Obama's New Geopolitics: 10 Key Takeaways

President Barack Obama delivered one of his trademark big speeches Sunday in Prague, discussing nuclear weapons, geopolitical challenges, and green technology.

President Barack Obama's just concluded big international tour is part of a major reshuffling in geopolitics. Here are 10 key takeaways from happenings in and around his trip.

(1) The G-20 is now the main global economic forum, but coordination and real action is still limited. It used to be the G-7 or G-8 -- G-7 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) plus Russia -- that was the main international economic body. Little was accomplished. Now the more expansive G-20 is the big deal, as we just saw with its London summit. With the financial and economic crises global, the usual rhetorical inaction wasn't an option.

But accomplishments were limited. Most of the European members, aside from Britain, didn't want to do a big coordinated economic stimulus program. They have extensive social welfare cushions already in place, and carry debt loads much higher than America's. And Germany may want to recover by exporting to a recovering American economy.

Still, Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown got over a trillion dollars in new support for the global economy, both to help prop up smaller nations and to help larger troubled economies like Mexico and Eastern Europe, staving off even bigger problems. And they got some more focus on transnational financial regulation, though not the global regime that neither actually wants, as the financial elites of New York and London have no desire to be governed by a global body.

Despite the atmospherics of its 60th anniversary summit, NATO's long-range future is very clouded.

(2) NATO's future is winding down. There were great atmospherics around NATO's 60th anniversary summit over the weekend. Obama, joined by French, German, and other national leaders, walked across the border between Germany and France. Then they walked back across the border between France and Germany. There was a big commemorative concert. There was a dinner with many toasts. There was Obama, asking for lots of military help in Afghanistan -- an ongoing NATO mission -- and not getting very much. Though he got more than Bush was able to get.

NATO is an organization that achieved its objectives when the Soviet Union crippled itself in Afghanistan and the Berlin Wall was taken down, reduced to shards for Cold War collectors. In part because NATO existed, the Soviets never, as was long feared, came storming through the Fulda Gap. As a relic of the Cold War, it's never found a truly animating raison d'etre. Obama will get what he can from it, as long as it lasts, but he could do much the same with bilateral contacts with some of its members.

(3) Obama will be friendly with Russia but drive a hard bargain. Obama goes to Moscow for a full-scale summit in July. After their mini-summit last week in London, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev called Obama "my new comrade." But, while Obama is part of the NATO consensus freezing the old Bush/Cheney plan to extend NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine, he isn't giving way on the anti-missile shield -- supposedly aimed at Iran but strongly suspected in Moscow of being an attempted check on Russia's nuclear capability -- in Poland and the Czech Republic, even though the program is unpopular there. The US wants more help with Afghanistan and Iran, but has cards to play to drive a harder bargain than some think.

Russia is a great power again, but not a superpower. And its economic problems with the fall in the price of oil and other commodities makes any efforts to become a superpower again highly problematic. Obama and his advisors know this. And while they seem sympathetic to Russia's concerns about past efforts to encroach on Russia's "near abroad" through NATO expansion right up to the Russian border, they don't seem willing to let, say, Poland slip back under Moscow's umbrella.

Obama demonstrated his rapport with American troops in Iraq.

(4) The new defense budget isn't what the left wants or the right fears. While Obama was in Turkey early in the week, Defense Secretary Bob Gates began unveiling the new defense budget. It's not a big cutback on defense, as the far right falsely claims, it's a cutback from the incredible wish list that the service chiefs and military contractors devised in the last year of the Bush/Cheney Administration. It's not a cut at all, confounding some on the left by increasing spending by $21 billion.

What Gates and, by extension, Obama and the rest of his national security leadership team are doing is cutting back on more futuristic weapons systems and focusing on spending for here-and-now military challenges. For example, jet fighter production continues but with an emphasis on aircraft that can play a big role in strikes against ground targets and not on futuristic stealth fighters to meet non-existent threats in the air. Ship-building continues but with an emphasis on vessels that are useful in combat near coastlines rather than countering non-existent deep water threats. (Though the number of aircraft carriers will only decline from 11 to 10.) Missile defense continues, but the focus is on improving existing tech for interception after the more challenging launch phase. Futuristic ground-fighting systems are scaled back but the size of the Army and Marine Corps actually increases. By the way, this is all consistent with what Obama campaigned on.

(5) Nuclear weapons will be reduced but not eliminated. This provides a great context for global cooperation. Obama spoke movingly on Sunday in Prague of the need to finally roll back the threat of nuclear annihilation. But he also said he didn't see nuclear weapons being eliminated in his lifetime. The technological genie is out of the bottle. However, the weapons are not at all easy to make, witness the fact that Iran still doesn't have a nuclear device, much less an actual weapon, after years of worry about it.

