Obama Abroad: Ambitious Realism

F ate did not deal Obama an easy hand. Taking office in January 2009, the new president faced a country mired in two wars (one from which it struggled to exit, and one it seemed unable to win); an ongoing terrorist threat, ominously accompanied by a standstill in all efforts to reduce nuclear proliferation; a low point in US-Russian relations; and, more generally, a worldview of the US as a go-it-alone actor with whom it was hard to make a deal.

Tweet

Email

Print

His foreign policy was immeasurably complicated by the freefall of the American economy, which had shed 4.4 million jobs in the thirteen months before he took office. To avoid financial collapse, the federal government had committed close to $1.3 trillion of taxpayer money to rescue some of the largest financial institutions. The annual federal deficit had gone from an average $40 billion for the years 1993 to 2000 (with every year showing an improvement over the preceding) to an average deficit of $250 billion for the years 2001 to 2008.

Obama’s response on Inauguration Day was nothing if not ambitious. He promised to defeat terrorism, withdraw “responsibly” from Iraq, make peace in Afghanistan, forge “greater cooperation and understanding between nations,” pursue a world without nuclear weapons, and “roll back the specter of a warming planet.”

Unsurprisingly, executing this agenda triggered criticisms. Disappointed that he did not end the war in Afghanistan or manage to close Guantánamo, some on the left labeled his policy “Bush-lite.” The right charged that his reliance on diplomacy was naive. It hadn’t stopped Iran’s nuclear program, and it was hard to see it bearing fruit in Mideast peace efforts or bringing an early end to our involvement in the war in Afghanistan. (One might well ask what administration had made progress in these arenas.)

The larger complaint was that Obama lacked a grand strategy or a coherent approach—a frequent complaint from some in the think tank community, and one that was also leveled at President George H. W. Bush. A close examination of the president’s words and actions, however, actually reveals a quite coherent approach, one that deftly mixes high ambition, caution, and pragmatism.[1]

[1] This article was completed before the uprisings in Libya. It also does not address the president’s response to the international economic crisis or his views on US trade policy. It’s worth noting, however, that while Democrats have historically been uncomfortable with most trade agreements, Obama, anxious to further his goal of doubling US exports within the next five years, resuscitated and renegotiated a dormant bilateral agreement between the US and South Korea. Korea is our seventh-largest trading partner, which makes the deal the largest bilateral agreement of its kind since the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement. In correcting a serious trade imbalance with South Korea, Obama has taken yet another pragmatic step.

Obama amplified the ambition of his inaugural address with his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. There he describes the ways he sought to build a just and lasting peace by developing alternatives to violence that would be tough enough to change the behavior of rogue nations, and by seeking a peace that upholds the rights and dignity of individuals and encompasses economic security and opportunity.

T he president’s caution stems from accepting the reality of America’s limited ability to influence world events. The nature of the threats we face has changed, and our overwhelming military strength no longer permits us to shape the world to our liking.

Obama’s pragmatism is similarly rooted in a realistic, rather than idealistic, view of the complexity of challenges facing the United States. Combating climate change and international terrorism, for example, requires increased collaboration, not unilateralism. And the increased strength and assertiveness of emerging powers—China, India, Brazil, and others—needs to be treated as an opportunity as well as a threat.

The Obama administration’s war policies on Iraq and Afghanistan show this approach at work. In Iraq, Obama’s challenge (and his success) has been to pull out US troops according to schedule. He achieved this not by talking about staying the course until victory is secured, but by buying into two propositions: that “our commitment in Iraq is changing—from a military effort led by our troops to a civilian effort led by our diplomats,” and that we needed to let the Iraqis muddle through, even if this at times seemed a quite hopeless plan. In articulating an Afghan strategy in his December 2009 West Point speech, the president described our goal as “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.” There is no grandiose reference to remaking Afghanistan.

A survey of other major foreign policy agenda items reveals a similar approach:

A World without Nuclear Weapons . Speaking in Prague in April 2009, Obama launched a campaign to lower the nuclear threat: “Today the Cold War has disappeared, but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of nuclear war has gone down but the risk of nuclear attack has gone up.” More nations had acquired nuclear capabilities, and a black market had sprung up for nuclear secrets and materials.

