Posted on 09 Nov 2009 at 11:18pm By GavinoOn the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the question begs whether the world is a better place now that America has minimized its foreign policy goals and approach.
Only a few years ago it seemed that the rest of the world – particularly its traditional allies in Europe who gained so much from the end of the Cold War – were lamenting American interventionist policies, be it in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere. Numerous good deeds, such as providing drugs to combat AIDS in Africa or supplying troubled regions with hundreds of millions of dollars plus equipment and manpower in relief support, didn’t seem to measure against the moral outrage.
President Obama’s most obvious missteps have concerned policy with Iran. His administration professed that diplomacy would yield results but it has produced nothing. Iran’s non-democratic leadership has strung along the United Kingdom, France and Germany without limiting its nuclear program. Now, with a pacifist President in the White House, it has little to fear from Washington even if the rhetoric were to increase.
Not that even this is likely. The President chose to engage an illegitimate leader over pro-democracy protesters in Tehran. In so doing he undermined not only their cause but also America’s moral authority and the cry for freedom around the world.
So what is this administration’s approach to dealing with global security threats? What has replaced President’s Bush’s preemptive strategy, so loathed by the once powerful Europeans?
Judging from Iran, the pendulum has swung to ‘wait and see’. In Iran this means doing nothing more than talking, while ruling out any military options and tiptoeing around the possibility of meaningful economic sanctions. But contemporary negotiations on security issues go nowhere unless there is a perception that the world’s only superpower has both the willingness and capability to act decisively.
Is President Obama's foreign policy a road to nowhere?
‘Wait and see’ has paralyzed NATO forces in Afghanistan. Until military commanders get direction from Washington, DC, they cannot execute an effective and coordinated strategy to pacify the Taliban. President Obama cited Afghan political uncertainties emanating from election fraud as a reason to delay his decision on reinforcements but his bigger priority is passing a domestic health care reform bill, which would be undermined if he sends more troops to battle overseas. With the health care debate now looking as if it will drag on until early next year, inaction on Afghanistan has become policy by default.
None of this will give Israel any confidence that this President will take any meaningful steps to protect it from military aggression. The message Washington is sending to Israel’s politicians is that they are on their own. It is difficult to disagree with those experts who argue that America’s newfound impotence makes an Israeli military strike on Iran increasingly likely.
In Europe, ‘wait and see’ will do nothing to deter Russia from annexing Georgia and Ukraine if it so chooses. Such a possibility was unthinkable until Barack Obama became President, but Russia’s leaders now know that the only repercussions would be verbal. Big deal.
One area of foreign policy where the President may deliver what Europeans want concerns climate change. But voluntarily making America’s economy less competitive by taxing industrial activity is something that requires little negotiation with other countries. Once a leader succumbs to the principle that carbon dioxide emissions must be cut, his political virtue is measured by the severity of the industrial limits he imposes. All the resulting damage is self-inflicted.
In the meantime, like a teenager using a new credit card to feed his addictions, Barack Obama is saddling America with trillions of dollars of unnecessary debt to pay for new government entitlements that it can’t afford. Low economic consumption in the world’s largest and most affluent market will limit growth and wealth creation around the globe for years.
The rest of the world didn’t revere the muscular America but it may yet come to regret the pacifist model in many different ways. U.S. foreign policy is on the road to nowhere. We will have to wait and see what ‘nowhere’ looks like.
“Wait and See” is an act of a president who does not know which course to take based on his lack of experience. He has not served in the armed forces, he has not studied any sort of military strategy or even studied historical military and diplomatic efforts. He has only been a community organizer on how to undermine from within the strength of a once proud and just nation. He and many in congress have pulled the wool over the eyes of those who voted for him. Has our nation failed to question in depth a persons true experience or intentions. After all there is a great deal of historical content where we can find similarities e.g. Germany where Neville Chamberlin thought he had an agreement with Hitler then later was betrayed and Britain attacked mercisisly nearly into submission. Is that what Obama has in mind for our country?
I think we are seeing the consequences of President Obama’s foreign policy in his Asia visit. Foreign leaders see him as a paper tiger willing to give concessions to gain a perceived victory. To quote from Machiavelli’s the Prince “…And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.” President Obama seems to want to be loved more than feared.
There are several Foreign Policy models that countries follow to achieve their goals: Hegemony, multi-lateral, unilateral, isolationism or neutrality. All have their pluses and minuses and have been utilized by nations since the beginning of civilization to further their interests. Look at Switzerland, they have a strong military but pursue a neutrality foreign policy that has served them well. Is this a feasible policy for the US? Yes, we’d save tons of $$ on our military but there are obvious negative consequences to our overseas interest. Next, look at Russia they seem to pursue a unilateral approach to most things with a focus on what is best for them, particularly in the long term. Again, this is an approach available to the US but we’d probably have to lessen our desire to increase human rights around the world and be willing to work with less than ideal governments to achieve our aims. Similarly, a purely multi-lateral approach can work for the US but we would naturally become somewhat reliant on other nations to come to the table with ample resources to ensure we have full spectrum capability. This is supposed to be how NATO works but can we downsize our military and foreign aid to the same levels (% of GDP) as our NATO Partners with no loss of security? Probably not. The reality is that we need to pursue a varying combination of these models to meet our myriad interests.
The whole concept of Foreign Policy revolves around how much influence do we as a nation want to have to help control events around the world. Look at what some consider the number one Foreign policy of today, Global Warming. Do you think anybody gives a damn what Switzerland, Norway, Finland or Sweden have to say about it? The answer is no, not because they are poor nations (they’re not) but because they don’t bring anything to the table economically, militarily, or diplomatically to influence other nations behavior.
All this leads to the question, what do we want our role in the world to be? This is a question, whether you agree or disagreed with them, that George Bush, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton had an answer for. Once that question is answered the next step is to develop the resources needed to accomplish the role we set for ourselves.
I think the problem we’re facing today is that President Obama doesn’t know the answer to the first question.