COMMENT An appeaser in the White House?
By Sreeram Chaulia
NEW YORK - As Senator Barack Obama's astonishing journey from underdog to
favorite climaxes in the presidential primaries for the Democratic Party in the
United States, his Republican opponents are increasingly aiming fire at his
foreign policy.
Obama's string of successes in the longwinded primary contest has shifted his
nomination for the US presidency from the realms of possibility to certainty.
If trends and pollster predictions were not enough to prove that Obama has
basically trounced Senator Hillary Clinton in the primaries, the targeting of
his foreign policy
prescriptions by President George W Bush in Israel confirms that the
Republicans are sure that they will face Obama in the general elections in
November.
Bush's innuendo against Obama as an "appeaser" who would negotiate with
"terrorists and radicals" has suddenly brought foreign policy issues to the
center stage of the presidential election race. So much so that Obama has
challenged his Republican contender John McCain to a public debate solely on
foreign policy.
As in any country, domestic subjects like taxation, healthcare, state of the
economy and religion tend to dominate electoral politics in the US. Even the
fate of the war in Iraq is framed as a domestic issue that revolves not around
what would happen to the Nuri al-Maliki government in Baghdad or to the wider
Middle East, but on the safety of American soldiers and the hemorrhaging effect
that military occupation is having on the US economy. Essentially, all policy
concerns having a visible and direct impact on the American electorate,
including the war on Iraq, are presented to voters from the angle of "domestic"
priorities.
Bush's attacks on Obama's engaged diplomacy doctrine is a detour from the
tested "domestic" electoral arena and opens a window to undiluted foreign
policy discussion, territory that is unfamiliar to the average American.
However, if raking up the controversy over appeasement may be a sideshow for
ordinary American voters, it attracts international attention because of the
high global stakes of American foreign policy.
The oft-repeated remark that the entire world should be able to vote in
American elections due to the global consequences of its results is shorthand
for saying that the foreign policy direction of a new US administration is
highly anticipated in every country. Bush's highlighting of Obama's alleged
softness and naivety in dealing with "evil" states offers a rare chance for
global audiences to appraise the likely future of American intentions and
actions on the planet. Despite the rise of Asian powers and the decline of
American hegemony, what Washington plans to do is still an important matter of
consideration in distant parts of the world.
A prominent theory about American foreign policy is that there is a hard core
of continuity between one administration and the next, and that the differences
between an outgoing and incoming regime on foreign policy are quibbles.
According to this "tweedledum-tweedledee" school, it hardly makes a difference
whether a Democrat or a Republican comes to power in an American election,
because there is a basic bipartisan consensus in foreign policy that does not
get disturbed by political comings and goings. So institutionalized is the
foreign policy machinery in the US that personalities and parties are reduced
to managers of a foreordained plot written over a palimpsest of American
involvement overseas.
A leftist variant of the "tweedledum-tweedledee" thesis sees the US as the
citadel and guardian of the global capitalist class. Whether it is Obama or
McCain, the Marxists believe that the fundamental capitalist thrust of American
policy will not alter one bit. American foreign policy is seen by this camp as
an instrument of multinational corporations and big business firms. So
structurally enmeshed is the US in the flows and fortunes of capitalism that
Marxists would not attach any significance to what might transpire if Obama
comes to the White House. Bush's broadside on "appeasers" projects a divide and
dissimilarity in foreign policy between Obama and McCain that does not persuade
the "tweedledum-tweedledee" advocates.
Nonetheless, it is worth examining whether there is any merit in branding Obama
as a lily-livered progressive who might sell out on American national interests
abroad. Bush's accusation is worth dissecting because it addresses the meaning
of "change", Obama's trump card slogan for beating Hillary Clinton.
Obama's dim view of the "Bush-[Vice President Dick] Cheney approach to
diplomacy" is that it is an overly muscular and militaristic strategy based on
violence and threat of violence. The Illinois senator has gone on record that
"not talking [to unfriendly governments] doesn't make us look tough, it makes
us look arrogant". On assuming office, Obama pledges to open dialogue with
Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela "without preconditions". This
rankles with the neo-conservatives, who believe in a no-nonsense offensive
posture towards states that are seen as security threats to the US and its
allies.
