DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA The American century is so over
By Dilip Hiro
Irrespective of their politics, flawed leaders share a common trait. They
generally remain remarkably oblivious to the harm they do to the nation they
lead. George W Bush is a salient recent example, as is former British prime
minister Tony Blair. When it comes to foreign policy, we are now witnessing a
similar phenomenon at the Barack Obama White House.
Here is the Obama pattern. Choose a foreign leader to pressure. Threaten him
with dire consequences if he does not bend to Washington's will. When he
refuses to submit and instead
responds vigorously, back off quickly and overcompensate for failure by
switching into a placatory mode.
In his first year-plus in office, Obama has provided us with enough examples to
summarize his leadership style. The United States president fails to evaluate
objectively the strength of the cards that a targeted leader holds and his
resolve to play them.
Obama's propensity to retreat at the first sign of resistance shows that he
lacks both guts and the strong convictions that are essential elements
distinguishing statesmen from politicians. By pursuing a rudderless course in
his foreign policy, by flip-flopping in his approach to other leaders, he is
also inadvertently furnishing hard evidence to those who argue that American
power is on the decline - and that the downward slide of the globe's former
"sole superpower" is irreversible.
Those who have refused to buckle under Obama's initial threats and hardball
tactics (and so the impact of American power) include not just the presidents
of China, a first-tier mega-nation, and Brazil, a rising major power, but also
the leaders of Israel, a regional power heavily dependent on Washington for its
sustenance, and Afghanistan, a client state - not to mention the military junta
of Honduras, a minor entity, which stood up to the Obama administration as if
it were the politburo of the former Soviet Union.
Flip-flop on Honduras
By overthrowing the civilian government of President Manuel Zelaya in June
2009, the Honduran generals acquired the odious distinction of carrying out the
first military coup in Central America in the post-Cold War era. What drove
them to it? The precipitating factor was Zelaya's decision to have a
non-binding survey on holding a referendum that November about convening a
constituent assembly to redraft the constitution.
Denouncing the coup as a "terrible precedent" for the region and demanding its
reversal, Obama initially insisted: "We do not want to go back to a dark past.
We always want to stand with democracy."
Those words should have been followed by deeds like recalling his ambassador in
Tegucigalpa (just as Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela
did) and an immediate suspension of the American aid on which the country
depends. Instead, what followed was a statement by Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton that the administration would not formally designate the ouster as a
military coup "for now" - even though the United Nations, the Organization of
American States, and the European Union had already done so.
This backtracking encouraged the Honduran generals and their Republican
supporters in the US Congress. They began to stonewall, while a top-notch
public relations firm in Washington, hired by the de facto government of the
military's puppet president, Roberto Micheletti, went to work.
These moves proved enough to weaken the "democratic" resolve of a president who
makes lofty speeches but lacks strong convictions when it comes to foreign
policy. Clinton then began talking of reconciling the ousted president and the
Micheletti government, treating the legitimate and illegitimate camps as
equals.
Having realized that a hard line stance vis-a-vis Washington was paying
dividends, the Honduran generals remained unbending. Only when Clinton insisted
that the State Department would not recognize the November presidential
election result because of doubts about it being free, fair, and transparent
did they agree to a compromise a month before the poll. They would let Zelaya
return to the presidential palace to finish his term in office.
That was when right-wing Republican Senator Jim DeMint, a fanatical supporter
of the Honduran generals, swung into action. He would give Republican consent
to White House nominees for important posts in Latin America only if Clinton
agreed to recognize the election results, irrespective of what happened to
Zelaya. Clinton buckled.
As a result, Obama became one of only two leaders - the other being Panama's
president - in the 34-member Organization of American States to lend his
support to the Honduran presidential poll. What probably appeared as a routine
trade-off in domestic politics on Capitol Hill was seen by the international
community as a humiliating retreat by Obama when challenged by a group of
Honduran generals. Other leaders undoubtedly took note.
A far more dramatic reversal awaited Obama when he locked horns with Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Wily Netanyahu trumps naive Obama
On taking office, the Obama White House announced with much fanfare that it
would take on the intractable Israeli-Palestinian dispute right away. On
examining the 2003 "road map" to peace backed by the United Nations, the United
States, Russia, and the European Union, it discovered Israel's promise to cease
all settlement-building activity.
