The world as it is
Inside the Obama White House
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9911482 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hans Kundnani (0009-0007-1559-0364, Chatham House, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 95 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 245-246 |
| Publication date | 2019-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Affairs (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0020-5850 • E-ISSN: 1468-2346 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ia/iiy265 |
| OpenAlex | W2907422471 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
The idea of an ‘Obama Doctrine’ is associated with Ben Rhodes more than with anyone else except former President Barack Obama himself. Rhodes joined the Obama campaign in 2007 at the age of 29 and, after Obama became president in 2008, served as his foreign policy speechwriter—his official title was Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications—for the entire eight years of the administration. He and Obama were frequently said to have a ‘mind meld’. In an influential article in The Atlantic entitled ‘The Obama Doctrine’, Jeffrey Goldberg called Rhodes Obama's ‘foreign-policy amanuensis’. However, while Rhodes's memoir, The world as it is, provides a sympathetic account of the life of a young staffer thrust into a position of enormous responsibility in an administration of historic significance, it does little to impose coherence on the administration's foreign policy choices—let alone on how to understand its place in the longer history of American foreign policy. It is frustratingly difficult to extract anything like a ‘doctrine’ from the book, or even to find a clear reflection on the fault-lines of American foreign policy
Administration (probate law · Doctrine · Foreign policy · Memoir · National security · Political science · Politics · Presidency · White (mutation · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US
| Citations per year | 1.17 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2020 - 2024 (5) |
| Highly cited | No |