To deal with these threats, Obama aimed to “reset” US relations with Russia, which, at the time, were at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War—to the extent that we were not cooperating even where we had common interests. For a year and a half after he spoke in Prague, Obama worked to get a nuclear treaty, New START, negotiated and ratified (the original 1991 treaty expired in 2009, as had any major non-proliferation efforts). In doing so, he showed his mettle both as a statesman abroad and a politician at home. Negotiating the treaty was difficult, as expected, but ratification, which should have been an easy chore, proved more demanding. START I—negotiated by Ronald Reagan, signed by George H. W. Bush, and put into force under Bill Clinton—was ratified 93-6. In 1996, START II was ratified 87-4. New START, however, came to a different kind of Senate. The opposition, buoyed by the results of the November 2010 elections, seemed focused against granting a win to the president. Nevertheless, Obama skillfully guided the treaty through the Senate, 71-26—barely surpassing the 67-vote threshold. The ultimate success of the treaty (it took effect in February) marked a key step forward in the president’s non-proliferation agenda and accomplished three major goals: It promoted the strategic stability of the two nuclear superpowers by reducing their strategic weapons arsenals; it revived and improved the stringent verification scheme that had been part of START I (no inspectors had seen the Russian arsenal or facilities for more than a year); and it put nuclear arms reduction back on the world’s agenda.

Defeating Terrorism. When Obama talked of defeating al-Qaeda, using that term as a proxy for all terrorist organizations, he may indeed have defined his mission too ambitiously. We have certainly weakened al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, but it has spread to a dozen other countries, and terrorism is today perhaps harder to control than when it was concentrated in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That we have not had a major attack on American soil is a tribute to our intelligence and security agencies. But it is a fragile victory, and could be undone almost any day. Despite these obstacles, however, the president’s antiterrorism strategy remains clear: An improved intelligence apparatus, closer cooperation with allies, preemptive relationships with Muslim communities to thwart terror plots, and a focus on the most pressing challenge, i.e., preventing terrorists from obtaining weapons of mass destruction.

With the April 2010 Nuclear Security Summit, Obama brought to Washington the largest group of world leaders since the end of World War II, and pledged to lead a global effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials within four years. Since then, the US has secured more than three thousand kilograms of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, enough to make more than one hundred and twenty nuclear weapons. Materials have been acquired from around the globe—from Serbia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine to Poland and Chile.

Concurrently, the US pursued the Russian-US “123 Agreement” (the name refers to a section of the US Atomic Energy Act). It was first submitted to Congress by President George W. Bush, but withdrawn at the time of the Russian-Georgian war. Obama, recognizing its importance, reversed that decision, resubmitted it, and it is now in force. It addresses non-military nuclear relationships, several of which are building blocks in curbing nuclear terror. It makes possible cooperation on research in converting reactors from highly enriched uranium fuel to low-enriched fuel, as well as developing a new generation of reactors, advanced fuels, and reprocessing facilities that pose lower nuclear proliferation risks.

The 123 Agreement also enables commercial joint ventures in fields such as advanced reactor design and fuel cycle technologies, both of which hold promise to make nuclear power safer and more economically competitive. This permits us to take advantage of technologies that Russia has and we do not. (The US has not built a new nuclear power plant since 1973, while Russia has a $3.5 billion dollar program for developing the next generation of nuclear technology.) Inasmuch as today Russian companies supply roughly one half of the uranium consumed in US and European power plants, we will need their cooperation if we expand our civilian nuclear capacity.

Coming to Terms with the Muslim World. In January 2009 a large part of the Muslim world, and particularly the Arab world, hated the US—the accumulation of resentments stemming from our role in the Israeli/Palestinian controversy, our sizable troop contingents in two Muslim countries (seen by many as occupations), and indignities suffered by American Muslims (or by Muslim visitors to the US) as a by-product of 9/11.

