The man's name was Woodrow Wilson, not Barack Obama. However, Mr Obama has been giving the impression of having been channeling the spirit of Wilson in his conduct of foreign affairs--with one notable and troubling difference to be considered a bit later.
President Obama, like his predecessor of nearly a century ago, has focused rhetorically on very lofty, idealistic themes. Also, like the Princeton political science professor turned politician, Obama has sought to reach over the heads of government and state to strum the sentiments of the public at large.
Again like Wilson, Mr Obama has made the grave error of misinterpreting public applause and media approval as meaning that influence over the policies and actions of foreign governments had been achieved.
Wilson, for example, sincerely believed that the public huzzahs which greeted his arrival in Europe for the Versailles Peace Conference, the crowds lining the roads and railroad tracks, the flowers cast before his processions, the naming of streets, squares, and children after him, assured that his view of a perfect peace would be actualized regardless of the hostile positions taken by European leaders.
Wilson was as wrong. Desperately wrong. Ultimately disastrously wrong as proven by World War II.
Obama apparently drew a Wilsonian conclusion during his Great European Tour of 2008. This conclusion was evidently reinforced by public acclaim and media cheers not only with his Cairo Address but also during and subsequent to his other declamations in Europe, Turkey, and elsewhere.
Obama has been wrong. Desperately wrong. Fortunately, it is still early enough for him to see that he had been disastrously wrong. For this all one can write is, "Timing is everything."
Wilson's delusion and its failure came too late in his presidency, too late in his life to allow for corrective action, for a mid-course change. Obama has made his blunder early enough--and obviously enough--to not only allow but demand a change in direction.
Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and even the often maligned George W. Bush made very real, quite sincere, and often highly effective efforts to both understand and establish firm personal relations with their foreign counterparts. It was this aspect of foreign relations far more than the details of policy or the dynamic of day-to-day diplomacy which provided the basis of so much of the foreign policy successes of all three administrations.
Other presidents such as Jimmy Carter and even Bill Clinton (who had a fine capacity for projecting the political in personal terms on the campaign trail) did not establish the personal chemistry which typified the three Republican presidents. (To demonstrate that Republicans can make the same failure to personalize diplomacy at the highest levels, one need only consider the grave deficiencies in this area demonstrated by Richard Nixon.)
Lest one object that overly personalized, too friendly relations with a foreign leader would hinder an American president in conducting national policy it is only appropriate to recall that Dwight Eisenhower had a close relation with Anthony Eden which extended back to the early days of World War II. That in no way impaired Ike's capacity to personally tear a strip off Eden's backside when England joined co-conspirators France and Israel in the Suez War of 1956. Ike reportedly demonstrated his mastery of the profane, scatological, and obscene during his phone conversation with Eden over the ill-advised nature of the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion.
The shoe fits the other foot as well. The warm relations between Maggie Thatcher and George H.W. Bush did not prevent her making the famed, "Don't go all wobbly on me, George," comment during the run-up to the Gulf War in 1991. A strong argument can be made for the proposition that only the friendship which extended back to Bush's years as Reagan's veep allowed the comment to be both made and heeded.
Foreign relations are both made and executed by human beings. They are not the abstract product of soulless processes conducted by remote entities devoid of emotions, likes, and dislikes, and all the other myriad irrationalities which serve as the basis of human perceptions, beliefs, and actions. Nor are foreign relations conducted between mass abstracts such as "peoples."
Policy is made and executed by humans whether the worker bees low in an embassy's table of organization or as highly placed as the POTUS. Contact, understanding, even smelling the "emotional air" of the interlocutor are critical to gaining influence on the perceptions and actions of the other guy.
The abbreviated meeting between Hamid Karzai and the American president was not only important in its own right but also because it demonstrates that Obama may be coming to the slow realization that personal contact, face time, is critical to either the success or failure of US policy. So also may be his dinner tete a tete with Nicholas Sarkozy.
When Mr Obama was in Paris a few months ago he stiffed Sarkozy when invited to dine at the French president's residence. The reason given was Obama's need for a private night on the town with his wife.
Sarkozy did not appreciate being "Gordon Browned" by Obama and has wasted no opportunity over the subsequent months letting Washington know about his displeasure. Now Mr Obama is making amends--just as he did in Kabul when the "disinvitation" delivered to Karzai for a state visit to Washington was cancelled.
If President Obama is now in the amend making business he has a number of others to address. The list may be led by the name of the British prime minister. It was, after all, the shabby treatment afforded Mr Brown during his state visit shortly after the inauguration which gave first warning of the Obama indifference to personal relations.
The dissing of Brown looped with other, earlier indications to put Europe on notice of the major difference between Woodrow Wilson and Barack Obama. The latter in no way shared with the former a focus on Europe. Indeed Obama often seemed totally uninterested in Europe as if it had already been cast into the waste heap labeled "The Past."
The malign indifference with which Mr Obama treated Europe on the personal level was rapidly mirrored by diplomatic disdain as evidenced by the blundering way in which the administration handled the change from land based ABM to a sea based equivalent in an apparent effort at truckling to Russian demands. That this resulted in a general growth of a "what-is-this?-I-thought-we-were-friends-or-at-least-allies" syndrome in the chancelleries of Europe is both understandable and fully expectable.
While cozying up with hostile regimes whether in Moscow, Beijing, Caracas, or even Tehran has it place, that place does not necessitate shoving long standing allies into the deepest diplomatic shadows. Leaving aside the irony that Mr Obama and his fellow progressives appear bent on turning the US into a clone of Western European democratic socialism, the fact remains that the US needs the wholehearted understanding and cooperation of Europe if any of its foreign policy goals are to be achieved. We and they and a handful of other states constitute what a former head of French intelligence brilliantly termed, "The League of Civilized States." We cannot forget that ground truth save at our peril--and theirs.
Obama needs a friend, a friend of the Maggie Thatcher sort, to tell him just that. Perhaps, just perhaps, the notably blunt spoken Sarkozy will prove to be the friend Obama so needs. That would make the dinner affair something beyond a mere fashion show featuring the two most shining examples of First Lady going today.
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