In his first meeting with Netanyahu in mid-May 2009, Obama demanded a halt to
the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and occupied East
Jerusalem, already housing nearly 500,000 Jews. He argued that they were a
major obstacle to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
Netanyahu balked - and changed tack by stressing the existential threat that
Iran's nuclear program posed to Israel.
Obama slipped into the Israeli leader's trap. At their joint press conference,
he linked the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks with the Iranian nuclear threat.
Then, to Netanyahu's delight, he gave Tehran "until the end of the year" to
respond to his diplomatic overtures. In this way, the wily prime minister got
the American president to accept his linkage of two unrelated issues while
offering nothing in return.
Later, Netanyahu would differentiate between the ongoing expansion of present
Jewish settlements and the creation of new ones, with no compromise on the
former. He would also draw a clear distinction between the West Bank and East
Jerusalem which, he would insist, was an integral part of the "indivisible,
eternal capital of Israel", and therefore exempt from any restrictions on
Jewish settlements.
Reflecting the Obama administration's style, Clinton offered a strong verbal
riposte: "No exceptions to Israeli settlement freeze." These would prove empty
words that changed nothing on the ground.
When Netanyahu publicly rejected Obama's demand for a halt to settlement
construction in the West Bank, Obama raised the stakes, suggesting that Israeli
intransigence endangered American security.
On October 15, after much back-channel communication between the two
governments, Netanyahu announced that he had terminated the settlements talks
with Washington. Having said this, he offered to curb some settlement
construction during a later meeting with Clinton. This won him the secretary of
state's effusive praise for an "unprecedented" gesture, and a call for the
unconditional resumption of the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.
The Palestinians were flabbergasted by this American volte-face. "I believe
that the US condones continued settlement expansion," said stunned Palestinian
government spokesman Ghassan Khatib. "Negotiations are about ending the
occupation, and settlement expansion is about entrenching the occupation."
In December, Netanyahu agreed to a 10-month moratorium on settlement building,
but only after his government had given permission for the construction of
3,000 new apartments in the occupied West Bank. Sticking to their original
position, the Palestinians refused to revive peace talks until there was a
total freeze on settlement activity.
On March 9, 2010, just as Vice-President Joe Biden arrived in Jerusalem as part
of Washington's campaign to kick-start the peace process, the Israeli
authorities announced the approval of yet more building - 1,600 new homes in
East Jerusalem. This audacious move, meant to underline Israel's defiance of
Washington, left Biden - as well as Obama - fuming.
With the House of Representatives adopting his health reform bill on March 24,
Obama was on a domestic roll when he met Netanyahu in Washington the next day.
He reportedly laid out three conditions for defusing the crisis: an extension
of the freeze on Jewish settlement expansion beyond September 2010; an end to
further Jewish settlement projects in East Jerusalem; and withdrawal of the
Israeli forces to the positions held before the second intifada in September
2000. He then left Netanyahu at the White House to consult with his advisers
and get back to him if "there is anything new". Again, however, as with the
Honduran generals, Obama's tough talk remained just that: talk.
The purpose of all this activity was to get the Palestinians to resume peace
negotiations with Israel, which they had broken off when that country attacked
the Gaza Strip in December 2008. Netanyahu was prepared to talk as long as no
preconditions were set by the Palestinians.
In the end, he got what he wanted. He met neither Palestinian preconditions nor
those of the Obama administration. Simply put, it was Obama who bent to
Netanyahu's will. The tail wagged the dog.
The hapless officials of the Palestinian Authority read the writing on the
wall. After some ritual huffing and puffing, they agreed to participate in
"proximity talks" with the Netanyahu government in which Washington's Middle
East envoy, George Mitchell, would shuttle back and forth between the two
sides. These started on May 9. Over the next four months, Mitchell's tough task
will be to try to narrow the yawning differences on the terms of Palestinian
statehood - when both sides now know that Obama will shy away from pressuring
Israel where it hurts.
Spat with China, then a sudden thaw
Obama's problems with the People's Republic of China (PRC) began in November
2009, when, to his disappointment, the Chinese government failed to accord him
the royal treatment he had expected on his first visit to the country.
