Of Might and Right
Testing Obama’s Foreign Policy
Joseph S. Nye
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CAMBRIDGE – Approaching the end of his first year as president, Barack Obama has taken a bold step in deciding to increase the number of American troops in Afghanistan to over 100,000. Critics on the left point out that the Korean War crippled Harry Truman’s presidency, just as the Vietnam War defined Lyndon Johnson’s administration. Obama thus risks becoming the third Democratic president whose domestic agenda will be overshadowed by a difficult war.
But critics on the right have complained that Obama’s approach to foreign policy has been weak, too apologetic, and overly reliant on soft power. They worry about Obama’s promise to begin withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan 18 months after the surge.
Obama inherited a fraught foreign policy agenda: a global economic crisis, two
difficult wars, erosion of the nuclear non-proliferation regime by North Korea and Iran, and deterioration of the Middle East peace process. Obama’s dilemma was how to manage this difficult legacy while creating a new vision of how Americans should deal with the world.
Through a series of symbolic gestures and speeches (in Prague, Cairo, Accra, the United Nations, and elsewhere), Obama helped to restore American soft power. As a recent Pew poll reported, “in many countries opinions of the United States are now as positive as they were at the beginning of the decade before George W. Bush took office.”
It is a mistake to discount the role that transformative leaders can play in changing the context of difficult issues. Power involves setting agendas and creating others’ preferences as well as pushing and shoving. That is why Obama’s administration speaks of “smart power” that successfully combines hard and soft power resources in different contexts. But soft power can create an enabling rather than a disabling environment for policy.
Critics contend that Obama has been all words and no deeds. They portray him as a rock star who won a Nobel prize on the basis of promise rather than performance. They scoff at his popularity, and note that the Middle East remains intractable, North Korea nuclear, Iraq and Afghanistan unsettled, and Iran difficult. But no serious analyst would expect otherwise in the short term. Bush and Cheney’s hard-power approach certainly did not solve these problems.
Moreover, in addition to words, there have been some important deeds. First and foremost was Obama’s handling of the economic crisis. When he came into office, his economic advisors told him that there was a one-in-three chance of a 1930’s-style depression.
If Obama had not avoided that disaster, all else would have paled in comparison. Success required not only an economic stimulus package at home, but international coordination. Despite US measures against imports of Chinese tires, the level of protectionism has been much lower than in the 1930’s and than many observers predicted. Moreover, Obama used the crisis to accomplish what many had suggested for years: transform the G-8 into a broader institutional framework of a G-20 that includes the major emerging economies.
Closely related to the economic crisis has been Obama’s handling of relations with China. How America responds to the rise of Chinese power is one of the most important foreign-policy challenges of the twenty-first century. Obama broadened the Treasury-led economic meetings to a strategic dialogue co-chaired by the State Department with an agenda that includes climate change as well as multilateral issues.
Contrary to some skeptical press reports, Obama’s summit meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao in November was a quiet success. At the same time, he has recognized that maintaining close alliances with Japan and Australia – and good relations with India – helps to maintain the hard-power capabilities that shape the environment for a rising China.
A third significant accomplishment of Obama’s first year has been to reframe the issue of nuclear non-proliferation, which many experts regarded as being in crisis at the end of the Bush era. By embracing the long-term goal of a non-nuclear world (though perhaps not in his lifetime), Obama reiterated America’s long-standing commitment, written into Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to reduce the role of nuclear weapons. Moreover, he followed up by negotiating with Russia a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty by the end of this year, and has moved the non-proliferation issue to the top of the agenda at the UN and the G-20.
Critics charge that these accomplishments, as well as efforts to unblock the stalemates in Sudan and Burma, have been achieved at the price of giving up moral clarity on human rights. But public proclamations are often less effective than long-term strategies in promoting human rights. Obama’s speech in Ghana, carefully located in an African country that recently had a successful democratic change of government, illustrated such an approach.
Other critics on the left have complained that he has not been able to get Congress to pass a tough energy bill before the Copenhagen conference on climate change. But Obama has helped to persuade China and India to announce useful efforts, and he will set an American target of reducing greenhouse emissions that should prevent the conference from being a failure.
Of course, the big test lies ahead in Afghanistan. Can Obama combine hard and soft power into a smart-power strategy that works? Will the increase in American and allied troops, and the increases in development aid produce enough stability for his planned withdrawal to begin in 2011? Can the Afghan government begin to provide the security that will protect its citizens against Taliban violence? Or will Afghanistan prove to be a quagmire that defines Obama’s presidency?
As Obama approaches the end of his first year in office, he must know that Afghanistan will be the major test according to which future historians will grade his foreign policy.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr. teaches at Harvard University and is the author of The Powers to Lead.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009.
www.project-syndicate.org
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alykhansatchu 07:24 20 Dec 09
Dear Mr. Nye,
The President has inflected the Rhetoric and it is often Rhetoric that frames the Landscape. In fact, the most curious thing about the Bush Years and its rhetoric was actually how similar George Bush and Osama Bin Laden were linguistically. So I commend President Obama for that. The Inflection in the Rhetoric also undercut many previously entrenched Positions and that surely is the Art and Finesse of Soft Power.