Obama, son of a Kenyan family that included many Muslims, believed he was well positioned to moderate Muslim hostility, and addressed these issues squarely in his June 2009 Cairo speech. While acknowledging that “no single speech can eradicate years of mistrust,” he made headway in detailing the many ways in which “Islam is part of America.”

The principal source of antagonism to the US in the Arab world probably stems from the half century of US support for authoritarian and often corrupt governments. President George W. Bush eloquently asked, “Are the people of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism?” But his and other US administrations opted for the stability these non-democratic governments provided.

In a speech at Doha, just one month before the riots in Tunisia and Egypt, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to get ahead of the storm by a prescient warning to Arab governments that they “would face growing unrest, extremism and rebellion unless they reformed corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order.”

The administration’s response to the uprisings in the Arab world, particularly Egypt, was as surefooted as possible in such a fluid situation (except when special envoy Frank Wisner got it spectacularly wrong and off message, saying Mubarak “must stay in office to oversee” the transition). The fundamental premise was that the democratic aspirations of the protesters must be responded to. While our rhetoric mattered—in fact it would shape our relations to the region for a generation—the actual decisions would be, and should be, made on the ground and not in Washington. These must not become made-in-the-US movements.

Some criticized our response as too tepid in its support for the protesters. Yet the message from the very first was clear and consistent. Obama’s call to Mubarak, just after the latter addressed his people, put the administration unequivocally behind the demonstrators’ demands. “The people of Egypt have rights that are universal,” he said. “And the United States will stand up for them everywhere . . . When President Mubarak addressed the Egyptian people tonight, he pledged a better democracy and greater economic opportunity . . . He has a responsibility to give meaning to those words, to take concrete steps and actions that deliver on that promise.” The implicit message to the area’s rulers was, “We won’t turn on you, but if your people turn on you, don’t expect any help from us.”

In a breathtaking moment, American policy had taken a turn.

Dealing with the Specter of a Warming Planet. America has been a laggard in the international fight against climate change since 2001, when the Bush administration pulled out of efforts to craft the Kyoto Protocol, without offering a substitute path forward. Obama made it clear during the campaign, and once in office, that he believed the prevailing science mandated meaningful action at home and abroad. His international opportunity came in December 2009 at the Copenhagen summit, where he managed to make progress in remarkable, personal, and unprecedented face-to face negotiations at the summit level.

The forum was the UN climate conference of parties to a 1992 convention on climate change. Expectations were high. But after two weeks of negotiations at the ministerial level, and on the eve of the arrival of heads of state, the conference had not been able to produce a document from which the leaders could work. Such a document, limited to two or three unresolved issues, is the pattern, and generally the only way progress can be made at the summit level.

It was politically risky for the president even to go to Copenhagen, given the lack of domestic legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which limited the level of commitments he could put on the table, and the generally bleak outlook for any sort of progress. But he went, and in a long, remarkable day of meetings, the leaders—in different configurations with Obama in the middle of them—hammered out the “Copenhagen Accord,” agreed to by all but five of the 190-plus participant countries. It accomplished three useful things: It broke down (though it didn’t quite eliminate) the artificial and unsupportable distinction found in the Kyoto Protocol between industrialized countries and “developing” countries—which in Kyoto-speak include economically powerful countries such as China, India, South Korea, and Mexico. It strengthened the regime of measuring, reporting, and verifying greenhouse gas reductions. And, by crafting a document on which nations could build in the future, it saved the UN forum from becoming irrelevant.

Ending Our Military Engagement in Afghanistan . Of all of Obama’s foreign policy decisions, the one whose wisdom remains most in doubt is his decision in Afghanistan to pass up the “do less” option supported by Vice President Biden in favor of the counterinsurgency option his military advisers counseled would work.

He has followed through by providing deep resources—military and civilian. But he concurrently limited US exposure by not overstating our objectives and by launching parallel political initiatives.

Obama understood that not one but three campaigns needed to be waged: the actual military campaign against Afghan and Pakistani insurgents; an elevated effort to negotiate a political arrangement and to get a handle on the massive corruption and poor governance that characterize the Karzai government; and a campaign to develop national support for a continuing $120 billion annual commitment in Afghanistan. All this required dealing with both the “double down” and “out now” factions of the policy establishment.

