terrorism to World War II and the Cold War - a global, generation-defining struggle against an enemy of vast military and ideological power that would transform whole chunks of the world...
...bring the Taliban into the political process. Despite his decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, Obama has abandoned the goal of making the country Taliban-free. For all the attention it has received, the decision about troop levels is essentially tactical: it's an effort to win the military leverage necessary to persuade elements of the Taliban that they're better off in government than on the battlefield. "Ultimately," Defense Secretary Robert Gates has declared, there must be "reconciliation with the Taliban...
...Obama's effort to downsize the war on terrorism can also free up time and resources for the rest of American foreign policy. During the Bush Administration, the post-9/11 agenda often seemed to constitute a good 75% of the U.S.'s international agenda. If Obama could eventually get that down to, say, 50%, it would free him up to devote attention to long-term challenges like climate change and the global economy that Bush gave short shrift...
...Therein lies the irony of Obama's downsizing effort: he needs to ratchet up conflicts at first - by sending more troops to Afghanistan and perhaps pushing new sanctions against Iran - to gain the diplomatic muscle to cut deals that don't look like abject American defeats. It's a risky strategy, since there's no guarantee that the bigger sticks will work, and if they don't, pulling back will be even harder. But it's a gamble Obama may have to take. The harsh truth is that the U.S. is significantly weaker in the Middle East now than...