Dealing with the world in a way that gives Americans reasons to be pleased.
So much sniping at Barack Obama’s handling of foreign affairs. Such low grades for his foreign policy. By reading op-eds and blogs, by listening to some radio and TV commentary, one would think that we’ve lapsed back to the dark dismal days of Jimmy Carter when, in Jeane Kirkpatrick’s biting words, America was walking around with a “kick me” sign on its back. That, we’re clearly not now doing. Obama’s foreign policy performance, on whole, isn’t bad at all. For the first year of a presidency, with much still unfolding, with an actual “policy” still not in shape, it’s actually been pretty good. All too easy is it to forget how severely Ronald Reagan was criticized for not being bold enough in his first year – for not sufficiently backing Poland’s Solidarity Movement, for example, or for moving too timidly to reverse Communist gains in Central America. It’s just as easy to forget how catastrophic was John Kennedy’s first year – bungling the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, watching passively as a wall split Berlin, withering in his Vienna encounter with the Soviet’s blustery Nikita Khrushchev.
Why, then, such criticism of Obama’s handling of our affairs on the world’s stage? The only possible answer: It’s simply political partisan sniping, aimed at wounding a Democrat president. One former mid-level official in the recent Bush State Department, for instance, derisively labels Obama’s foreign policy as “Bumble, Stumble and Skid” (That’s cute, but he fails to give examples.) Such partisanship is understandable. Liberals and Democrats did the same and more to Reagan and to the Bush duo. It’s also acceptable, fueling the fiery Washington exchanges from which some enlightenment ultimately leaks. And, anyway, it’s the way our system works, which, despite a messiness that puzzles (and at times infuriates) foreigners and dismays political scientists, works pretty well.
Still, sniping is not the same as assessment. An assessment would find, at this still early date, Obama’s foreign policy a mixed bag which, in balance, should give Americans more reason to be pleased than alarmed.
No progress.
There are, of course, huge, festering problems against which Obama has made no progress: Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs have not been slowed; Israelis and Palestinians, whose clashes inflame the whole Middle East and limit our policy options there, are no closer to (indeed, may be farther from) some sort of genuine peace deal; insurgents still blow up marketplaces and government offices in Iraq and Afghanistan in their attempts to thwart America’s efforts at what we once grandly called “nation building;” al Qaeda and other terrorists still use Pakistan’s frontier regions as bases for attacks against us and against Pakistan itself, a nuclear-armed state that too long has verged on collapse.
All these pose excruciating threats to our security and to our global interests. Yet, truth be told (though Obama critics don’t tell it this way) eight years of Bush foreign policy also failed to slow Iranian and North Korean weapons programs, failed to embolden Pakistan to suppress al Qaeda, failed to bring a Palestinian-Israeli peace and left Afghanistan and Iraq in the messes inherited by Obama. That Obama in 12 months has not yet succeeded where Bush in eight years had failed is hardly cause for giving Obama foreign policy low grades. An “Incomplete, But Shows Promise” would be more warranted.
Sucker-punch.
What are unwarranted are the criticisms that transparently are no more than partisan biting. It’s become almost a mantra among critics, for instance, that Obama is going around the world apologizing for America. That’s simply not true; worse, it fails to recognize the powerful sucker-punch structure of the Obama rhetoric. To be sure, Obama abroad has admitted that America has made mistakes (as it, after all, has). By this, he wins his audience’s sympathies; then, pivoting, he demands that the audience also admit its own mistakes and change its behaviors. Take his Cairo speech. He wins applause by conceding that America has held unfair negative stereotypes of Muslims and that he will fight to change these; he then demands “that same principle must apply to Muslim perceptions of America.” Similarly in South America in April, he first (correctly) acknowledges America’s often high-handed treatment of that region, but then demands that South Americans stop blaming America for all of their own problems. Ditto in Africa. There, after recognizing (correctly, after all) the pain inflicted by colonial rulers, he demands that Africans must stop blaming colonialism for all of their problems and start taking responsibility for themselves.
Far from being a series of apologies, these Obama statements are a steady barrage of direct, tough talk, making demands of his Third World audiences that no previous American president ever has. That’s not only refreshing, it’s good for America, possibly creating, at last, a useful framework for our relations with developing nations.
Getting priorities right.
What’s even better for America is that Obama seems to have his foreign policy priorities right, erasing concerns about him that legitimately were raised by his presidential campaign rhetoric. In his meetings with Canadian and Mexican leaders, for example, Obama assured that he had no plans to reopen for negotiation Bill Clinton’s landmark North American Free Trade Agreement – NAFTA – which has boosted all three North American economies, even though Obama in 2008 had campaigned furiously against it.
More important – much more important – he has handled with skill our relations with China and India. As readers of this blog by now know, I regard our management of the rise of China and India as major powers as our most important foreign policy challenge of the next half-century. How we handle it not only will shape this century and will not only determine whether our inevitable rivalries with these two countries degrade into hostility but also will determine whether we remain the world’s commanding power. While there have been some Obama mistakes, most notably bowing to pressure from U.S. labor unions (major Obama political backers) and imposing tariffs on Chinese exports, thus risking a trade war with China, he has continued George W. Bush’s excellent policies towards both Asian giants. This policy, more than anything else, will determine how history judges Obama on foreign affairs.
Encouraging too, especially to a common sense conservative, is how Obama views his presidential foreign policy-making responsibilities. Missing, mercifully, is the kind of crusading moralism that seemed to possess Bush. For a conservative, after all, the sole purpose of our foreign policy is to defend and advance our interests. Jimmy Carter never understood that for a moment; at crucial moments, such as when dispatching U.S. troops into harms’ way in Iraq, the second Bush seemed to forget it. Of course, for Obama, the jury is still out. Still, it is significant that when he went to Oslo to accept his Nobel Peace Prize, instead of using his lectern to spout the world peace bromides so beloved by leftwing Democrats, he made a strong case for America’s right to wage war and declared unequivocally that he has a “sworn [duty] to protect and defend my nation.” His record – so far – points to him doing just that.
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Obama conducting American foreign policy, meeting world leaders.
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