It is hard to say how well the strategy is working. The Taliban is not weakening, and the Karzai government is barely improving. The coming months, following the winter weather, will be crucial. Will we be able to establish an effective program of training and funding Afghan police and military? And will there be political and civilian progress in the Afghan government? Recent reports that midlevel Taliban commanders are pulling away from the leadership give some hope to the Obama strategy.

Strengthening the Role of Multilateral Diplomacy. Obama’s view that relying on diplomacy is not a sign of weakness has so far paid dividends. We could not have achieved the tough multilateral sanctions against Iran, the reset of our relations with Russia, or the carefully phrased agreement with China that it bring its influence to bear on North Korea without a willingness to use diplomacy rather than bombast.

The attitude toward the UN and its affiliated organizations marks the most visible change from the prior administration. Obama clearly believes we can and need to use the UN to pursue our goals. The Bush administration’s policy was, in the words of Susan Rice, our current ambassador, “to stiff-arm” the organization. Its principal interest seemed to be in UN reform, rather than in what the UN actually did.

Less than two months after his inauguration, Obama decided to seek a seat on the UN Human Rights Council—the world’s premier rights body—reversing a decision by the Bush administration to shun it. Predictably, the decision was denounced by John Bolton, Bush’s ambassador to the UN, as “the theology of engagement at work. There is no concrete American interest served by this.” Obama believed that engagement would get us further than isolation.

Diplomacy and an emphasis on development require resources, and Obama has begun the process of increasing both the staffing and the budgets of the State Department and USAID—not an easy decision in today’s political and fiscal climate. When the administration issued its first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Report, which proposed restoring some of the thirty-eight percent cuts to the USAID budget made throughout the past twenty years, it was greeted with a comment from the Heritage Foundation headed “Obama’s Foreign Aid Strategy: Hire More Federal Workers, Spend More Taxpayer Money.”

But wiser counsel, such as our uniformed military leadership,applauded. The secretary of defense noted that the cost of all the State Department diplomats is “less than the manning for one aircraft carrier strike group.”

The increased use of diplomacy is part of Obama’s larger shift toward the use of “smart power” (Secretary Clinton’s phrase), the combination of hard (i.e., military) power and soft power, which convinces and persuades through diplomacy, trade, aid, and the spread of values. Other administrations, including that of George W. Bush, have talked similarly, but with the admirable exception of his HIV/AIDS program, there is little evidence that Bush was willing to spend much effort to use this tool.

Containing Iran’s Nuclear Plans. Since before Jimmy Carter’s time, no administration has had a truly successful Iran policy. Obama’s policy certainly cannot yet be counted a success story. If Iran wants above all to become a nuclear power, it may be possible to delay the process (as may have been done by the Stuxnet infection) but it is hard to see what will stop it, short of major military intervention, with all its consequences. Thus Obama had only three choices: a US military strike against Tehran’s nuclear facilities, support for an Israeli strike, or diplomacy.

He chose diplomacy featuring a tough sanction regime adopted by the UN Security Council, one that would not have come about without the cohesion of the P5+1 Group (China, France, the UK, Russia, the US, and Germany). This represents a remarkable diplomatic accomplishment by the administration.

Obama’s parallel outreach was to the Iranian people, which gave them some courage to challenge the regime. The 2009 Green Revolution challenge was quashed, and to date the mullahs’ agenda has not changed. But the final chapter of democracy in Iran has yet to be written.

T his is a rare moment in history. As the analyst Fareed Zakaria notes, the international system constructed after the Second World War will be almost unreconizable by 2025. The rise of Asian powers, from Japan in the 1950s to China in the 1990s, is a broad and deep trend that will endure—and will be paralleled by growth in India, Brazil, and other countries. When combined with China’s enormous surplus reserves and our unsustainable deficits and debts, the future does not picture a return to American unipolarity. The first two years of Obama seem to show that America has found a leader who can accept—and work with—these realities while steering a course that permits America to play a leading role in shaping the world and the peace that he described so eloquently in his Nobel acceptance speech.

Frank Loy is a former US under secretary of state for global affairs.