Why President Obama has been more successful at antiterrorism policy than his own foreign policy

The International Herald Tribune, October 27, 2011 Thursday, BY THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Barack Kissinger Obama

Why President Obama has been more successful at implementing George W. Bush's antiterrorism policy than his own foreign policy.

Who would have predicted it? Barack Obama has turned out to be so much more adept at implementing George W. Bush's foreign policy than Bush was, but he is less adept at implementing his own. The reasons, though, are obvious.

In his own way, President Obama has brought the United States to the right strategy for Bush's ''war on terrorism.'' It is a serious, focused combination of (1) global intelligence coordination, (2) targeted killing of known terrorists and (3) limited interventions - like Libya - that leverage popular forces on the ground and allies, as well as a judicious use of U.S. power, so that we keep the costs and risks down. In Libya, Obama saved lives and gave Libyans a chance to build a decent society. What they do with this opportunity is now up to them. I am still wary, but Obama handled his role exceedingly well.

No doubt George Bush and Dick Cheney thought that both Iraq and Afghanistan would be precisely such focused, limited operations. Instead, they each turned out to be like a bad subprime mortgage - a small down payment with a huge balloon five years down the road. They thought they would be able to ''flip'' the house before the balloon came due. But partly because of their incompetence and lack of planning, it took much longer to flip the house to new owners and the price America paid was huge. Iraq may still have a decent outcome - I hope so, and it would be important - but even if it becomes Switzerland, we overpaid for it.

So let's be clear: Up to now, as a commander in chief in the war on terrorism, Obama and his national security team have been so much smarter, tougher and cost-efficient in keeping the country safe than the ''adults'' they replaced. It isn't even close, which is why the G.O.P.'s elders have such a hard time admitting it.

But while Obama has been deft at implementing Bush's antiterrorism policy, he has been less successful with his own foreign policy. His (1) Arab-Israeli diplomacy has been a mess. His hopes of engaging (2) Iran foundered on the rocks of, well, Iran. He's made little effort to pull together a multilateral coalition to buttress the (3) Arab Awakening, in places like Egypt, to handle the post-revolution challenges. His ill-considered decision to double down on (4) Afghanistan could prove fatal. He is in a war of words with (5) Pakistan. His global (6) climate policy is an invisible embarrassment. And the coolly calculating (7) Chinese and Russians, while occasionally throwing him a bone, pursue their interests with scant regard to Obama's preferences. Why is that?

Here I come to defend Obama not to condemn him. True, he was naïve about how much his star power, or that of his secretary of state, would get others to swoon in behind us. But Obama's frustrations in bagging a big, nonmilitary foreign policy achievement are rooted in a much broader structural problem - one that also explains why we have not produced a history-changing secretary of state since the titans Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and James Baker.

The reason: the world has gotten messier and America has lost leverage. When Kissinger was negotiating in the Middle East in the 1970s, he had to persuade just three people to make a deal: an all-powerful Syrian dictator, Hafez al-Assad; an Egyptian pharaoh, Anwar Sadat; and an Israeli prime minister with a  huge majority, Golda Meir.

To make history, Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, by contrast, need to extract a deal from a crumbling Syrian regime, a crumbled Egyptian regime, a fractious and weak Israeli coalition and a Palestinian movement broken into two parts.

We don't even bother anymore to negotiate with the flimsy civilian government in Pakistan. We just go right to its military, which only wants to perpetuate the conflict with India - and exploit Afghanistan as a chip in that war - to justify the Pakistani Army's endless consumption of so many state resources.

Making history through diplomacy ''depends on making deals with other governments,'' says Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy expert (and co-author with me on ''That Used to Be Us''). ''But now, to make such deals, we actually have to build the governments we want to negotiate with - and we can't do that.'' Indeed, in so many hot spots today, we have to do nation-building before we can do diplomacy. So many states propped up by the Cold War are failing.

And where states are stronger - like Russia, China and Iran - we have less leverage because leverage is ultimately a function of economic strength. And while many of America's companies are still strong, our government is mired in debt. When a nation is in debt as deep as we are - with severe defense cuts inevitable - its bark is always bigger than its bite.

The best way for us to gain leverage on Russia and Iran would be with an energy policy that reduced the price and significance of oil. The only way to gain more leverage on China is if we increase our savings and graduation rates - and export more and consume less. That isn't in the cards.

So, Mama, tell your children not to grow up to be secretary of state or a foreign policy president - not until others have done more nation-building abroad and we've done more nation-building at home.

No illusions; Intervention in the Arab awakening

No illusions; Intervention in the Arab awakening The Economist March 19, 2011

The Arab awakening is succumbing to violence. The outside world has a duty to act

UNTIL the Arab awakening reached Libya, protesters seemed able to prevail armed with little more than self-belief. Not any more. In Bahrain the regime's troops, reinforced by foreigners—mostly Saudis—have stormed the protesters' tent-city at Pearl roundabout, shooting as they went. In Yemen the regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh has taken to firing live rounds into the crowds. And in Libya itself, as Muammar Qaddafi seizes back the rebel towns strung along the Mediterranean coast, the people are reaping the whirlwind. Torture and death are rampaging through Brega and Zawiya. Terror and despair loom over Tobruk and Benghazi.