Nuclear weapons are a good issue for America and Russia and other nations to work on. Both Washington and Moscow have aging arsenals, with weapons in need of retirement. Neither has an interest in more countries becoming nuclear powers. And they all look good in the process.

As he fights Al Qaeda and the Taliban, Obama seeks to engage the more moderate mainstream Islamic world, declaring in his address to the Turkish Parliament that "The United States is not and never will be at war with Islam."

(6) The Afghan Taliban are offering compromises before the Obama surge kicks in. After Obama announced his new Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy and as he was beginning his tour, the Afghan Taliban offered a little-noticed set of compromises. Among other things, they changed their tune. To allow tunes.

Now in talks with the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the official Afghan Taliban position has shifted significantly. They are now willing to have only partial control of the country's governance through rule in part of the country by religious scholars. The Taliban have dropped their demands to the end of education for females and for females to wear burqas in public. (They would be "strongly recommended.") Pop music would not be banned and men's beards would not have a mandatory length.

Foreign forces would have to be witdrawn in six months and most -- though not all -- names on anti-Taliban watch lists would have to be guaranteed safety. Clearly, some of this is a non-starter. But it's interesting that the Taliban have altered their demands so significantly prior to the start of the American offensive against them.

(7) If that's a pretty good sign, let's go to a bad one. Pakistani intransigence is a serious problem for Obama's strategy. Obama's success in Afghanistan is tied to the stability and willingness of the Pakistani government. While Pakistan's leaders said during Obama's tour that it supports Obama's new strategy, they also denied the longstanding linkages between the dread ISI intelligence service and the Taliban (which it essentially created), claimed that deposed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar is not in Pakistan, urged that the US stop aerial drone attacks against Al Qaeda and Taliban cadre inside Pakistan, and cut deals with Pakistani jihadist leaders.

Pakistan is in the midst of a slow-rolling jihadist uprising, and Obama is going to have a difficult balancing act between helping stabilize the government and eliminating the hidey holes of Al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban cadre.

(8) The new Afghan laws on women illustrate the fallacy of nation-building, and demonstrate the bind of Obama's policy. The new laws passed by the pro-American government in Kabul are a rollback and a sop to traditionalist, fundamentalist feeling in Afghanistan. It's a dramatic example of why full-scale nation-building in Afghanistan, which the new Obama strategy skirts (without embracing) even though the president says the mission to get Al Qaeda, is so problematic.

Obama visited Aya Sofia in Istanbul, a famed mosque-turned-museum.

(9) The Turkey trip was the most important for the long haul. Obama seems to see Turkey, which has friendly relations with Israel, as potentially a much more important strategic partner than any other NATO nation, perhaps even Britain. Turkey is arguably the most powerful militarily and the most balanced economically in the Islamic world, and perhaps the most stable. And unlike Saudi Arabia, it hasn't had a vested interest in feeding and off-loading homegrown jihadists to wreak havoc elsewhere in the world. In the new emerging Obama conception of geopolitics, it may be that it is Turkey, strategically situated on the Bosporus, which provides even more needed help with the newer crises of Afghanistan and Pakistan and the traditional crises of the Middle East, as well as a watchful counterweight to Russia.

And Turkey is a Muslim nation. Obama can highlight this alliance as a means of reaching out to the entire Islamic world.

(10) Iran has to be engaged but may not be very helpful. The Bush/Cheney Administration followed the rather bizarre neoconservative doctrine that opponents are not be talked with, oddly ignoring the repeated high-profile talks with the Soviet Union during the Cold War which did much to keep a lid on very high tensions. Of course, the Bush/Cheney team did talk with Iran, just generally in private ways.

Now the Obama Administration is directly and publicly engaging Iran. Obama did his video address for a traditional Persian holiday, special envoy Richard Holbroke spoke with a top Iranian official at last week's conference on Afghanistan (where Iran may be helpful), The US will take part with other permanent UN Security Council members and Germany in talks with Iran on its nuclear program. The US also has an interest in dealing with Iran to keep Iraq stable so American forces can be redeployed for Afghanistan and other potential challenges.

Will Iran halt its nuclear weapons program? We don't know. It doesn't seem to be nearly as far along as neocon hysteria, generally wrong-headed, suggests. How helpful will Iran be with Afghanistan, where it helped greatly in 2001, and Iraq, where it has frequently been very mischievous? We don't know.

There's a lot we still don't know. The future, as always, is a moving target, and the Obama Administration is still probing a complex and changing geopolitical system.

You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.

