With pomp and polish and platitudes, the 2016 presidential campaign is underway. It began in December, as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush announced he was “actively exploring” a run for the White House. Bush is more moderate than much of the Republican base on many issues — 

perhaps too moderate to win his party’s nomination, according to Nate Silver’s statistical analysis

 against Syria, Russia, Iran, China, and Cuba in order to better promote and 

On the whole, the Republican hopefuls are “racing to the right” on foreign policy, arguing for a more muscular approach to international affairs. A narrative is taking hold that many of the problems facing the world today are the result of the Obama administration’s “

.” More specifically, they were not brought about by America’s ill-conceived actions, but instead, because of U.S. inaction: a failure to intervene as often or aggressively as “needed” around the world, which (to many conservatives’ minds) 

projected American weakness and undermined U.S. credibility

 American leadership. This line of reasoning permeates the recently-announced campaigns of 

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz

the political strategy of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul as well

The presumed Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, is perhaps 

 the counterproductive drone program, and 

tentatively supports the nuclear negotiation effort

During her pre-announcement book tour, Clinton lambasted the Obama administration’s foreign policy, particularly the administration’s aspirational credo: 

the Obama administration has failed to live up to such a modest goal

, but instead, that “don’t do stupid stuff” is not an organizing principle, and 

On its face, that criticism is absurd. Clearly, “avoid doing harm” is, in fact, a maxim 

 do, but for that very reason, it is the basis of (and more important than) any offensive strategy: it constrains what sorts of affirmative policies are desirable or even permissible. But notwithstanding 

this apparent lack of understanding about what “organizing principle” means

, there is a more profound error that Secretary Clinton holds in common 

: the assumption that grand strategies are necessary or useful in guiding foreign policy. They aren’t.

To understand why foreign policy doctrines are counterproductive, let us begin with a handful of humble axioms:

First, situations are importantly different from one another. Libya is not Ukraine. The Syria of the 1950s is neither the Syria of 2011, nor the Syria of 2014. The crises America faces today 

are not the same as those of Rome at the time of its collapse

tend to obscure rather than elucidate the problems

 policymakers are currently faced with. A policymaker’s 

lack a nuanced grasp on the actual situation at hand

 — and are likely not well-informed about history, either.

Second, situations are fluid and often volatile: they evolve over time in response to myriad factors, 

most of which are difficult to predict or control

mindfulness of the present will be far more useful

 in guiding policy than attempts to model the future, draw analogies from the past, or 

frame contemporary developments within pre-existing narratives

Third, U.S. interest, and the optimal means of promoting them, are also 

 and evolve along with the situation to which they’re indexed. Accordingly, strategies which take American interests for granted 

and risks presented by particular circumstances

 right is heavily determined by the context in which options are presented — both at the 

In light of these propositions, we are left with the question: why would policymakers approach fluid and dynamic problems through 

It is disturbing that policymakers seem so willing to embrace policies 

 at the expense of paying attention to the facts on the ground, or even 

in outright defiance of known empirical realities

. But worse still is that even as it becomes glaringly obvious that these ill-conceived measures are failing or even backfiring, the typical response by policymakers is to explain problems away with 

 about how the strategy is essentially sound and could have worked better under alternative circumstances — with the proposed “solution” typically being to 

 on the current policies, rather than to rethink their aims and methods. This is 

virtually the definition of fundamentalism

And yet, it is fundamentalists who win elections. This is no less true in America than in the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Uprisings. It is a problem intrinsic to democracy itself. While doctrines will 

, they make excellent soundbites and political slogans. 

 created by the apparent clashes of these lofty ideals. Perhaps more importantly, 

voters like simple narratives about what is happening and why

hopeful and bold (even if poorly substantiated) visions of the future

. Constituents want complex issues related in an accessible fashion, short enough to fit between commercial breaks, distill into an op-ed column, or squeeze into a 140-character tweet. And so, for these reasons, voters are more likely to elect someone who has 

some neat, tidy ideological package to offer

. (This may be why Americans, despite being 

generally and consistently averse to military interventions

 to resolve foreign policy challenges, while decrying their political opponents as 

Perhaps the one exception to the aforementioned trend has been Barack Obama, who has tended to base critical policy decisions on 

what the public wanted in the moment rather than subscribing to any particular doctrine

, as the midterms underscored. And it’s hard to blame them.

. But for all that, we have the good fortune of living in a representative (rather than direct) democracy, where citizens elect politicians who are supposed to have the temperament and expertise to make tough, often controversial, decisions on their behalf. While accountable to citizens via occasional elections, precisely what American politicians are not supposed to do is reflexively defer to the public in the interim. The rightly (if improperly) maligned foreign policy track record of the Obama administration should serve as a cautionary tale for why not.

American leadership doesn’t want for populism or idealism — 

, perhaps the best that one can hope for is leaders who are great at exploiting narrative tropes to explain their policies to the public while their actions are determined by careful, informed, and realistic assessments of the challenges the U.S. faces.

However, Americans shouldn’t hold their breath in anticipation of such a noble liar anytime soon (

is an instructor in the Department of Government and Public Service at the University of Arizona, affiliated with the Southwest Initiative for the Study of Middle East Conflicts (SISMEC). Readers can connect to his other work and social media via his website: 

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“Grand Strategies” are great for winning elections, but they’re terrible for governing.

Musa al-Gharbi