Personal Relations Do Matter, Mr Obama

Once upon a time a man was elected president. He was by nature cool, aloof, passionate in a detached, controlled fashion. This new president was an academic, a specialist in the American constitution. He focused on great themes, lofty ideals, the power of an informed and rational population. And, he eschewed the personal. The very notion of enduring, intimate contact leading to trust and confidence between individuals, including individual leaders, was outside his purview of understanding.

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.

There Is No "International Community!"

British Prime Minister, the Right Honorable Gordon Brown, is either totally gripless or gripped by a delusion of monumental proportions. Mr Brown is quoted as saying that the debacle in Copenhagen occurred because "some countries" held the proposed treaty "for ransom." He went on to call for either the reformation of the UN or the formation of a new body so that the "international community" could properly deal with "challenges" confronting the "international community."

Here is the fundamental flaw with Mr Brown's tocsin: There is no such thing as the "international community." Period.

There are a lot of independent sovereign states. Indeed, sovereign states have proliferated at a rate compared to which neither rabbits nor cockroaches can be described as rapid breeders. Of course, every sovereign independent state has to be a member of all possible international bodies including but not limited to the UN. This is one of the reasons the UN--and other subsidiary bodies--have become the havens for inefficiency, corruption, and a shakedown-the-West-at-the drop-of-a-hat attitude.

Mr Brown, and a host of others infesting the self-appointed elites of both Europe and the US, including in all probability the current occupant of the Oval, is of the fashionable post-modernist view that the age of the sovereign independent nation-state is over. Mr. Brown (and Mr Obama) shares the necessary twin of that thought: And, the world is better off for the death of the nation-state.

This understanding of international relations is both unrooted in reality and dangerously counterproductive in practice. Mr Brown's comment about climate change being held for ransom and his prescription calling for the creation of yet another international body show this--on steroids.

The real deal as Mr Brown (and Mr Obama) must know down deep somewhere in the back recesses of the mind is that nation-states are alive, flourishing, and showing all their usual characteristics of operating from subjectively defined self-interest. When China torpedoed the rush to a treaty, any treaty at Copenhagen, it did so out of rationally defined national interest. The same was true of the hijack-the-rich oriented states of the G77.

Even the US operated from the basis of national interest when its president demanded that any agreement include verification mechanisms so as to be more than a paper sham. The resulting outrage from China spoke volumes about the power and persistence of nationalism.

This is the reality. It will remain the reality. Whether the subject is esoteric and absurd such as anthropogenic climate change or down, dirty, and in the mud of reality such as the thwarting of Iranian nuclear ambitions, the motivator of states will remain the same. It will be what it always has been in the past, a careful calculation of what course of action best serves the national and strategic interests of the state--or, worse but more common, what will serve the political interests of the present government.

If Gordon Brown were to be afflicted with a severe case of honest self-assessment, he would have to admit that his obsession with global warming is a calculated effort to divert attention within the British electorate with the very real problems at home, problems which call into serious question the future election prospects of the Labor Party. The national interest, the strategic interests of the UK, were not in play at Copenhagen despite the plentiful catastrophe predicting oratory of Mr Brown. All that was at stake was the ability of the Brown Ministry to bamboozle the public well enough to limit the election damage yet to come.

Mr Obama's performance at Copenhagen was similarly inclined less to furthering the interests of the US and more to bolstering his political interests at home during a time of sinking polls and doubt over the great healthcare transformation effort in the Senate. The President had to have some semblance of success, no matter how insubstantial in substance without at the same time being seen to have blatantly sold American jobs and the national economy down the river in order that the plaudits of the European elite might ring louder in his ears.

Now, back in the real world, both Mr Obama and Mr Brown must deal with the power of national interest as the clock runs out on the end of the year deadline for Iranian compliance with the demands of the "international community" or at least the P5+1. National interest alone will dictate the positions taken regarding sanctions on the part of Russia and China. National and strategic interests will determine just how well the German, French, or British government actually enforce sanctions both past and future.

And, national interest of the most existential sort will determine how long Israel waits before taking solo action to abate the Iranian threat.

The Tehran regime will also have to weigh national interest, including that of an existential variety in determining their posture, including any changes from their so far successful approach of talk and delay, talk and bluster, talk and exploit the differences in national and strategic interest between the members of the P5+1. The Iranians will cloud their picture with the eschatological views of Shia Islam and the personal interpretations of that held by President Ahmadinejad. It will be further clouded by the potential impact of the funeral and memorial rites attendant upon the death of Ayatollah Montezeri.

In any and all these countries the crucial choices will be made by individual governments and not by the mythical "international community." In all these countries the governments, the decision makers, will base their decisions upon the needs, fears, and plans of their own nation's interests and strategic requirements.

So, Mr Brown and the rest of the crowd had best get a grip on the reality of nationalism and abandon the convenient delusion of an "international community." Their future (and ours) depends upon it.

