Barack Obama: Business as Usual

A bizarre and unjustified consensus is emerging with respect to President-elect Barack Obama’s foreign policy. Convinced, perhaps, by his lofty, millenarian rhetoric, a host of otherwise sober-minded commentators actually assume Senator Obama will replace the national interest with a global conscience in a revolutionary break from the Bush administration. But even if he has an earnest desire to be president of the world, rather than merely President of the United States, Obama will be hamstrung by a slew of domestic and international constraints.
Progressives and globalists from Berlin to Nairobi are cheering the President-elect as if he were the avatar of some imminent socialist utopia, sent to cure the world’s ills and trade warheads for dandelions. European leaders like French President Nicholas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel seem to think he will kow-tow to his sophisticated old -world peers. Even staunch opponents of American foreign policy, like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are betting Obama will abandon decades of bipartisan effort and simply hug it out. It’s like they genuinely believe the President-elect will govern as if he had an electorate of 6.5 billion as opposed to 150 million.
The holes in this fairy tale will manifest almost as soon as he assumes office, on Jan. 20, amidst negotiations for Bretton Woods II; which are intended to restructure the global economy in the wake of the credit crisis. Sarkozy, representing the voice of Europe, has demanded that the United States cede sovereignty over its financial sector to an as yet unformed regulatory body based in Brussels. Apparently, he expects the new President to concede as a token gesture of Atlantic unity. I wouldn’t bet on it. American voters are notoriously testy on matters of sovereignty; especially when they involve European bureaucrats.
And Obama’s troubles with Europe won’t end there. In the spring, when the snow starts to melt in Afghanistan and the Taliban start mobilizing for a summer offensive, Obama is going to need a fresh round of commitments from his NATO allies to fight the “right war.” The problem is that none of them are in a position to kick in fresh troops. Even the United States doesn’t have the spare brigades to shoulder the burden of escalation alone. So, he will insist, and there will be an unprecedented crisis in the West’s pre-eminent military alliance.
Now, the Code Pink crowd will point out that plenty of spare man power could be drummed up by precipitously withdrawing from Iraq. But Obama’s not likely to do that. Probably, he’s aware that a broken army fresh off the retreat from Baghdad isn’t going to be a lot of help surging into Helmand Province. In any case, the American voter will forgive anyone but a loser; which is exactly what Obama would be if he let Iraq collapse into dust and blood. So, the troops will stay, and probably far longer than the New Year’s Eve 2011 deadline mandated by the latest draft of the status of forces agreement.
Why so long? At some point an understanding will emerge between the United States and Iran over the fate of Iraq and the wider region. George W. Bush took the first steps to make it possible by sending Undersecretary of State William Burns to meet with Iran’s nuclear negotiator in Geneva (after years of backchannel contacts). He will likely go a step further during his final months in office by opening a special-interest section in the Swiss embassy; in the first posting of an American diplomat to Tehran since the Iranian revolution. Any deal between the long-time foes will involve a permanent American military presence in Iraq to keep those crafty Persians from reneging on their side of the bargain.
Throw in the headache of an increasingly aggressive Russia, busy issuing illegal passports to native Ukrainians, and you have Obama’s first term. There will be no time for lolly-gagging or bandying about at climate conferences. So, any plans to “heal earth” will have to wait until after 2012.
Only in Africa, that deeply troubled continent, will Obama’s most ambitious promises be fulfilled. Of course, as Bob Geldof pointed out, in Time magazine, George W. Bush has done more for Africa than any other president; Democratic or Republican. So, it won’t be much of a revolutionary break.
Every president, even one as charismatic as Senator Obama, is bound by the laws of geopolitics and the whims of the electorate. No president will ever be free to dismiss the national interest in order to assume the mantle of global governance. The winds of fate, and the American voter, wouldn’t allow it.