President Obama's "kinder and gentler" foreign policies have been roundly assailed by foreign policy hawks and increasingly questioned by those most predisposed to favor his exertions. This past weekend David Broder, dean of the Washington liberal press corps, used the "d" word (dithering) in regards to Obama's lack of action on Afghanistan. At times it appears to be most salient to think of Obama's foreign policies as reflecting his longstanding disinclination to make difficult decisions, a hallmark of his tenure in the Illinois House and the US Senate, where his most frequent vote was "present." Most commentators decry Obama's approach and suggest that we are all in greater danger because of his characteristic style of (non)managing crises. Ralph Peters is a representative of this point of view:
Half a year ago in Cairo, President Obama addressed the Muslim world. Global leftists lauded the speech as heralding instant change in the Middle East.
The Obama-adoring pundits were right. Change came. But it's all bad.
Instead of listening to the extravagant claims of our leftward-plunging media about how profoundly that speech affected Muslims, let's look at what's actually happened since Obama praised Islam and trashed America:
Peters has good arguments that Obama's approaches to the Muslim world have increased tension and conflict from Yemen to Iraq. He suggests that the Muslim world's response to Obama also must be thought of as including Texas, a complicated line of connected dots but defensible. However, nothing in Peters's exegesis is definitive. For example, it is quite likely that there would be no movement forward for Israel and the Palestinians, no matter what Obama did; progress cannot come until the protagonists are ready, and not a moment sooner. Further, Afghanistan was faring poorly under the Bush administration's policies, there was never any guarantee of Iraq remaining stable, and Iran was well on its way to destabilizing the neighborhood and obtaining a bomb even with President Bush manning our foreign policy rudder. Finally, Pakistan was a meta-stable construct before Obama and remains the same now.
As an alternative, Tom Barnett, despite his concerns that Obama's protectionism could undermine the entire globalization enterprise, suggests repeatedly that Obama understands the importance of co-opting other great and near great powers into buying into the construction and maintenance of the global order. He often blogs on signs that countries like China and Brazil are becoming more mature powers and doing their part to enhance and support globalization. Although his arguments tend to be thinly supported (beyond his assurances that larger forces will be determinative, demographics, debt, economic prowess, etc) nonetheless his past record suggests that his ideas are worth careful consideration.
So, given that I disagree with Obama's approach, what would be a fair metric or metrics by which to measure the success or failure of his policies?
Post-9/11, the greatest worry was that al Qaeda would someday come into possession of a nuclear weapon and we would lose a city. President Bush and Vice-President Cheney were quite proud of their record in not allowing any further terrorist attacks. (Some of this was verbal legerdemain, since the Beltway shooter claimed to be motivated by Islam, just as Major Hasan has claimed, and in both cases it has been in the administration's interest to deny the atrocities were terrorism.) This much is incontrovertible: It is clear that President Bush, and thus far, President Obama, have not presided over a major terrorist attack on the order of 9/11 since that unhappy day.
And this is where the arguments become speculative and uncertain. There are several potential disasters germinating in the world that could well derail globalization, prolonging the current quasi-depression indefinitely and leading to an upsurge in wars and terror. The most important metric by which to measure Obama's success or failure would be in how many of these disasters come about.
This is not an exhaustive list:
1) Iran gains a nuclear capability and uses its new abilities to foment instability and unrest, spread its influence and threaten its neighbors. For a description of the possibilities, consider Armageddon Time.
2) In response to developments regarding Iran's approach to the bomb, Israel, considering itself to face an existential threat (despite the reassurances of the Obama administration that Iran is amenable to containment via MAD) attacks Iran, leading to a widening war in the Middle East as Iran's proxies and allies attack Iran's enemies. To paraphrase Tom Lehrer's discussion of Werner van Braun, "Once the rockets are up, who knows where they'll come down"*; escalation at that point would be extremely likely and outcomes extremely unpredictable.
[The idea that MAD worked is plausible, yet we must always keep in mind that MAD came close to catastrophic failure on several occasions. The margin of error for MAD is extremely thin and countries that already threaten first use of nuclear weapons are less likely to survive MAD than those who eschew such options. See 7 Close Calls in the Nuclear Age and the saga of Stanislav Petrov for the close calls we know about.]
3) In our haste to exit Af-Pak, we release the pressure, the Pakistanis back off from their attacks on the Taliban, and Pakistan spirals into chaos, eventually leading to an Islamist takeover, which draws the attention of its neighbor, India, which has its own memories of Mumbai to motivate it.
In one sense the clearest metric to score Obama's stewardship would be the increase or decrease in armed conflict around the Middle East (and the world.)
A second metric would be a measure of the retreat of globalization and the attendant damage to our economic recovery attendant on a major upsurge in terror or a large scale, successful terror attack.
The third and most significant metric would be the loss of a city to a nuclear explosion. Please note that this could be the result of terror or state on state violence. If a nuclear weapon is used in the next 3 years, President Obama will have become the greatest failure in the history of the American Presidency.
Here then are my three metrics for evaluating President Obama's foreign policy. If his instincts are correct, the world will be a safer and calmer place when he leaves office than it was when he entered.
Finally, history is full of unexpected and unanticipated events. To a large extent 9/11 was unanticipated by the vast majority of people; another 9/11 type event would not be a surprise since we have been warned. Unknown unknowns remain among the most dangerous possibilities and were one to occur, we would then have an additional metric by which to measure Obama's performance.
*Once the rockets are up,
Who cares vere ze come down,
That's not my department.
Says Werner van Braun.
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