US Foreign Policy - Hope but no Change

With two entries in the works, I first wanted to bring to your attention this short but interesting tidbit from Der Spiegel:

"When he entered office, US President Barack Obama promised to inject US foreign policy with a new tone of respect and diplomacy. His recent trip to Asia, however, showed that it's not working. A shift to Bush-style bluntness may be coming."

I recommend you all go read it, it's fairly thoughtful and less influenced by domestic politics than most of what we get here. It's also indicative of a gradually-clarifying world opinion on Obama. The honeymoon appears to be over, and now the soft approach and "nice" rhetoric that got him the Peace Prize is being weighed in the scales and found wanting.

The highlight of the piece, as far as I am concerned, is the following statement (emphasis mine):

"Upon taking office, Obama said that he wanted to listen to the world, promising respect instead of arrogance. But Obama's currency isn't as strong as he had believed. Everyone wants respect, but hardly anyone is willing to pay for it. Interests, not emotions, dominate the world of realpolitik."

One might say, convinced that after eight years of Bush, the world was just waiting to be charmed, President Obama and his team are finding that charm only gets you a willing audience, the "Hope" if you will. But the "Change" only occurs after strong, realistic, and well-executed foreign policies are brought into play. Bush's policies were strong, and even occasionally well-executed, but often fatally rooted in personal idealism over practical realism. Obama's policies seem, like Bush's, to consist largely of optimistic idealism, but unlike Bush, his optimism is based not on the persuasive and positive effects of freedom, but on the universal goodness and reasonableness of mankind, an even shakier and less stable foundation.

One has to wonder whether his repeated failures to charm the world into a better place will result in his adoption of a different strategy, one more resembling Bush's aggressive and often preachy stance towards the world.

The Spiegel piece suggests this may already be occurring:

While in Asia, Obama mentioned "consequences" unless it followed his advice. This puts the president, in his tenth month in office, where Bush began -- with threats. "Time is running out," Obama said in Korea. It was the same phrase Bush used against former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, shortly before he sent in the bombers.

We are approaching a situation remarkably and dangerously similar to the one we occupied pre-WWII in the Pacific: lecturing Japan on its policies, while sending our forces to deal with conflicts elsewhere. Eventually militant forces in Japan gained the upper hand, and all the outraged blustering Washington could issue weighed little in the face of the new overwhelming Japanese naval supremacy in the region.

Fastforward to the 21st century: Lectures on human rights fall on deaf, unappreciative, and increasingly (and rightfully?) resentful ears in China when our irresponsible economic policies are agitating their own economy. Meanwhile their military is more or less openly stating that their immediate objectives are to deny us air and sea supremacy further and further out from their mainland.

One major difference between then and now: China has more than a handful of nukes. And, as the Spiegel article points out, nuclear disarmament is a non-issue there. Nukes = respect and leveraging power. Why on earth would they want to give them up?

Meanwhile, apparently Obama's playbook has only one entry for China: Demands for transparency, increasing debt, and more lectures on human rights.

The piece goes on to point out the similarities that are being drawn between Obama's foreign policy and that of Jimmy Carter. It might be worth noting that it was under Carter that we funded central asian terrorist groups (Al Qaeda, for example), and Osama Bin Laden.

From weak policy to funding our future enemies... We can hope that weak and misguided policy now does not lead to either of the two parallel situations later. A capable and realistic foreign policy might remember that history has a way of repeating itself...

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Bowing to No One

Obama has created a furor over his repeated bowing to foreign leaders. Arguments have tended to rage over whether or not his nearly 90-degree bend at the waist constituted a "bow" or not, which is of course silly. Yes, he was bowing.

However, I submit that this is not the point at all. The relevant question to me is brought up by a statement by former Vice President Cheney:

"There is no reason for an American president to bow to anyone. Our friends and allies don't expect it, and our enemies see it as a sign of weakness."

