Is it possible for an American president to carry out accidentally an isolationist foreign policy? That odd question crossed my mind last week as I talked with various foreign-policy experts about the Middle East, Russia and Afghanistan. There can be no doubt that by his words and his travels, President Obama intends to be anything but an isolationist president. He proudly called himself a citizen of the world while in Berlin during the campaign. He has gone out of his way to travel the world, speak to the world and reach out for the favorable judgment of all the peoples of the world.
And yet, wherever one looks, one sees American influence visibly and voluntarily shrinking. Consider three world hot spots: The Middle East, Russia and its near abroad, and Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In the Middle East -- whether you talk to Jew, Arab, Turk or Kurd, to Sunni or Shia -- the de-Americanization of Middle East policy increasingly is the emerging factor to be reckoned with. The uncertainty of the American trumpet, the indecisiveness of the American hand and the modesty of the American goals are freeing the strong and forcing the weak in the area to prepare to fend for themselves. American ineffectiveness (under both George W. Bush and Mr. Obama) in the face of Iran's nuclear quest drives nuclear acquisition plans throughout that unstable zone.
We saw the effect of reduced American influence most recently in the matter of the flotilla to Gaza. With America playing "honest broker" instead of Israeli ally -- the net result was an absence of American deterrence to anti-Israeli instincts. Israel backed off, and her enemies notched a victory and are planning for future, more intrusive challenges to Israeli sovereignty. In the absence of a stern American presence, all the murderous forces indigenous to the region are being let loose.
Our imminent departure from Iraq is another dangerous case in point. As Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. -- who is in charge of the withdrawal -- reaffirmed recently, we will reduce troop levels to 50,000 even if no new Iraqi government takes shape:
"It's going to be painful; there's going to be ups and down. But I do think the end result is going to be that we're going to be able to keep our commitment (to leave)."
Speaking recently, however, at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Mr. Obama said that the U.S. commitment to Iraq endures and that as U.S. troops depart, "a strong American civilian presence will help Iraqis forge political and economic progress." Well, we can hope so.
However, a senior Israeli military adviser last week described to me what Israel expects to see as the United States pulls most of its remaining troops out of Iraq. Iran will start to reassert her claim to oil-rich southern Iraq (populated mostly by Shia Iraqis) -- the cause of the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s.
Turkey will challenge -- with military force -- the Kurds in the north of Iraq to the oil-rich lands around Kirkuk while also using the opportunity to repress Kurdish moves toward a de facto independent Kurdistan in what is now parts of Iran, Iraq and Turkey. The Kurds have thrived since the U.S. invasion of Iraq as America's best friends in the area. With American withdrawal, the Kurds are likely once again to be brutally repressed -- this time by the Turks rather than Saddam Hussein. How much value Mr. Obama's "strong American civilian presence" will be to the Kurds as they face Turkish tanks and attack planes remains to be seen.
Next, consider revanchist Russia's drive to re-dominate the lands of her old empire. I was at a Washington think-tank seminar last week on America's "reset" Russian policy. The scholar on the panel representing Russian interests was so glowing in his compliments for the new Obama policy that he couldn't avoid chuckling, and by the end of the discussion, it became something of a running joke that Mr. Obama's Russia policy (including withdrawing missile defense from Poland and the Czech Republic, restraint in Georgia, acquiescence to new Russian influence in the Ukraine, ambiguous nuclear disarmament agreements, etc.) fit Russia's desires to a T. Once again, it is the weakness or absence of strong American diplomacy that is the coming hallmark of developments in Russia and her border area.
Most strikingly, this danger can be seen in Afghanistan and Pakistan. At the operational fighting level, increasing American irrelevance was vividly and heartbreakingly described by George F. Will in his superb column on Sunday, in which he described our Army's new rules of engagement, which are making our troops the laughingstock of the battlefield. No patriotic American can read George's description of those rules and not feel something between nausea and fury -- or both.
At the strategic level, the story is the same. I had breakfast last week with a veteran military/diplomatic adviser whose counsel has been sought by a wide range of American officials from Richard M. Nixon to Colin L. Powell to senior Democrats in the Senate and administration. He was just back from a visit to Pakistan, where both the Pakistani army and the intelligence services are preparing for American withdrawal. Whatever Mr. Obama meant by his firm commitment to start drawing down by July 2011, all players in the region are assuming America will not be a long-term player -- as I discussed regarding Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai in this space last week.
