Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Obama in wonderland

The Obama Administration's amateurish policies in relation to five distinct areas of foreign policy have been exposed in a consistent manner, showing that Obama, for all his smarts, is not up to the task.
First, take Iraq, yesterday was a historic day in which the US turned security in all of Iraq over to the Iraqi Government armed forces. There is no doubt that this eventuality could not have been achieved without the "surge" policy of Gen. Petraeus, that was implemented by the Bush Administration, but was opposed at the time by Obama. Yet, in acknowledging the historic event Obama appeared to take credit rather than giving credit where it was due. His lack of foresight and his readiness to ignore the actual foreign policy that led to this success shows an amateurish quality, when everybody knows the facts.
Then on Iran, as pointed out in an article by Bret Stephens, "Obama's Obsolete Iran Policy: The audacity of hope gives way to the timidity of realism," Obama and his spokesmen have fumbled the ball, delaying forceful response until it was too late, and then essentially saying to the Iranian people "good luck." Obama's policy was timid, after the dramatic events in Teheran and now with reports that followers of Mousavi have been hanged in Mashhad, his main response was effectively "oh well, we'll have to rethink our intention to dialog with Iran."
On Israel and the Middle East conflict he seems to have two diametrically opposed policies, one is to expand the scope of the peace process to include all of the Arab or Muslim world, the other is to focus exclusively on the detail of Israeli settlement building in the West Bank. While PM Bibi Netanyahu has expressed his willingness to restart negotiations with Pres Abbas of the PA as soon as possible with no preconditions, Abbas is hesitating, for two reasons. First, he knows that no negotiations can progress while there is no agreement between Fatah and Hamas, and these negotiations in Cairo failed again to come to any conclusion. Second, why should he negotiate when the US is essentially representing him in bringing pressure on Israel to change its settlement policy as a precondition to talks. Everyone knows that merely allowing "natural growth" in the settlements would affect less than 1% of the land of the Wes Bank, that can easily be taken into account during negotiations. Yet this is the issue that the US is obsessing on, it is impractical and amateurish.
On N. Korea, once again the policy of engagement and dialog has been dealt a fatal blow by the actual actions of the the "dear leader." It is clear that N. Korea is in a stage of aggressive confrontation with the world, and the US response of deciding on a naval blockade would be an appropriate response if it were being implemented. Yet, following the N. Korean threat that it will consider any boarding of its ships to search for contraband weapons as an act of war, the US has contented itself with merely monitoring these ships. What would have happened with the world if Kennedy had done the same thing in Cuba in 1962. That was also a deliberate test of a new President, but Kennedy stood firm while Obama bends.
Finally, the current crisis in Honduras, where Pres. Manuel Zelaya, a definite enemy of the US and an ally of Pres. Chavez of Venezuela, has been ousted by the military for trying to illegally extend his term in office. The military and many others feared that he would follow Chavez in eventually declaring himself essentially President for life. In response, even after the Honduran Parliament elected an interim President until scheduled elections are held, Obama declared that the elected President should be returned to power, an act that shows a lack of realism and concern for US interests in the region.
In all these five conflicts the Obama Administration has acted as a bumbling naieve learner, unprepared for dealing with the reality of the situation and responding without the larger interests of the US taken into account. His policies of appeasement rather than expediency are destined to fail.

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