The World in the c21st is a very accelerated and high Velocity One. I recall the Shakespearean Hubris of the Predeccessor standing on the USS Abraham Lincoln and announcing to the Gods that the Mission was Accomplished. Hardly! The Military overreach practically bankrupted the US, IT spiked Oil Prices by stressing the entire ME Region at exactly the moment that China was tipping the Demand Supply Balance in the Crude Oil Markets. Few Commentators have correlated American above Trend Growth with a Crude Price below $40.00 but I think you will find that is very clearly a strong correlation.
With Regard to Afghanistan, I do wish the President would read Baburnama which is the autobiographical account of Emperor Babur who was the last Person to extend his writ over Afghanistan. The lessons in that Autobiography are just invaluable. The President needs to break out of a Purely Military response Box. I do not think its about counting the Scalps at all. I think its about inflecting Afghan Society. I recall 300 Women who walked through Kabul not so long ago. I have to believe that this Constituency is one the President needs to work with. Women are fed up with the Misogynist Taliban. We need to empower them. The American Constitution talks of inviolable rights. Women all over the World want security and Opportunity for their Children. The Secretary of State seems the perfect Person to make this case. Her Story will resonate and amplify.
My greatest concern remains the Point Man Hamid Karzai, who surely is the softest of soft Underbellies and it is a cruel irony that the President of the United States has placed so much of his destiny in this Fellow's Lap.
Aly-Khan Satchu
www.rich.co.ke
Twitter alykhansatchu
angellight 06:21 10 Dec 09
It is know among many Esotericists that we can expect the Reappearance of the Christ "when a measure of peace has been restored, when the principle of sharing is at least in process of controlling economic affairs, and when churches and political groups have begun to clean house. Then He can and will come; then the Kingdom of God will be publicly recognised and will no longer be a thing of dreams and of wishful thinking and orthodox hope." It is also know that Christ has never left us and that "He is ready and anxious publicly to appear to His loved Humanity." And lastly it is known that "The opposing forces of entrenched evil must be routed before He for Whom all men wait, the Christ, can come." (1)
President Obama's commitment and work has been to restore peace. He is and has accomplished this through his diplomatic efforts of talking to other countries instead of threatening war. And, as we know, the whole world' economic system has collapsed and we must begin to work on Sharing the world's resources. Pres. Obama has spent much time abroad in helping to bring about economic sharing and stability and our recognition that we are interrelated, interdependent and one world. And, could it be that President Obama's efforts in Afghanistan is to try to route out the opposing forces of evil?
"'According to Alfred Nobel's Will, the Nobel Prize should be awarded to the person who "during the preceding year... shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".
While this dictum may be interpreted in terms of outer events and measurable changes, its psychological aspect is arguably more important, for those fundamental ideals which can bring about international peace must first gather sufficient mental and emotional force to empower outer changes. The skilful projection of a vision through the right use of oratory is of immense importance in this process. Great oratory awakens hope and adds its momentum to the transformative process to ensure its emergence in the world of physical plane events. Tied down as we are in the world of the five senses, it may not be easy to relate cause and effect; but in the realm of conscious energy, every momentous thoughtform must reveal itself in the mundane world at some point.
Not for nothing is the term "a ray of hope" evoked in journalistic circles in contrast to the gloomy background of world affairs. Diana Mukkaled, a prominent and respected journalist in the Arab world, remarks that "Obama possesses a particular ability to push matters towards hope, not only in America, but also in the rest of the world. Perhaps the Nobel Peace Prize will contribute towards making this hope a reality, particularly in our countries that are drowning in despondency and despair." http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=18521,
Though hope may be transient, it is a carrier wave for a principle or truth to be ushered into the collective consciousness. There it resides in latency until the next wave of hope reawakens and strengthens it. The recognition of a new truth, a spiritual principle, thus makes its way incrementally to the forefront of public consciousness, its pressure eventually achieving sufficient influence to become an effective agent of change. President Obama's many speeches have "captured the public imagination", thereby energising a positive vision of hope for the future. Their quality could be described as that of the practical visionary rather than the mystical dreamer. The difference between true vision and non-pragmatic idealism is a fine line, but when the hope of nations soars in response, it is a sure sign that the right spiritual note has been sounded. When people are brought together by such a vision, a bond of world unity is recognised and this provides an unique opportunity to the spiritual Hierarchy Who stand behind world affairs to help further integrate the consciousness of the "one" humanity. For unity is the destiny of humanity, as a clear-eyed study of the evolution of social consciousness and its imaginative projection into the future reveals.
More and more people are beginning to be forward-looking and to hope with greater conviction and courage for a better world set-up; their hitherto wishful thinking and their emotional desire are slowly giving place to a more practical attitude; their clear thinking and their fixed determination are far more active and their plans better laid because both their thinking and their planning are today based on facts; they are also beginning to recognise those factors and conditions which must not be restored... " (2)
http://www.lucistrust.org/en/service_act ivities/world_goodwill_1/world_view_on president_obama_receiving_the_nobel_peac e_prize
To those Souls who are beginning to awaken, it is up to us to aid in making Earth like it is in Heaven. We are at a time of Decesion and we must do all we can to usher in the new earth and the new holistic ways. We must work with goodwill and we must work with love.
I don't know what that mysterious "Blue Light" was over Norway before Obama's coming, but I do know blue represents peace and love. May be the watching Hierarchy gave mankind a sign that the work of President Obama is nobel and worthy of his work. Let us take Note, that in his speech President Obama reminded us of the Spark of Divinity within each of us and therefore One!
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(1) Reappearance of the Christ, Alice A. Bailey
(2) Externalisation of the Hierarchy, Alice A. Bailey