Obama Leads by Listening to World Used to Bush One-Way Approach
Author(s): Hans Nichols, Indira A.R. Lakshmanan
Original Post: Obama Leads by Listening to World Used to Bush One-Way Approach
Type: News Article
Date: 04/27/2009
April 28, 2009 - Barack Obama has used the first 100 days of his presidency to repudiate the go-it-alone tone of George W. Bush’s foreign policy, announcing to friends and foes alike that America will lead the world by listening to it.
Since taking office Jan. 20, the president has appealed to foreign leaders and their peoples to work with the U.S. to counter terrorism, nuclear threats and global warming. And he has displayed a willingness to reach out to unfriendly regimes such as Iran and Cuba. At the same time, the real tests lie ahead.
“He’s done a hell of a lot in the first 100 days to redefine the flavor and premises of American foreign policy,” said Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. “But now that has to be translated into diplomacy, and the hard decisions have to be made in terms of what’s in America’s interest and what’s doable with how much effort.”
In particular, Obama will have to decide how he will react if his overtures to other nations aren’t matched by similar concessions.
The president, who has already warned against an “insidious” anti-Americanism that blames the U.S. for all the world’s problems, will stop negotiating “at the point where he believes that they are not being sincere,” said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. “The line comes down.”
Rolling Back Policies
During his first three months in office, Obama made a point of rolling back policies and images that made Bush an unpopular figure globally.
He banned torture, ordered the closing of the prison for terrorism detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and shook hands with leftist Latin American leaders who clashed with Bush. On his first presidential trip to a predominantly Muslim nation, Turkey, Obama insisted that the U.S. isn’t “at war with Islam.”
The president also revealed his approach through early overtures to Russia and China, two countries whose leverage the U.S. needs on Iran, North Korea and the financial crisis.
He has agreed to hold nuclear arms-control talks with Russia and signaled that Russian help in pressuring Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions might reduce the need for a U.S. missile shield based in Europe that the Russians oppose.
Reassuring Chinese
Obama reached out to reassure China, the second-largest U.S. trading partner, that it was safe to keep investing in U.S. Treasuries. He also engaged Chinese leaders when North Korea tested a missile on April 5, eventually producing an agreement to enforce existing international sanctions on the regime more rigorously.
“Bush’s approach was unilateral if we can, multilateral only if we must,” said Lawrence Korb, a former Defense Department official now at the Center for American Progress in Washington. “With Obama, it’s multilateral if we can, unilateral only if we must.”
Along with these diplomatic initiatives, Obama also has shown a willingness to unleash America’s military and economic clout.
He ordered 17,000 additional combat troops to Afghanistan to fight Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents. He authorized the Navy to use deadly force against Somali pirates holding an American hostage. He told Pakistani leaders to redouble the fight against Taliban extremists threatening their nuclear- armed country, and has linked Pakistani cooperation to future U.S. aid.
Iran Sanctions
And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned last week that Iran faces “crippling” sanctions should its government rebuff talks on its nuclear program.
After campaigning on a pledge to withdraw U.S. combat forces from Iraq within 16 months, Obama once in office acceded to requests from his generals for a longer timetable that keeps most of the approximately 137,000 American troops there until after elections this fall.
That approach to the Iraq War has won praise from one-time critics who had been concerned he would destabilize the country by imposing a political timeline on what they said should be a military process.
“I am pleasantly surprised,” said South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who campaigned for Obama’s presidential rival, Senator John McCain. “He’s got some very difficult problems to handle, and I think he’s done well in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
‘People Have Noticed’
Obama’s tonal shifts have helped him even in quarters where some aspects of his foreign policy were greeted with suspicion.
In the Middle East and the broader Muslim world, “his tone is markedly positive and people have noticed,” said Iraq’s ambassador to Washington, Samir Sumaida’ie.
Obama’s aides said his new approach is already paying dividends. “There’s such a hunger for the U.S. to reengage with the world,” said David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser. “I think he’s helped ignite that.”
That hunger was demonstrated during Obama’s trip to Europe earlier this month.
Hundreds of French and German citizens packed a town-hall meeting in Strasbourg, France, and cheered the president’s remarks, from climate change to closing Guantanamo. When he had an audience with Queen Elizabeth II in London, well-wishers hoisted his campaign posters above police barricades outside Buckingham Palace.
‘Projection of Weakness’
Some critics, such as John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Bush, said Obama’s effort to recast America’s relationship with the world amounts to “tangible projection of weakness.”
Obama’s approach ignores the harsh realities about the intent of America’s enemies, “revealing a Jimmy Carter-style unwillingness to do what’s necessary in a hard world to protect America’s interest,” Bolton said.
The Obama handshake with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at a regional summit drew criticism in the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week from Representative Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican. Pence said Obama had been used to promote a “virulent” dictator.
Clinton responded that the Bush policy of trying to isolate Chavez didn’t work.
“I don’t think there is any contradiction between standing strongly for our principles and our values and pursuing the give-and-take of diplomatic encounter and negotiation, where appropriate,” the secretary of state said.
Uneven Results
So far, Obama’s overtures have produced mixed results.
Chavez, who once denounced Bush as “the devil” and withdrew his ambassador last year, told Obama at the summit that he wants to be friends and is ready to send a new envoy.
Cuban President Raul Castro responded to Obama’s loosening of curbs on travel and remittances by Cuban-Americans by saying that he was prepared to discuss political prisoners and the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Former President Fidel Castro then wrote that his brother wasn’t yielding to U.S. demands on human rights.
North Korea ignored U.S. admonitions and UN restrictions by launching a missile over Japan, then expelled international inspectors and withdrew from talks aimed at scrapping its nuclear-arms program.
Adversaries Assess
Iran has sent mixed messages. While saying it will cooperate with the U.S. to promote security and counter drugs in Afghanistan, it has jailed an Iranian-American journalist. Its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, delivered an attack on Israel that prompted a walkout by Western officials at a UN racism conference.
Madeleine Albright, secretary of state under President Bill Clinton, said these longtime U.S. foes -- some branded as part of an “axis of evil” just a few years ago by Bush -- “are assessing in their own way how to respond to the open hand versus the fist.”
Domestic politics are at least as important in these countries’ decision-making as anything the U.S. president says or does, Albright said.
North Korea experts say leader Kim Jong Il was recovering from a stroke and trying to prove his hold on power by launching the missile. Iranian politicians are contesting June elections, and the balance of power with top clerics is a constraint.
Wait-And-See
In time, said Said Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to the U.S., “a lot of these countries will take this opportunity to respond and engage with the U.S.” Some, he said, “may be waiting to see how these new approaches” will be backed up with incentives.
Obama’s approach is built on a bedrock of pragmatism, said retired Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, an author of the military’s counter-insurgency field manual. That pragmatism is reflected in his decision to cooperate with Iran on Afghanistan while “deeply deploring Iran’s position on a number of other things” said Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security in Washington.
“The president views security in Afghanistan as so important that he’s willing to get half a loaf of bread today,” Nagl said. “Both sides have to get used to the fact that doors are opening. Much more business can be conducted through an open door.”
Topic(s): Natural Resources + National Security = Natural Security, Iraq, Regional Security Challenges, Terrorism & Irregular Warfare, U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. National Security Strategy, WMD & Nuclear Proliferation
Project(s): Afghanistan, Asia-Pacific Security , Energy Security and Climate Change, Iran: U.S. Strategic Options, Nuclear Negotiations in North Korea
People: Dr. John A. Nagl