 

Comments

[MPeter]

Thanks Bill. That is a clear-headed analysis and an excellent summary of what Prez Obama just did on his recent international venture. Good job. CNN, NYT, CNB, CBS and the rest of them will never give you this kind of sober assessment.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

You're very welcome.

[Pulemerci]

As he fights Al Qaeda and the Taliban, Obama seeks to engage the more moderate mainstream Islamic world, declaring in his address to the Turkish Parliament that "The United States is not and never will be at war with Islam."

I'm not so sure if there is a "moderate mainstream Islam." The Islamic terrorists have hated us for a long time. Way before George Bush became president too. I'm not sure if bowing to a Saudi king or apologizing to Turkey and stating that we are not a Christian nation will do much. After he left Turkey, a news reporter did a piece on President Obama while in black face. I wish him well but I don't think there's any talking to them.

[BottomLine2008]

So you think we're fighting against a whole religion then?

Brilliant.

lol

[Bladernr1001]

Not the religion per se. if you look at history religion is often used simply as a means to rally support of the masses. Usually the real problems are economic. Scarce resources, dictitorial leadership and the like. Most islamic states have poor economies which give little opportunity to its citizens...so what are they going to do? Many lash out and blame other entities for their misfortune instead of. This is human nature. It is true most muslims have not taken it to the extreme of becoming terrorists but many muslims are angry on some level and many use the USA as a scapegoat to explain their own failure as a society. it is no different than these guys like Jesse jackson and Al Sharpton have been rpeaching to the black community for years........are you poor?, no job?....it is because "the man put you down". Unfortuantely this does not encourge anyone to try to take charge of their own life. It is very tragic.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Do you actually believe that fighting an entire religion is a good idea?

Turn off the talk radio and right-wing blogs, my friend.

[TheBurdicks]

Good summary, except:
"..unlike Saudi Arabia, it hasn't had a vested interest in feeding and off-loading homegrown jihadists to wreak havoc elsewhere in the world."
This is not substantiated by the facts.
"Homegrown jihadists" are more of a threat to Saudi than any other nation. They specifically oppose and target Saudi monarchy, and have repeatedly attacked Saudi targets.
After 9/11, which caught both Saudi and US off guard, and after an short period of shock and inertia, the Saudi's, in full cooperation with US intelligence, launched a very successful program to address "homegrown jihadists". At considerable expense, in the lives of Saudi security forces, and to the treasury, nearly all cells of "jihadists" have been crushed. Imams preaching hatred in Saudi mosques have been removed, or reformed whenever possible. Curriculum and faculty in Saudi schools have been reviewed to eliminate promotion of content which might encourage violent behavior.
Americans are once again favored on the Saudi street. There is a subtle shift in Saudi opinion of the US government, toward optimism, and support for Obama. Saudi scholarship students and Saudi tourists are returning to the US. The monarchy continues to work closely and cooperatively with the US in fighting terrorism, stabilizing the price of oil, and pursuing a fair resolution of the Palestinian issue.
The Saudi's may be the best friends of the US in the region.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks. However, Saudis dominated the 9/11 hijackers, as you know, and Saudi funds have flowed heavily into jihadist causes. They still do, in fact. The strategy was first to simply off-load jihadists to other countries. Now, with persistent threats to the regime -- which jihadists regard as illegitimate, for obvious reasons -- the Saudi authorities have had to fight jihadists within the kingdom.

[Bladernr1001]

I fear that Obama is committing some very serious blunders here:

- Raising taxes on the "rich" in the midst of a major economic downturn - just like Hoover did after the onset of the depression (this along with Smoot-Hawley served only to further deepen the downturn)
- Hugely expanding the role of government - just like the disaterous meddling of the FDR adminsitration that served to prolong the great depression (FDR put the "Great" in depression)
- And Obama appears to be very concilliatory to those who clearly aim to do us harm - like Nevill Chamberlin in dealing with Hitler in the 30's.

What do they teach these guys at Harvard????

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Did you read anything I wrote?

[Bladernr1001]

Sorry I was not specifcally responding to your piece.

[clarryr]

So how much more are you paying in taxes today? Hoover raised taxes from 25% to 63%. Somewhat more than President Obama's proposal to roll back the Bush tax breaks from 35% to 39% so you comparison is just as grossly invalid. And you forgot to mention the HUGE tax break in the stimulus bill. Your revisionist history of FDR has been well documented to be wrong - the New Deal worked quite well. On what basis are you saying "huge expansion of the role of government"? President has ceded no territories to a foreign power as Chamberlain did. And the premise "very concilliatory to those who clearly aim to do us harm" continues the lie of ALL Islam are our enemies. Instead the President recognizes the complexity of the Middle Eastern situation and has a nuanced foreign policy to achieve the American interests in the area - something the prior administration could never do.

