Schama on Obama's Foreign Policy

Simon Schama's programme, Obama's America: the Price of Freedom, broadcast on the BBC on 12/1/2010, makes the argument that President Harry Truman's handling of the Korean War provides salient lessons for President Obama in Afghanistan. Truman settled for a policy, he suggests, that was 'compromised, messy, local, and realistic.' Containment, supported by the military cost of an American army of over 30,000 men as late as 2009, provided the opportunity for South Korea to experience both prosperity and freedom. The Vietnam war, by contrast, was prompted by John F. Kennedy's promise that the United States would 'pay any price,bear any burden... to assure the survival and the success of liberty.' The result was military failure and the loss of 58,000 American and several million Vietnamese lives. The danger in Afghanistan, Schama seemed to suggest, was to believe that it might be possible to completely crush the Taliban, just as General Douglas MacArthur had believed that he could destroy the Communists in Korea. Obama's statement that American troops might return home as early as July 2011, following a victory created by the steady increase in troops through 2009 and 2010, seems unduly optimistic, when seen from the perspective of the long-term American military presence in Korea. On the other hand, whether containment can be as effective in the very different conditions of the contemporary Middle East as it was in post-World War II Europe or Korea is open to question. A continuing U.S. military presence in Afghanistan might soon come to seem like an army of occupation.