Candidate Romney (L) and adviser Kagan (R) part ways on Obama's Asia policy

Last week, Romney wrote a Wall Street Journal opinion piece blasting Obama’s Asia policy, particularly on China (albeit while misrepresenting said Obama policy). That afternoon on MSNBC, former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, who endorsed Romney after dropping his own presidential bid, said Romney’s China policies were “wrongheaded” and that he “would disagree with what some of what Governor Romney said.”

Now, a top Romney foreign policy adviser — not merely a supporter — has come out and praised Obama’s Asia policy, particularly his work on China. Appearing on the Colbert Report to promote his book, neoconservative Brookings scholar Robert Kagan, an Iraq hawk who advises the Romney campaign, said Obama “has a good policy in Asia, particularly in dealing with China”:

COLBERT: How can you advise Romney and like anything the President does?

KAGAN: I think that when the president does the right thing, it doesn’t matter what party you’re in, you should be supportive.

COLBERT: Killing bin laden doesn’t count. Killing Awlaki doesn’t count. Killing Qaddafi doesn’t count. Supporting the Arab Spring doesn’t count. So what else has he done?

KAGAN: Well, I think he’s done some things wrong. I think he has a good policy in Asia, particularly in dealing with China. I think he’s strengthened our position in Asia with our allies. On some issues I think he’s been a lot weaker.

Watch the video, starting at the four-minute mark:

Kagan’s assessment that Obama has “strengthened our position in Asia with our allies” flies in the face of what Romney said in his Wall Street Journal piece. The GOP candidate wrote:

[Obama] has only encouraged Chinese assertiveness and made our allies question our staying power in East Asia… The supposed pivot has been oversold and carries with it an unintended consequence: It has left our allies with the worrying impression that we left the region and might do so again.

But maybe no one should be surprised that Kagan is a fan of some Obama policies. After all, the feeling seems to be mutual. Last month, Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin and the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein wrote that Obama spoke effusively about Kagan’s essay in the New Republic (also here) about “the myth of American decline.”

But Gen. David Petraeus, while testifying at his Senate confirmation hearing to become the next CIA director, offered a far more nuanced explanation of how the White House consulted with military leadership before yesterday’s announcement and how a broader set of concerns have to be taken into account by the civilian leadership. He also emphasized the importance of military leadership respecting the orders of the president and executing his decision:

PETRAEUS: The risk being assessed in this case, from my perspective, the risk having to do with the ability to achieve objectives of the military campaign plan, acknowledging that at every level of the chain of command above me there are additional considerations, and each person above me, all the way up to and including the President has a broader purview and broader considerations that are brought to bear. [...]

And so that’s how I would layout the process that took place, the very good discussion, this was indeed vigorous. All voices were heard in the situation room. And ultimately the decision has been made. And with a decision made, obviously I support that.

Watch it:

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen offered a similar description of the decision making hierarchy in his testimony before the House Armed Services Committee this morning. He said:

“More force for more time is, without doubt, the safer course,” Mullen continued. “But that does not necessarily make it the best course. Only the president, in the end, can really determine the acceptable level of risk we must take. I believe he has done so.”

Petraeus and Mullen’s testimonies offer a useful review of how civilian control of the armed forces is central to our democracy and how military leadership see their role in the decision making process.

Full transcript of Petraeus’s answer on Obama’s decision:

I’ll walk through the process since it was quite a substantial one although in a brief period of time included three meetings. After the first meeting I was given a homework assignment which I answered by the second meeting. And then the third meeting was the one in which the president ultimately reached a decision.

The responsibility of a combat commander in that kind of situation is to present options to the president to implement his state policy and that’s what I did. The risk being assessed in this case, from my perspective, the risk having to do with the ability to achieve objectives of the military campaign plan, acknowledging that at every level of the chain of command above me there are additional considerations, and each person above me, all the way up to and including the president has a broader purview and broader considerations that are brought to bear. The president alone [is] in the position of evaluating all those different considerations, including certainly those of the commander on the ground but also many others as well in reaching his decision.

I provided such options. I provided assessments of risk. I provided recommendations. We discussed all of this again at considerable length. The president then made a decision. The commander in chief has decided. And it is then the responsibility, needless to say, of those in uniform to salute smartly and to do everything humanly possible to execute it.

Now as Chairman Mullen, Admiral Mullen, stated today before the House Armed Services Committee, the ultimate decision was a more aggressive formulation, if you will, in terms of the timeline, than what we had recommended. Again, that is understandable in the sense that there are broader considerations beyond just those of a military commander.

The fact is that there has never been a military commander in history who has had all the forces he would like to have. Or all the time. Or all the money. Or all the authorities. Or, nowadays, all the bandwidth.

There is always a process of assessing risk. And it’s typically, in a case like this, as the Chairman put it today, “risk at the margin.” We’re talking about small differences, albeit significant from a military commander point of view.

And so that’s how I would layout the process that took place, the very good discussion, this was indeed vigorous. All voices were heard in the situation room. And ultimately the decision has been made. And with a decision made, obviously I support that. And will do all I can during my remaining time as the commander of ISAF to implement it, set up General Allen to do likewise, so we can achieve the objectives of the campaign plan and then also, if confirmed as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, to do the same from the position as well.

Objectively pro-Ahmadenijad? So says Bob Kagan. (Wikimedia)

As conservatives continue to criticize Barack Obama’s rhetoric on the Iranian political crisis, Iranian dissidents and human rights leaders continue to support Obama. Shirin Ebadi, for example, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her efforts as a human rights lawyer and advocate in Iran. For her trouble she’s been persecuted in the press, threatened with physical violence, etc. And as Spencer Ackerman points out she thinks Obama’s doing the right thing:

Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, said she has no complaints about Obama’s rhetoric. “What happens in Iran regards the people themselves, and it is up to them to make their voices heard,” she said in a telephone interview from Geneva. “I respect his comments on all the events in Iran, but I think it is sufficient.”

There’s been an effort made to fit this into some grand tableau about “idealism” in foreign policy, but the simple fact of the matter is that the time for the United States to do something on behalf of the Iranian opposition would be when Iranian opposition leaders ask us to. Simply inserting ourselves more directly into the situation in order to feel more self-righteous about it would be horrible. The people protesting on the streets in Iran are running very real risks to their lives and their families. We owe them more than thoughtless rhetoric.

Meanwhile, my colleague Matt Duss was on MSNBC yesterday offering a much more reasonable take on Obama’s restrained response:

DUSS: I think the lesson to be learned is the United States’ ability to intervene and change these outcomes is rather limited. As Americans, we like to believe that our ability to move, to promote democracy and to move events in the world at our will is a lot bigger than it actually is. … Right now President Obama’s treatment of the demonstrations going on in Iran is pretty near perfect. He has taken the United States to the extent possible out of this equation, he, the United States, and our role in the Middle East is not — he’s not going to give that to the hard liners as an excuse for an even greater crackdown.

Something I think people don’t always get is that the President is not the columnist-in-chief or the National Blogger. One of the very nice things about being a professional political pundit, is that you can just sort of spout off what you think and use colorful language and strong, bold words. You need to be careful with what you say and do, paying scrupulous attention to consequences.

Max Bergmann did an excellent post on just this subject last summer, saying that John McCain had a tendency to act more like a pundit than a president. I think that’s exactly right. And today you’re seeing some rightwing pundits getting mad because Obama is acting like a president rather than like a pundit.