[Bladernr1001]

Well any tax increase in this time is not well advised. I agree that Hoovers moves were much more agregious than anything Obama has done thusfar but he is not even at 100 days yet. I very concerned about the amount of debt and expansion in the federal budget that is being implemented or proposed. And don't forget this is just the federal level. Out here in CA they just voted in the largest tax increase in the states history....an obvious attempt to insulate the public employee unions from the effects of the downturn and shift the cost to the private sector.

You folks always to try to write off the criticism of FDR's policies as "revisionist". Forget the unconstituionality of his programs to begin with but unemployment iniatially went down then spiked back up to provious levels by 1937. Do you call that "working"? Even FDR's treasrury sec lamented that the programs did not work. Sometimes the best answer is to do nothing or at least very little (I will likewise not go into the very compelling criticisms of FDR's approach). I always marvel at the bravado of a pol who thinks he can mold and shape an economy from his office in Washington.

[Bladernr1001]

Obama spent the last week telling the world how awful he thinks the USA is. Taking blame for everything economic and political and signaling his willingness to talk to a dictator that has said publicly that he would love to see the demise of the USA (not to mention Isreal). I think there is great potential that he will play Obama for a fool....we will see.

[BottomLine2008]

These are all fringe right talking points.

[Bladernr1001]

You call Milton Freidman "fringe"?

Most of the rebuttal comes not from anyone "respected" but from left wing types that use the same tactics that the tabacco companies used to use to say smoking was safe.

[Lanny Shay]

wow...

stale right wing talking points that have long ago been proved wrong by respected historians and economists.

that's the best you can do?

[Bladernr1001]

The problem with "government action" is that it can create an unpredictable environment or a percieved unstable environment. Why?...because government has power by fiat. it can pass a law that by the stroke of a pen can change the prospects of any business endeavor. What reasonable businessman would risk capital in such an environment? This is precisely what happened during the FDR reign. FDR was enacting many many government actions that included impacts on tax rates and markets. This served to "freeze" business investment because no one really new what he was going to do next.

Now you can write that off as some kind of revisionist history but you cannot escape the the very simple logic and empirical observations made about that era. It has nothing to do with right/left wing thought. That is a copp out.

[Pulemerci]

Except for Noble winner Paul Krugman and others.

[Querent]

OK, it's "8:00, antipsychotics," not "8:00, antioxidants." Obviously, you still don't have it.

[clarryr]

A nice roundup. The President made meaningful progress on many fronts in a complex, ever changing environment.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks.

Some progress, some things in play, some problems.

[BottomLine2008]

Wow, the troops really like Obama, don't they?

Not like Rush Limbaugh would have you believe.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

You know there was actually a suggestion on the far right that that footage would be doctored.

There is a tremendous amount of anger and irrationality at play.

[indyleftist]

That was quite a shameless propaganda stunt IMO
The troops are legally obligated to support Obama and would infact face prison time if they publicly oppose his policy

[BottomLine2008]

Obama's visits to the mosques was also brilliant. He knows exactly how to play this.

[BottomLine2008]

Obama's speech to the Turkish Parliament is really smart. Bush or McCain could never make that speech, even if they were smart enough to try.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

You're never going to pull the teeth of Islamic extremism without recognizing that you can't be at war with a religion.

[BottomLine2008]

Russia Today's report on NATO is very interesting. Not as negative as I had guessed.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Obama's going to Moscow for a summit in July.

[BottomLine2008]

Obama's Prague speech is pretty darn good.

[BottomLine2008]

This is really a fascinating time of change.

[henryberry]

Thanks for the summary. One significant moment you didn't get in is Obama's comment that Roosevelt and Churchill sitting alone in a room over brandies is a nostalgic, antiquated picture of how today's world is shaped. This circumstance has been outdated for some time, but it was Obama on this trip who used deft imagery to allude to a world which is practically entirely different. I find this interesting with respect to Obama's rhetoric which got a good deal of attention during the presidential campaign, but hasn't been discussed or analyzed much now that he is into the work of governing and making decisions which inevitably have wide effects. I also see the image of Roosevelt and Churchill as a small instance of Obama's deployment of images as a major public figure who is trying to bring changes in many areas. He hasn't done much concretely regarding change. As we see almost daily, he is learned about the obstacles and restraints to change from many domestic interests and foreign countries. But one way at least in which he is showing that he is aware of today's circumstances calling for changes in domestic and world relationships and affairs is slipping in such images at times.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks. There are many things to take away from what is in motion.