As the violence escalates, the outside world no longer has the easy option of simply backing the "reform" of corrupt and oppressive regimes. Instead, it faces hard choices. Are countries content to sit on their hands and watch rebels die? And if they feel they must step in, what exactly can they do?

In Libya, at least, those questions are fast becoming the business of historians rather than policymakers. The moment will soon have passed when a no-fly zone designed to stop Colonel Qaddafi from using his air force could offer civilians much protection. As The Economist went to press, the UN Security Council was at last discussing this but Colonel Qaddafi was advancing towards Benghazi (see

). If he arrives at the city, its people will need more than just air cover to save them in what could be a bloody and long-drawn-out battle.

Democracies wisely set obstacles in the way of those who seek to put the world to rights by fighting—however good their motives. Bitter experience in Iraq has taught how liberators soon come to be seen as oppressors. Western troops have found that when they wage war, they own the mess they have created. You cannot fight people into behaving well.

At the same time, democracies shrink from the idea that might is right. After the genocide in Rwanda, nations took on a duty to stop mass-killing if they could. Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Liberia all showed that outsiders can in fact help avert catastrophes. The Arab awakening is all about human dignity and the rights of ordinary people—values that the West lives by and seeks to promote. For the West to turn its back on Libya's rebels and to stand aside while its allies shoot protesters in Bahrain betrays its own values.

Confronted by the contradictory urges to do good and steer clear, the West has so far accomplished neither. Even as the Arab League and the Gulf Co-operation Council have called for international action against Colonel Qaddafi, the West has temporised and rebel towns have fallen. Europe is at its chaotic worst. France and Britain want a no-fly zone, but Germany, deaf to the pleas of Libyans, sees only risks and entanglement. And in America Barack Obama has summoned up the will to condemn violence and oppression, but, until far too late, studiously avoided summoning up the means to do much about it—a weak stance for a superpower (see Lexington).

Those who wish America to be a force for good will find that disappointing. But those who rejected George Bush's searing and bloody pursuit of democracy should reflect on how they got what they sought.

No universal formula can cut through the contradiction between values and interests in foreign policy—that is why intervention in Vietnam and Somalia led to neglect in Rwanda, which set the scene for intervention once more in Bosnia and Iraq. And it is why foreign policy is condemned to live with an age-old dilemma. If the West sacrifices its place in the world to its values, then it will be less able to promote them. On the other hand, if the West always puts narrow realpolitik before its values, then its values will be tainted in the eyes of the world.

By that test, the West let down the Bahrainis: sterner talk from Mr Obama may have deterred their attackers. Yet the West does still have options in Libya. To send in Western ground forces would be to own a dysfunctional, violent place. But the West can seize upon Arab backing to help protect eastern Libya. It should jam Colonel Qaddafi's communications and rush in a no-fly zone. If the regime begins to pound Benghazi, then aircraft—including Arab aircraft—should destroy Colonel Qaddafi's tanks, artillery and gunboats.

Have no illusions about the risks of such a policy. Bombing Libyan armour would endanger the lives of pilots and, inevitably, civilians. It would, at least temporarily, partition Libya. The eastern groups under the protection of the outside world may include Islamists and killers who turn out to be just as savage as Colonel Qaddafi. And that is if the policy succeeds.

Even so, these are risks that the West should now take before it is too late. Saving lives in eastern Libya will be hard. Not even trying to save them would be worse.

Holbrooke the dove

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/14/holbrooke_the_dove

Posted By Blake Hounshell Tuesday, December 14, 2010 - 2:35 AM Share

The last words of Richard C. Holbrooke, a lion of U.S. diplomacy, were "You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan" -- a sentence worth pondering as the United States heads into a fresh round of debate over a conflict that has ground on for more than 9 years, steadily escalating from a sideshow to a nightmare that threatens to consume Barack Obama's presidency.

What did Holbrooke mean? Did he oppose the war? [UPDATE: The Washington Post has a fuller account of Holbrooke's last comment, and one person I've spoken with who was at the hospital last night says it was taken out of context.]

Holbrooke, who until last week was running the civilian side of the Afghan war, had expressed few public doubts about the wisdom of U.S. efforts there. Despite constant sniping at him in the press (and some unkind words in Bob Woodward's latest), he remained officially upbeat about what he was doing, touting U.S. aid efforts in Pakistan, highlighting agricultural programs in Afghanistan, and trying valiantly to broker some sort of modus vivendi between the two South Asian neighbors.

But he clearly had grave doubts about the war. He is quoted in Woodward's book saying that "If there are 10 possible outcomes in Afghanistan, nine of them are bad." Through Woodward, he also criticizes the approach urged by Bruce Riedel, who led the president's first major strategy review in the spring of 2009. It's worth quoting Woodward at length:

The war -- or the American role in the war -- would not end in a military victory, but nearly all the focus had been on the military. There had been little discussion of reconciliation -- how the warring parties could be brought together diplomatically. That might be far off, but it had to be planned. How could the Taliban insurgents be lured off the field? Maybe it was a fantasy. But they had to sincerely try.

