Time To Hit The Foreign Policy "Reset" Button

If the results go as predicted a bit over a week from now, one of the options confronting the Nice Young Man From Chicago will be that of becoming a "foreign policy president."  It may be more attractive to a president who sees himself  both embattled and underappreciated to seek success on the international stage while leaving the nearly unsolvable problems of domestic and economic nature to the Republicans and whatever Democrats are left standing when the vote counting is done.

The idea of Barack Obama focusing his efforts on global politics can be frightening.  To date he has shown no particular capacity in this area.  His lack of capacity is matched by an apparent lack of interest in any foreign policy consideration beyond those rooted in his "progressive" ideology with an emphasis on blaming America first while seeing international organizations as sublime.  

However, the sting of defeat along with the bitter taste of personal failure and humiliation can focus the mind wonderfully, particularly for an individual who believes his own press releases as completely as does Mr Obama.  The cause for a sense of defeat and the horrid taste of having been personally rejected and humiliated comes in this context not from the American electorate but the words and actions of foreign leaders.  For most of two years now, more than a few leaders of states both great and small have acted as if Barack Obama was an inconsequential factor in their policy considerations.  Other leaders have seen the American president as both fatally naive and all too willing to abandon ancient allies in order to embrace recent enemies.

The increasing irrelevance of Mr Obama to the calculations of foreign politicians would have been avoided if his eccentric approaches to global politics had brought success.  A record of successful moves erases all sins in the wonderful and wacky world of diplomacy.  However, there have been no successes.  There have not been even the slightest hints of successes soon to become obvious.

Take China as an example.  Mr Obama has truckled shamelessly to the Trolls of Beijing with the expectation that a exhibition of a high quality kow-tow to the Central Empire would result in the Chinese becoming cooperative on a wide range of topics: balance of trade, currency value, nuclear proliferation, climate change, and terrorism.  In the real world the results of the Obama effort are self-evident.  In a word: Failure.

The Chinese have been so dismissive of the Obama demarches as to border on the insulting.  Beyond that, the Trolls have embarked upon a noisy diplomatic offensive which is both arrogant and triumphalist.  While the Chinese have not scored any great successes themselves with the new, muscle flexing tactics, particularly among their near neighbors, the in-your-face style of China during the past two years is a humiliating rejection of the Obama administration and the US.  In essence, Beijing has acted as if the US was so far in decline that it could be treated with the disdain due a has-been power.

For a man as proud and sure of his own importance as Mr Obama, the attitude exhibited by the Trolls has to be infuriating.  In this context it should never be forgotten that personal feelings, the power of an individual's emotions, have influenced the conduct of foreign relations on numerous occasions, sometimes for the good, often for the worse.

As the Geek noted in a post a couple of months back, the US made a tentative but important set of moves in response to the Chinese proclamation that Beijing had a special, "core interest" in the South China Sea warning the US and others to mend their ways and mind their own business.  SecState Clinton replied in Hanoi that the South China Sea was our own business.  As a matter of declaratory policy, Ms Clinton told the assembled ASEAN delegations--which included China--that the US had a history of supporting freedom of the seas and peaceful means of solving questions of competing sovereignty.

Ms Clinton's declaratory policy was backed up by a series of naval exercises in which the US Navy and allies conducted a number of war games in waters not all that far from the Chinese coast.  One planned exercise brought howls of protest from the Forbidden City.  That proposed exercise would see a joint US-South Korean task force including the USS George Washington, a CVN, operate in the Yellow Sea.

The Yellow Sea is an international water.  The right of the US or any other country to hold naval exercises anywhere in the Yellow Sea outside the territorial waters of China is well established.  Apparently, this reality was either unknown or unacceptable to the Trolls.  They went exoatmospheric.  The Chinese foreign ministry all but called the totality of the Yellow Sea Chinese territorial waters.

The US, based on remarks by Admiral Mullen and others including Robert Gates, seemed to be unperturbed by the Chinese reaction.  The exercises would proceed was a constant theme over the past ninety days.  Taken in conjunction with the ongoing effort by the US to buck up the small regional countries feeling threatened by the newly expansionist Chinese as well as to reassure both South Korea and Japan that we were back to the Pacific littoral to stay, it appeared the Obama administration was determined to out-stare the Trolls this time around.

All of that changed, maybe.  The exercise for the Yellow Sea has been cancelled.  This decision, according to South Korean sources, was taken in order that "certain countries not be antagonized as the G-20 meeting scheduled to occur in Seoul looms near.  The Pentagon for its part now denies that exercises were ever planned for the Yellow Sea.

Adrift at the policy level?  Perhaps.  The Obama administration is locked in a very real dispute with China over currency values.  The attempt by the Treasury Secretary to gain agreement prior to the meeting on a plan to limit trade surpluses/deficits came to nothing.  One of the countries objecting was China.  China was not alone, being backed by Russia and France among others.  This can lead to speculation that the administration is trying one more deep bow in the hopes the Trolls will change their tune, even if not officially.

If the cancellation is a tactical gambit, it will fail.  The Trolls will take it as one more sign of the president's personal weakness.  One more attempt at appeasement will result not in "understanding" but in more intransigence.  The Trolls will not be cowed by cowardice.