Washington-Beijing relations cooled further when the Obama administration
greenlighted the sale of US$6.4 billion worth of advanced weaponry to Taiwan,
including anti-missile missiles, and Obama met the Dalai Lama, Tibet's
spiritual leader, at the White House. The PRC regards Taiwan as a breakaway
province and Tibet as an integral part of the republic.
Senior US officials described the moves as part of Obama's concerted drive to
"push back" at China which, in his view, was punching above its weight. Along
with these moves went unrelenting pressure on Beijing, in private and in
public, to revalue its currency, the yuan. The administration repeatedly
highlighted a legal provision requiring the Treasury Department to report twice
a year on any country that has been manipulating the rate of exchange between
its currency and the American dollar to gain unfair advantage in international
trade. That the next due date for such a report, a preamble to possible
sanctions, was April 15 was repeated by US officials ad nauseam.
In mid-April, Obama was convening an international summit on nuclear security
in Washington. He was eager to have as many heads of state as possible attend.
At the very least, he wanted the leaders of the four nuclear powers with UN
Security Council vetoes - Britain, France, Russia, and China - present.
That provided Chinese President Hu Jintao with a powerful card to play at a
moment when a White House threat to name his country as a currency manipulator
hung over his head. He refused to attend the Washington nuclear summit. Obama
blinked. He postponed the Treasury Department's judgment day. In return, Hu
came and met Obama at the White House.
That tensions existed between Beijing and Washington did not surprise China's
leaders, a collective of hard-nosed realists. Their attitude was reflected in
an editorial in the official newspaper, the China Daily, soon after Obama's
inauguration. "US leaders have never been shy about talking about their
country's ambition," it said. "For them, it is divinely granted destiny no
matter what other nations think." The editorial went on to predict that
"Obama's defense of US interests will inevitably clash with those of other
nations." And so they have, repeatedly.
Such realism contrasted starkly with the mood prevalent at the White House,
where it was naively believed that a few well-scripted speeches in foreign
capitals by the eloquent new president would restore US prestige left in
tatters by George W Bush's policies. What the president and his coterie seem
not to have noticed, however, was an important Pew Research Center poll. It
showed that, following Obama's public diplomacy campaign, while the image of
the US had indeed risen sharply in Europe, Mexico, and Brazil, any improvement
was minor in India and China, marginal in the Arab Middle East, and nonexistent
in Russia, Pakistan, and Turkey.
Stuck in its self-congratulatory mode, the Obama team paid scant attention to
the full range of options that other powers had for retaliating to its
pressure. For instance, it did not foresee Beijing threatening sanctions
against major American companies supplying weapons to Taiwan, nor did it
anticipate the stiff resistance the PRC would offer to revaluing the yuan.
Some attributed Beijing's behavior to a rising Chinese nationalism and the
fears of its leaders that bending under pressure from "foreigners" would play
poorly at home. But the real reasons for Chinese resistance had more to do with
hard economics than popular sentiment. In the wake of the financial crisis of
2008-09, symbolized by the collapse of the gigantic Lehman Brothers investment
bank, China's leaders noted tectonic changes occurring in the international
economic balance of power - at the expense of the hitherto "sole superpower".
While the US and European economies contracted, Beijing quickly adopted
policies aimed at boosting domestic demand and infrastructure investment. This
resulted in impressive expansion: 9% growth in the gross domestic product in
2009 with a prediction of 12% in the current year. This led Goldman Sachs'
analysts to advance their forecast of the year when China would become the
globe's number one economy from 2050 to 2027.
For the first time since World War II, it was not the United States that pulled
the rest of the world out of negative growth, but China. The US has emerged
from the financial carnage as the most heavily indebted nation on Earth, and
China as its leading creditor with an unprecedented $2.4 trillion in foreign
reserves.
Its cash-rich corporations are now buying companies and future natural
resources from Australia to Peru, Canada to Afghanistan where, last year, the
Congjiang Copper Group, a Chinese corporation, offered $3.4 billion - $1
billion more than the highest bid by a Western metallurgy company - to secure
the right to mine copper from one of the richest deposits on the planet.
Karzai the menace becomes Karzai the indispensable
On assuming the presidency, Obama made no secret of his dislike for his Afghan
counterpart, Hamid Karzai. To circumvent his central government's pervasive
corruption, senior American officials came up with the idea of dealing directly
with Afghan provincial and district governors. In the presidential election of
August 2009, their preference for Abdullah Abdullah, a serious rival to Karzai,
was widely known.
