Peter Feaver has a piece at Shadow Government where he attacks the President for not focusing his State of the Union on foreign policy. This is a weak attack. Feaver, a former Bush administration official and currently a professor at Duke, writes:

The foreign policy headline of the State of the Union speech is how far the president went to avoid generating a national security headline. In one of the longest of recent SOTU’s, the president’s speechwriters devoted some of the shortest space and least consequential language to national security… This will be a very consequential year for U.S. foreign policy, but little of that is foreshadowed in this speech.

Feaver is right that foreign policy was not the focus of the speech, but the implication that the President is desperate to avoid a foreign policy “headline” is just bizarre and the idea that he needed to devote more time to foreign policy speech is wrong for a few reasons.

First, the President has very recently given many many prominent speeches about foreign policy. It is simply absurd to accuse the President of not focusing on, or talking enough about, foreign policy. Did Feaver not see last month when the President was in Oslo giving a lengthy speech solely on his vision of foreign affairs and national security when he received the Nobel Prize? And did he not see a month before when the President went to West Point to give a prime time address on his Afghanistan strategy. And finally, in the first few weeks of January the President talked at length about the failed underpants bomber and responding to terrorism. He hasn’t given a major domestic policy address, since his September speech to Congress.

Second, the country is going through a tremendous economic crisis. This is what the country really really cares about. This also happens to be what the political debate is focused on. Should the President have flipped the speech and talked for 2/3rds of the time about foreign policy, it would have been seen as politically tone-deaf for not addressing the concerns of the country.

Third, it is not like he didn’t talk about foreign policy. He hit on Afghanistan, terrorism, and Haiti. The President reconfirmed his commitment to withdraw troops from Iraq and indicated a new START treaty with Russia is imminent. He also highlighted the upcoming April Nuclear Security Summit that will seek to control loose nuclear materials. Finally, he expressed a commitment to human rights in Iran and warned Iran that they were facing sanctions. The President was no doubt checking the boxes in the foreign policy section, but that is to a large degree what the State of the Union is about – informing the public about what is going on.

As a foreign policy person, I would always like the President and the political class to focus more on my issue areas, but the fact is the President has spoken prominently and at length about foreign policy to the country. Feaver really seems to be complaining just to complain.

As the United States prepares to withdraw its combat troops from Iraq this summer and the diplomatic confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program continues, it’s important to think about what the security structure of the Persian Gulf region will look like in the near future. By the end of 2011, the United States will have no military presence in Iraq for the first time in eight and half years. Even if the U.S. and Iraqi governments negotiate a new arrangement for some U.S. troops to stay and provide technical support and training, the number of American troops remaining will not be very large.

In the Gulf, the United States will probably maintain a significant naval presence. Right now, the U.S. Navy maintains one aircraft carrier strike group and one expeditionary strike group in the Gulf and Arabian Sea area. This naval posture has been relatively constant since the First Gulf War in 1991, and is unlikely to change after U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq in 2011. In addition, there will likely be about 140,000 U.S. and NATO troops still in Afghanistan that a carrier strike group could support. With the war in Afghanistan likely to continue, long-range U.S. Air Force strike and support aircraft will probably remain based at undisclosed locations in the Gulf region.

As a result of the withdrawal of its land forces from the region, security assistance to Gulf states will become a major component of U.S. strategy for the Gulf. President Bush laid the first groundwork for this evolution when his administration announced a $20 billion arms package for Gulf allies like Saudi Arabia in July 2007. Since that time, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency has notified Congress of some $35.5 billion in potential arms sales to Gulf Arab states.

Among the items requested by these states, primarily Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, are attack and utility helicopters, antitank missiles, and precision-guided bombs. But the most expensive possible purchases were those of anti-aircraft and anti-missile missile systems such as the Patriot PAC-3 and THAAD missile systems.

These potential sales go through the Foreign Military Sales program, a process by which the United States contracts for weapons systems on behalf of a foreign government and that foreign government then pays the United States for the weapons in question. However, the Defense Department has not awarded contracts for many of the major arms sales since the Bush administration’s July 2007 announcement. Only the UAE’s orders for 14 UH-60M Black Hawk utility helicopters and Patriot PAC-3 missile systems have been awarded, and these awards only came over the last month.

So far the Obama administration hasn’t promulgated an idea of what it expects Gulf security to look like once U.S. troops leave Iraq. Though the Bush administration originally had no intention of leaving Iraq, their solution to the problem of a rising Iran — empowered by the removal of its rival Saddam Hussein — was to dump weapons on friendly local states, while leaving the process by which these states obtained weapons largely dormant, apart from official notifications of possible arms sales.

As the Obama administration thinks about how the United States should manage the security transition in the Gulf, they should move beyond the Bush administration’s arms bazaar policy and toward an integrated security system for the Gulf. Rather than, say, selling as many anti-missile systems like THAAD or the Patriot PAC-3 to as many local states as possible, the goal should be to establish a cooperative anti-missile system that links friendly Gulf states together in a collective security arrangement.

Time is running out for the Obama administration to set forth its vision of the Gulf’s future security architecture. Withdrawing from Iraq and leaving the future security of the region up to a group of disorganized and competitive states is the worst option it can pursue.

Although President Obama spent a significant amount of his State of the Union speech last night talking about domestic issues, he also addressed several national security issues. The Joint Chiefs sat quietly when Obama talked about a timeline to begin the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and committed to working with the military to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:

And in the last year, hundreds of al Qaeda’s fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed — far more than in 2008. And in Afghanistan, we’re increasing our troops and training Afghan security forces so they can begin to take the lead in July of 2011, and our troops can begin to come home. [...]

This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. It’s the right thing to do.

However, as Joe. My. God. points out, the Joint Chiefs didn’t sit passively during the entire speech, as the Supreme Court justices are supposed to do, although they traditionally applaud “rarely.” The Joint Chiefs stood and applauded when the President talked about supporting veterans or pledging to secure nuclear materials:

And at April’s Nuclear Security Summit, we will bring 44 nations together here in Washington, D.C. behind a clear goal: securing all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world in four years, so that they never fall into the hands of terrorists.

Watch a compilation:

A new study by UCLA’s Williams Institute estimates that there are an “estimated 66,000 lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals are serving in the US military, accounting for approximately 2.2% of military personnel.” Additionally, repealing DADT “could attract an estimated 36,700 men and women to active duty service and 12,000 more individuals to the guard and reserve.” The Pentagon has reportedly been “stepping up internal discussions on how gay men and lesbians might be able to serve openly in the armed services,” in anticipation that Congress and the President will move forward on repeal.

Notably, Defense Secretary Robert Gates did stand and clap for Obama’s call to repeal DADT. (HT: AMERICAblog)