The only questions are these: When will Mr Obama react to one more insulting rebuff?  And, assuming his pride is finally wounded sufficiently, what options will he exercise?

There is an attractive option about to present itself up close and personal to the American president.  More of that after we consider another area of foreign policy embarrassment.

That area is Pakistan.  The administration has put great pressure on Islamabad to get off its duff and move into  North Waziristan.  At the same time the administration has backed quite openly the preliminary conversations underway between elements of Taliban and the Karzai government.  We have agreed with Karzai that these early talks about talks would be conducted without the presence of Pakistan or Mullah Omar, the Pakistani's man in command of Taliban.

In large measure due to the effects of American and ISAF operations in and around Kandahar coupled with the lethal impact of Predators and Reapers in the FATA, components of Taliban are now open to talks which may lead to peace negotiations.  While it is far too early to even hint at the chances of success, the fact that informal conversations are taking place and are openly acknowledged by all hands is an important development.

It is also a development which has outraged the Pakistanis.  The word from the Pakistani army, ISI, and parts of the civilian government is simply, "Without us no peace can happen.  Without our guy, Omar, there can be no peace."  At the same time the senior commanders of the what-us-fight? army of Pakistan have deprecated the effectiveness of recent and current US/ISAF military operations.

More than one braid encrusted wallah has opined that the claims of success offered by General Petreaus are bogus.  The party line is the stories of success are simply a political ploy of Obama as the midterm elections come closer.  The official view from Islamabad offered to anyone with a tape recorder or a camera is the Taliban is winning, the Americans are losing, and only Pakistan can assure peace.

On a more practical level, the Pakistanis are refusing point blank to undertake any operations against the hard core jihadists of Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the Haqqani network in North Waziristan.  As a contingency plan, the ISI and army have already been cranking up to facilitate the removal of the "threatened" leadership from North Waziristan to another Agency in the FATA.  This would duplicate the way in which ISI and army assured everyone who was anyone in the Taliban got out of Dodge before the slow motion army moved in during the operations into Swat and, later, South Waziristan.

In short, the Pakistanis are quite willing to accept billions of borrowed American dollars while demanding yet more and refusing to do anything useful against the advocates of armed political Islam which are a potentially fatal cancer more for Pakistan than for Afghanistan.  Nothing is going to change this ground truth.

And now for the option.  Mr Obama will be visiting India shortly.  India is a major and natural counterweight not only to Pakistan but China as well.  India has the potential to equal or surpass China economically.  It has a military capability which is orders of magnitude superior to that of Pakistan and is nearly a match for the Peoples Liberation Army.  Beyond that, India is a genuine multi-cultural society and a democratic polity.

Indian values and norms are far closer to those of the US and other Western countries than are those of either China or Pakistan.  Politically, economically, and culturally, India is a far more comfortable fit with the US and other Western countries.  It has a wide range of national interests which coincide with those of the US.  India, not Pakistan is best positioned to be a genuine ally of the US.

It is quite true that the US and India have a long record of troubled relations.  For decades, right up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, India tilted very far to the Left.  In the process, it irritated the US time after time, often to the point that our policies in the sub-continent lost all rational basis.

Those days are behind us.  While Left and far Left parties are a major political force in India, they are to a great degree a very spent force.  The growth of the middle class, the almost explosive development of the Indian economy, the inventiveness shown by Indian technologists and entrepreneurs alike all combine to thwart the agenda and appeal of the Left.

If Mr Obama makes the decision to focus on foreign policy, the Indian option presents a way by which he can not only advance American interests but go a distance in recovering from the insulting defeats inflicted upon him and his "Team" by China and Pakistan.  In words simple enough to be understood easily by the Guy in the Oval and his Foreign Policy Team: Tilt to India.  Tilt our policy in Asia in an open and obvious way in favor of India.

The triangle of India, Japan, and South Korea would constitute a stable alliance with the US.  While all four countries have current economic and economically related problems, these are neither insurmountable nor a reason not to form an understanding between countries sharing a wide range of interests and an equally broad set of norms, values, and aspirations.

A policy which seeks to link the US with India more effectively while establishing tighter ties between India and the other states currently allied with the US in Asia and the Pacific littoral would do much to inhibit China and show Pakistan the limits of acceptable non-cooperation.  Such a policy would also provide a sound base to incorporate Indonesia, which is the world's largest Muslim more-or-less democracy.

To succeed in foreign policy the president needs a new, clear vision.  It will necessitate abandoning the love affair with the UN and taking on new, regional lovers.  It will also require an accurate understanding of American national interests and an equally shrewd appreciation of the national interests of other states, both allied and hostile.

The possibility of a Democratic Party defeat in the midterms may have the unintended consequence of forcing Mr Obama to engage with foreign relations for the first time in his life.  Should, by some miracle, he do so with the sort of realistic, new vision hinted at above, he will have a unique opportunity to transform humiliation both by the domestic electorate and foreign leaders into a victory for the US.  And, it should be added, a victory for his country should be what an American president desires more than anything else.