President Barack Obama's predecessor, George
W. Bush, will go down in history as one of
America's worst presidents, squandering diplomatic,
international and economic assets that were
bequeathed to him. As a result of the perfidy
of President Bush and Vice President Dick
Cheney, Obama inherited a great deal of low-hanging
foreign policy fruit that he has been slow
and even hesitant to pick.
Two losing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan;
policies of unilateralism and preemption,
and a global war on terrorism that included
torture and abuse, secret prisons and extraordinary
renditions left US foreign and national security
policy in a shambles and created numerous
opportunities for creative diplomacy.
President Obama dramatically rejected in
his inaugural speech the "false ... choice
between our safety and our ideals" and
subsequently vowed to press the "reset
button" in those bilateral relations
that the Bush administration had worsened.
Ten months later, we are still waiting for
the genuine use of a reset button.
At the same time, the Obama administration
is copying too many aspects of the Bush administration's
cover-up of abuses committed in the name of
fighting terrorism, including blanket claims
of national security to stop lawsuits; resisting
orders to release photographs of torture and
abuse, and threats to stop intelligence-sharing
with Britain if a High Court Panel declassified
intelligence documents relating to torture
allegations.
There are numerous situations where the Obama
administration has been halting in its efforts
to arrange for genuine change in the international
arena. Although President Obama has been creative
in his use of diplomacy to get a handle on
Iran's nuclear program, it made no sense to
hold a weeklong joint missile defense exercise
with Israel as a deadline neared for Iran
to accept or reject an export deal for Iran's
enriched uranium.
The United States is holding important talks
with Russia on strategic nuclear weapons,
but at the same time the Obama administration
is holding out possible NATO membership for
Ukraine and Georgia, which merely adds to
the long list of irritants that Washington
has created in its bilateral relations with
the Kremlin.
The United States has held joint military
exercises with Georgia, which is a totally
gratuitous affront to Moscow. The plan to
shelve an unnecessary and unworkable missile
defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic
was offset by the decision to deploy an even
more extensive system in the Middle East and
Europe over the next ten years.
President Obama promised a "new beginning"
in Latin America, but continues to pursue
the feckless 47-year embargo as a means of
leverage to press for political change in
Cuba.
The United States is the only nation in the
Western Hemisphere without normal diplomatic
relations with Cuba, and the United Nations
has condemned the embargo for the past seventeen
years, with the United States receiving support
for its embargo only from Israel and Palau.
North Korea has obviously softened its policies
toward the United States and South Korea in
an effort to elicit one-on-one talks with
Washington as a prelude to resuming the six-power
talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program. Again,
the Obama administration has turned a deaf
ear to North Korea.
President Obama has contributed significantly
to the problem by complicating the policy
process with the appointment of foreign policy
tsars as well as the selection of a weak cabinet
in the area of international security. The
tsars are a mixed group to begin with. There
is a tsar for Iran and the Persian Gulf (Dennis
Ross) who has not been heard from since his
selection and has been forced to move his
office from the State Department to the White
House.
There is a tsar for Afghanistan and Pakistan
(Richard Holbrooke) who failed to create a
working relationship with Afghan President
Hamid Karzai, which necessitated the selection
of Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) to
convince the Afghan president of the need
to hold a run-off election.
And there is a tsar for the Middle East (George
Mitchell) who is being diddled by Israeli
President Binyamin Netanyahu and even undercut
by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who
incredibly praised the Israelis for making
"unprecedented" concessions in their
settlement policy on the West Bank. (Earlier
in her trip to Southwest Asia and the Middle
East, Clinton irritated the Pakistani government
by accusing the Pakistani intelligence service
of concealing the whereabouts of Osama bin
Laden, at a time when the Pakistani army has
mounted a major offensive against the Taliban.)
Thus far, the three tsars have had no success
in their so-called regions of expertise, and
the State Department once again has proven
feckless in playing a key diplomatic role.
The Obama cabinet is reminiscent of the weak
Clinton cabinet in 1993, which was responsible
for a series of errors in foreign policy that
got President Clinton off to a weak start
on national security. Clinton's initial choices
for secretary of state, secretary of defense,
national security adviser and CIA director
were inadequate, and all were replaced before
Clinton's second term.
Obama's choices also appear lacking, and
there is no single adviser who appears to
have a strategic command of the foreign policy
agenda. As a result, more power is being centralized
in the White House where domestic advisers,
not international ones, are dominating decision-making
on Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Cuba.
President Obama could learn from Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev who resorted to "perestroika"
and "glasnost" in order to reduce
the Soviet military's domination of resources
and allocations and thus invest in the domestic
infrastructure.
The Obama administration is spending far
too much time and effort on its Afghan policy,
when it really needs to address the larger
issues of the expansion of military power
(which has not led to success vis-à-vis
Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan) and the decline
in economic power (growing deficits and debts).
We are spending more than the rest of the
world on defense, intelligence and homeland
security, with few perceptible benefits. The
defense and intelligence budgets have more
than doubled in the past ten years, and we
have no answers for the ethnic conflicts in
Iraq and Afghanistan and no coercive influence
over the nuclear programs of Iran and North
Korea. It is long past time to resort to the
far less expensive and far less onerous policy
of diplomacy and constructive engagement.