For a prospective American president to speak of sitting down across a table
with someone like Mahmud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad or Hugo Chavez sounds
revolutionary to the neo-conservatives, who have defined the limits of
elasticity in US foreign policy since George W Bush's election as president in
2000. What is more, Obama claims that his foreign policy will restore the
balance between military might and diplomatic engagement with all countries,
including perceived enemy states, an American heritage that the neo-cons worked
hard to undermine in the past eight years.
Obama has even admitted to "admiring" the traditional conservative foreign
policies of George H W Bush, who upheld the military-diplomatic balance that is
a legacy of John F Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Obama discerns the
demoralized mood in the US military against further invasions and occupations
and has cleverly maintained that his emphasis on diplomatic engagement is in
tune with the preference of the American defense forces. What better
commander-in-chief can the US want than one who is in sync with his generals?
Obama is exploiting the deep internal divisions over foreign policy in the
American polity among the neo-cons, the traditional conservatives, the
intelligence agencies and the military. He is earning political dividends from
the internecine contradictions that are partly responsible for the dismal
failures of the Bush administration in its "war on terror". By the same token,
Obama is demonstrating that his approach is not a radical departure from
middle-of-the-road conservatism or liberalism. Bush's usage of the term
"appeaser" does not do justice to Obama's efforts to stay as close as possible
to the "mainstream" of American foreign policy.
While Obama calls for bringing the troops back home from Iraq "immediately" and
for closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, he has also shown an
uncompromising side by condemning former US president Jimmy Carter for meeting
with Hamas representatives in Palestine. The alleged "appeaser" said last
month, "We must not negotiate with a terrorist group intent on Israel's
destruction." Obama's readiness to diplomatically engage states of any hue does
not extend to violent non-state actors that have not renounced terrorism.
Moreover, he has reiterated continued support, if elected in November, for the
US-Israel special relationship.
Obama is a proponent of tough action on striking al-Qaeda targets inside
Pakistan "with or without the approval of the Pakistani government". Keenly
aware of the Bush administration's folly of straying from the heartland of
terror, ie the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, to Iraq and Iran, Obama avers that
his administration would "refocus efforts on the al-Qaeda threat in Afghanistan
and Pakistan". Here, he is simply offering course correction that will serve
American and South Asian regional interests better.
Some imponderables remain about how Obama would deal with Russia, which New
York University's Professor Stephen F Cohen has labeled "America's greatest
foreign-policy concern" for the next few years. The absence of Russia as a
topic in the US primaries season is cause for concern because of the escalating
tensions between Washington and Moscow. One of the Obama campaign's foreign
policy bigwigs is Zbigniew Brzezinski, a notorious Russia-baiter and Cold
Warrior. With a close adviser like Brzezinski, Obama could turn out to be more
hawkish than Bush on Russia, a development that does not bode well for American
interests and world peace.
The political grapevine in Washington, however, believes that Brzezinski's
putative anti-Semitic credentials are a liability for Obama as he inches closer
to the White House. Professor Gerald Steinberg of the Bar Ilan University in
Israel is of the opinion that Brzezinski's appointment as adviser on foreign
policy to the Democratic Party frontrunner is "more symbolic - to try and shore
up Obama's image as someone who has no experience in foreign policy - so he's
bringing in an older statesman". If Obama can think for himself in the long run
along the "mainstream" line he is championing, one can be hopeful of a less
provocative American policy towards Russia.
To sum up, Obama's foreign policy is not deviationist or radical. As a
potential president, he is expected to shore up the United States' sagging
global image by a judicious mix of diplomacy and military might. The only prism
through which he can be painted as an "appeaser" is the jaundiced one of the
neo-cons, for whom a non-militaristic worldview is sinful.
Much remains to be done between now and November for Obama's historic bid for
the US presidency, but his well-calculated foreign policy stance reveals that
he will be acceptable to the "mainstream", not only in the US but also in the
rest of the world. He represents a wind of change in Washington insofar as his
message on foreign policy will depart from the jingoism of the Bush
administration. But situated in the longer grand tradition of carrot-and-stick
American foreign policy, he is very much a vindication of the
"tweedledum-tweedledee" theory.
Sreeram Chaulia is an analyst of international affairs at the Maxwell School of
Citizenship at Syracuse University, New York.
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