This newly modest American diplomatic/military stance in Central Asia (after our unprecedented big buildup after Sept. 11, 2001) is putting in motion increased assertiveness by all the traditional players (India, Pakistan, Russia, Iran, China) along with the increased confidence of the radical Islamists and drug merchants in the region.
In April 2009 in Strasbourg, France; London and Istanbul, Mr. Obama, in his triumphant tour of Europe, proclaimed that America could no longer carry the burden of world leadership alone. Others would have to join in. In the ensuing year, we have begun to see the effects of that vision in practice.
The characteristic aspects of Mr. Obama's new foreign policy in action might fairly be described as: (1) a refusal to assert American will, which leads to (2) an American policy that is described but not implemented by force and, thus, (3) acquiescence to the assertion of will by other nations or forces.
Though this may not be intentional isolationism, the result is turning out to be pretty much the same thing. Each of these impending disasters, among others, is on its own timeline -- but they all point to the same conclusion: a world no longer guided by a powerful, benign hand but rather a world that is the target of malignant grabbing hands and pounding fists.
Copyright 2010, Creators Syndicate Inc.
"...guided by a powerful, benign hand,.."
Is that what Iran got in 1951?
How about Nicaragua in the 1930s?
Ummm...Panama, anyone? Are the Columbians STILL mad about that or what?
Phillipino internment camps on Luzon in the 1890s?
Should I stop or have I completed the list of "benign American hand-adventures".
.â€
Until I see Tony and the other warmongers putting their own lives on the line, I will never be convinced they are anything more than cowards and bullies.
Come on tony, strap on a protective vest and join our soldiers in Afghanistan at a remote firebase.
If Tony wants to attack Iran, he should do it on his own like that guy that tried to find and kill OBL. Since he thinks it is a great idea for the US to destroy its future by attacking Iran, he should be very willing to lead the charge.
Just how long does the West have to fight the battles for the so-called "moderates" in all these countries? When are the "men" of these countries going to stand up and yes, maybe die (like Canadians,Americans and Brits have been doing) to make changes in their OWN lands?
sometimes i test a theory by asking myself what it would sound like if i were telling it to my 7 year-old. if i asked my daughter to behave in school the way you think america should behave in the world, she would be a pariah, beaten regularly, despised and friendless, punished and unable to learn.
you see... it works!
Of course the best foreign policy is being a good neighbor, which is where American corporations should be acting as ambassadors for the country. But American companies make the worst example, in many cases violating every human right so that they can get the best price....and Americans are seen only as a corrupt manipulative country..
That is the reason this author is pounding his war drum.
The USA would be better off to withdraw from the region
Israel will not make peace so long as the US enables them.
We are being set up.
The Muslims are not our enemy.
We are not going to be defeated militarily.
We are going broke fundig a useless war machine.
All this saber rattling and killing will never bring peace.
The new policies are those of estrangement and appeasement and can be summed up in one Winston Churchill quote: “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him lastâ€
Such policies lead to far larger conflicts, eventually.
To be fatalistic, eventually all sides will have nukes and since all sides have shown the propensity to behave as spoiled children, eventually one of them will lob a nuke at the other. At such a point in time, the responsibility of the US will be to stand back until they have completely obliterated one-another and provided the only real, long term solution to THEIR 'problem'.
As a side issue, does any sentient person in America really give a flap what T Blank thinks about anything?
Again.
Here is more of the powerful voice of the fear mongers who are driving us to the brink. The stern American presence, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in unequivocal support of Israel, in posturing against Iran; these are the self fulfilling prophecies stirring "the murderous forces indigenous to the region".
Bring our troops home, home from every foreign base. Turn the saved trillions to addressing our real problems, not some imagined aparition threatening us from abroad. We desperately need the bridge of a social safety net for our middle and working classes while we invest in education and infrastructure to return our workers to productivity, alternate energy to sever our dependence on the international oil cartel, and a real system of health care for all with embedded cost control and an emphasis on prevention.
The fear this blogger and his ilk conjure will lead us to disaster.
Ha u delusional person. U think they wanna save your money?
Fanned :)
More like a malignant tumor for certain places of the world....