While it's certainly true that our friends don't expect it, whether our enemies see it as a sign of weakness is a more esoteric criticism, protocol notwithstanding. It gives more the impression, perhaps, of an inexperienced leader who is not sure how these matters are conducted. Yet while Cheney's comment is representative of a very common attitude in the US, I consider that attitude to be well-meaning but misguided.

It's easy to write off such a statement as more American arrogance: "We're the leader of the free world; others may bow to us, but we bow to no one." Yet the issue of paying respect to foreign leaders is a subtle one.

It's clear that part of Obama's approach to dealing with foreign leaders is wanting to be on good terms with all the other kids on the playground. Not totally a bad thing; though it shows a certain naivety on his part, as on the part of most liberals concerning foreign policy, it very rarely hurts to show respect to other people. The nonsense about "showing weakness" is probably true in dealing with a nation like Russia (and may very well stem from the Cold War mentality which most of our current government/infrastructure people seem irretrievably locked into), but does not apply in most cases.

It's 2009. The Cold War is over. Though President Obama doesn't seem to have any kind of cohesive strategy for engaging an increasingly belligerent Russia whatsoever, his interactions with China are arguably more important. And in that culture, bowing is not seen as a sign of weakness.
(Unless perhaps it be taken to the extreme of a kow-tow. And lest you think that idea laughable, go look again at how in debt we are to China. And recall that the Empire State Building was lit up yellow and red very recently in honor of the Communist revolution in China. We may yet see Obama approaching the Dragon throne, with the "three kneelings and nine head-knockings")

The problem with Obama's bowing is not so much that it projects weakness, but that it demonstrates a fantasy-approach to foreign policy. One in which by showing each other respect and being nice to everyone, "bad" leaders will suddenly see the light of freedom and reasonableness. This is similar to Bush's unswerving and irrational faith in the idea that if we can bring freedom to a people, they will choose to use this freedom in the same manner that people who earned their freedom have used it. Neither approach has demonstrated anything more than ephemeral success. Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Myanmar, all greatly appreciate the attention they so desperately crave and are now under Obama's administration receiving, yet at the same time make it clear that they do not intend to change their policies just because we threw them a bone of recognition. To believe that they would do so is in itself arrogance. And while a more subtle arrogance than that of America in some periods in the past, it is as foolish and ineffective nonetheless.

In any case, bowing to the Japanese Emperor is not going to make Al Qaeda decide that this is their big chance to launch another attack, or Iran decide to build another reactor, or Russia invade another small, former-Soviet province. Those things are all happening anyway.
A lack of a prudent foreign policy or economic strength to back up the bow will indeed bring trouble, however, and that is precisely what has been occurring.

"Walk softly but carry a big stick": this is an expression I've quoted here before, one containing much insight. The strong may bow to the weak with no loss of face, because they do it out of generous respect and not out of obligated weakness. If we as a nation really feel that bowing is in and of itself a sign of weakness, perhaps it shows how unconfident we have in fact become.

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Secession in Sudan

Just a short entry tonight: this story was brought to my attention by an African missionary.
Apparently there is a distinct possibility that southern Sudan may secede.

November 11, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — South Sudan could unilaterally split from the north because of a dispute over the oil-rich region of Abyei in Africa’s largest country, leading Islamist opposition party leader Hassan al-Turabi said on Sunday.

Sudan is currently in a period of uneasy "stability" after the end of the civil war there in 2005, with a coalition government uniting the nation, though unresolved situations like Darfur belie any perceptions of actual peace...

Observers say the biggest obstacle to reconciliation is the unresolved status of Abyei, which is on the north-south border.

"I realise now that this is a very critical issue — it could risk something very serious for the whole deal," Turabi told Reuters in an interview. "It might provoke the south to proceed directly towards a proclamation of secession."

They have also not yet accepted UN peace-keeping forces.

(Hmm, perhaps they spoke to the Congolese...)

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