When Karzai resorted to massive vote rigging to ensure his reelection and
turned a deaf ear to Washington's exhortations to clean up his administration,
Obama decided to use a stick to bring Washington's latest client regime in
line. In a dramatic gesture, he undertook an air journey of 26 hours - from
Washington to Kabul - over the last weekend in March to deliver a 26-minute
lecture to Karzai on the corruption and administrative ineptitude of his
government. The Afghan leader had few options but to listen in stony silence.
When, however, Karzai read a news story in which an unnamed senior American
military official suggested that his younger half-brother, Ahmed Wali, the
power broker in the southern province of Kandahar, deserved to be put on the
Pentagon's list of drug barons to be killed or captured, his patience snapped.
An incensed Afghan president responded by claiming that the US was deliberately
intensifying and widening the war in Afghanistan in order to stay in the region
and dominate it. He added that, if Washington's pressure continued, he might
join the Taliban. (He had, in fact, been a significant fundraiser for the
Taliban after they captured Kabul in September 1996.)
Obama reacted as he had done in the past. When facing a serious challenge, he
retreated. From being a stick wielder he morphed into a carrier of carrots
during a Karzai visit to Washington early this month (which, in March,
administration officials were threatening to postpone indefinitely).
The high point of the wooing of Karzai - worthy of being included in a modern
version of Alice in Wonderland - was a dinner Vice-President Joe Biden
gave for the Afghan dignitary at his residence. At the very least, Karzai must
have been bemused. In February, Biden had staged a dramatic walk-out halfway
through a dinner at the Afghan president's palace after Karzai denied that his
government was corrupt or that, if it was, he was at fault.
Despite the Obama administration's "red carpet treatment" and "charm
offensive", Karzai was boldly honest at a joint press conference with Obama
when he described Iran as "our bother country, our friend".
The same sentiments would soon be expressed by another leader - in Brazil.
Da Silva thumbs his nose at Obama
Ever since assuming the presidency of Brazil in 2003, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
has, when necessary, not hesitated to challenge US policy moves. He has clashed
with Washington on world trade (the Doha round), global warming, and continuing
US sanctions against Cuba.
In December 2008, he chaired a meeting of 31 Latin American and Caribbean
countries, which excluded the United States, at the Brazilian tourist resort of
Sauipe. The next month, instead of going to the World Economic Forum at Davos,
Switzerland, da Silva attended the Eighth World Social Forum at Belem, at the
mouth of the Amazon River.
He was critical of the way Obama compromised democracy in Honduras, and,
despite the Obama administration's dismay and opposition, he invited Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Brasilia in November 2009 for talks on the
Iranian nuclear program, his first attempt at high-profile international
diplomacy. (A week earlier he had warmly received Israeli President Shimon
Peres in the Brazilian capital.) Six months later, he paid a return visit to
Tehran - and made history, much to the chagrin of Washington.
Acting in tandem with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, da Silva
revived a putative October 2009 nuclear agreement and brokered an unexpected
deal with Ahmadinejad. Iran agreed to ship 1,200 kilograms of its low-enriched
uranium to Turkey; in return, Russia and France would provide 120kg of 20%
enriched uranium for a medical research reactor in Tehran.
Taken by surprise and rattled by the success of Brazil and Turkey in the face
of American disapproval, the Obama administration reverted to the stance of the
Bush White House and demanded that Iran suspend its program to enrich nuclear
fuel. It then moved to push an agreement on further UN sanctions against Iran,
as if the Brazilians and Turks had accomplished nothing.
This refusal to register reality was myopic at best. The blinkered view of the
present White House ignores salient global facts. The influence of mid-level
powers on the world stage is on the rise. Their leaders feel - rightly - that
they can ignore or bypass the Obama administration's demands. And, on the
positive side, they can come together on certain international issues and take
diplomatic initiatives of their own with a fair chance of success.
By now, from Afghanistan to Honduras, Brazil to China, global leaders large and
small increasingly sense that the Obama administration's bark is worse than its
bite, and though the US remains a major power, it is no longer the
determinative one. The waning of the truncated American century is by now
irreversible.
Dilip Hiro is the author of 32 books, the latest being After
Empire: The Birth of A Multipolar World (Nation Books).
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