The Saudis were already acting as secret intermediaries with elements of the Taliban, but the White House was not seriously engaging the issue. This was the only end for the war in Holbrooke's estimation. How could they not at least consider it?

Holbrooke largely agreed with Biden. He saw the vice president emerging as the adminisration's George Ball, the deputy secretary of state who had opposed the Vietnam escalation. But the length of Bidens's presentation undermined his message, Holbrooke told others.

Like Biden, Holbooke believed that even if the Taliban retook large parts of Afghanistan, al Qaeda would not come with them. That might be "the single most important intellectual insight of the year," Holbrooke remarked hours after the first meeting. Al Qaeda was much safer in Pakistan. Why go back to Afghanistan, where there were nearly 68,000 U.S. troops and 30,000 from other NATO countries? And in Afghanistan, the U.S. had all the intelligence and surveillance capability, plus the capability to dispatch massive ground forces, not just Special Operations Forces but batallions of regular troops and the CIA's 3,000-man pursuit teams.

Astonishingly to Holbrooke, that key insight had neither been in Riedel's report, nor had it been discussed that Sunday morning. Where was the no-holds-barred debate? The president had told them not to bite their tongues. Holbrooke had to bite his because he worked for the secretary of state, who was unsure of what course to recommend. But where were the others?

In another part of the book, Holbrooke is quoted saying that the strategy "can't work." Elsewhere, he expresses doubt that the United States can "defeat" the Taliban, complains about the Afghan police ("the weak link") and says provocatively that the U.S. presence itself "is the corrupting force" in Afghanistan. During the fall 2009 strategy review, he told Clinton privately that he supported sending 20,000 troops, but not the full 40,000 the military had requested. But he also opposed the July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing U.S. troops and said flatly at one point, "We're not leaving," urging that the U.S. presence be put on a more sustainable long-term footing.

Holbrooke's relations with the military weren't always smooth. When an aide to Gen. Stanley McChrystal dissed Holbrooke to Rolling Stone as "a wounded animal," he laughed it off, telling reporters, "Worse things have been said about me."

He also had fraught interactions with former national security advisor Jim Jones, whom he clearly viewed as a lightweight (and who in return tended to see Holbrooke's ideas as impractical), and with Jones's deputy, Tom Donilon.

But Holbrooke's biggest problem was with Obama, who in Woodward's estimation "didn't care for" him. The two men just didn't connect. In one painful anecdote, Holbrooke approaches him and asks to be called "Richard," rather than "Dick," because his wife preferred the former.

"Later, the president told others that he found the request highly unusual and even strange," Woodward writes. "Holbrooke was horrified when he learned that his request -- which he had repeated to no one -- had been circulated by the president."

Though we'll get the administration's formal assessment later this week, it's still too early to tell how the new "surge" in Afghanistan is going. But one has to wonder: If Holbrooke and Obama had gotten along better, or if Clinton had been less guarded in her own views, would history be playing out differently?

Should the U.S. Ratify Treaties for the Sake of Ratifying Treaties?

Posted: 17 Jul 2010 02:37 AM PDT

by Julian Ku

I agree that the relatively slow progress in U.S. treaty-making is not all the fault of the sluggish Obama Administration. The Senate no doubt is a big obstacle to treaty-making, . Still, I think the idea that the U.S. should join treaties, simply in order to show the world that we are willing to join treaties, is a really bad principle to govern lawmaking. Yet this is the main point of this op-ed in Politico.

As the Senate begins debate on the U.S.-Russia New START arms-reduction treaty, we must not lose sight of a glaring problem in our national security: the impact that the U.S. failure to join major multilateral treaties has on our capacity to exercise global leadership. This failure threatens to make us, in a sad parody of Madeline Albright’s famous phrase, the “dispensable nation.”

The world is not waiting for us. As it becomes clear the treaties we negotiate might never be ratified, our power to shape their formation will wane. The rest of the world will continue negotiating multilateral treaties to shape vital international issues — with or without the United States. This position is dangerous. Each of the threats we face today — terrorism, climate change, poverty, infectious diseases — can only be solved through global efforts and global rules.

…

It’s time for the Senate — and the White House — to expend the political capital necessary for treaty ratification. There are at least six multilateral treaties that have a reasonable chance of ratification and would demonstrate that the U.S. is back in the business of working with others: the Test Ban Treaty, the Law of the Sea Convention, the Landmines Treaty, International Labor Convention 111, the Women’s Treaty and the recently signed Disabilities Treaty. It is critically important the Senate moves forward on at least one and demonstrates that the U.S. will have a say in writing the rules of the world. Failure to do so risks undermining our capacity to achieve our national security goals.

I think treaties should be judged independently and based on their individual merits. I have simply seen very little evidence that joining treaties irrespective of its policy benefits for the U.S, can itself be a policy benefit for the U.S. And I really doubt that ratifying the ILO or CEDAW would do much for our ability to write rules on nuclear testing or the law of the sea. There are ways to get Republican Senators to vote for treaties, but this is not one of them.

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what about applying the theory of a policy benefit to UN Declaration on indigenous people ?