"Obama Can't Even Fake An Interest..."

According to one of those usual suspects, an unnamed well-placed, well-informed source, The Telegraph (UK) reports that "He (Obama)can't even fake an interest in foreign policy." The occasion for the remark was an analysis of the badly blundered summit meeting with Gordon Brown.

There is no doubt but the president and his people stiffed the British PM. Any number of reasons have been offered. The Man With the Smile was too preoccupied with the economic catastrophe. The Nice Young Man From Chicago was overloaded having never anticipated the workload which piles on the big desk in the Oval. The Big O should never have made the Health Nazi required pledge to quit smoking.

Then there was the unnamed person reputed to reside at the State Department who decried the very notion of a "special relationship" between the US and the UK. This faceless (and clueless) denizen of Foggy Bottom went on to aver that the UK was simply one of a "150 countries" with which the US does diplomatic business. Rarely, if ever, has a policy extending back three-quarters of a century at the least been tossed aside so cavalierly.

It's time for a change!

It's time for President Obama to go to the mountain and have an epiphany.

It's time for the Nice Young Man From Chicago to get a grip on a ground truth or two.

The first of these foundational realities is the economic catastrophe--or more properly the ambit of Obama's and Congress's of "solutions"--encompasses the world. The US cannot fund the awe inspiring deficits proposed without totally draining whatever investment pool might exist following the proposed tax changes. Even without this latter complication, the vast sums must come in large part from foreign investors including sovereign wealth funds and direct government purchases of our notes.

Of course, foreign ownership of US debt has the very real potential of--shall we say--influencing American foreign policy as to both goals and methods. The Remember-We-Hold-Your-Note ploy can have great and increasing power over whoever sits in the Oval or hangs out in Foggy Bottom.

The unpleasant reality which the President has to get a firm grip on is very simple. The world is full of sharks. The smoothest, most implacable, most lethal of these do not have offices on Wall Street. They sit in the plush chairs in the Kremlin, the Forbidden City, Whitehall, the centers of power in Germany, France, Turkey and even Iran.

These people have been circling in the deep and turbulent waters of international politics searching for the scent of blood, finding prey, avoiding attack for a long,long time. In many cases these sharks of diplomacy have been swimming, striking and evading fatal bits since President Obama was organising the "po folk" in Chicago.

Dealing effectively with interlocutors far more experienced than the Nice Young Man From Chicago requires careful preparation, meticulous planning, and a limited agenda. Even with these necessities firmly in place, the worst can happen.

Another nice young man, John Kennedy,discovered this one fine day in Vienna. He was eaten alive by Khrushchev. The prepared, planned, pragmatic, polished man from Harvard was so much fishbait in the mouth of the vastly experienced Soviet leader.

Arguably, the humiliation and anger JFK felt and expressed on the flight back to the US played a role in his later, unfortunately overly robust foreign policy gambits which not only brought the world very,very close to nuclear war, but dropped our little white butts into the deep kimchee of Vietnam.

Having not yet had either an epiphany or a humiliating defeat by one or more of the assorted land sharks from the chancelleries of the world, the Man With The Smile is about to undertake a dive into the shark pool which would have daunted men with the experience and aplomb of Dwight Eisenhower. In a week of flurry Obama is going to take on NATO, the G-20, the EU and, now, Turkey. Along the way the president is presumed to have one-on-ones with such as Brown and Medvedev (and presumably others as well lest Germany or France feel slighted.)

Now, Mr Obama may have warm, fuzzy memories of his Great European Tour last year. The crowds! The adulation! Weren't they just grand? Sure. So what?

Woodrow Wilson had crowds fainting at his feet in 1918. Babies and streets were named after him by the hundreds. The applause could be heard from Paris to Tokyo. Woody ate it up.

So what? The land sharks from the UK, France and even Italy ate the American president for lunch (and dinner, and, come to think about it, breakfast as well.) The upshots from Wilson's adventure in summit diplomacy ultimately brought the world, inter alia, World War II, the mess in the Mideast, the dissolution of Yugoslavia and sundry other more minor debacles.

Of course, Mr Obama cannot aspire to equal the Wilson record--yet.

It would behoove him, however, to consider carefully the record of the last president who could not "even fake" an interest in foreign affairs. He will not have to look far for a full briefing on it. His administration is littered by retreads from the Clinton Administration.

The Clinton record in foreign policy is far from splendid. Indeed the word "disaster" comes creeping into one's mind. His "successes" such as opening free trade with China have sucked money, manufacturing jobs and technology into the grasp of a country which wishes the US anything but good. NAFTA has not paid off any discernible benefits for either the US or Mexico although Canada may have garnered some.

Most notably, Clinton's weak responses to the emergence of al-Qaeda coupled with his all-too-rapid withdrawal of American forces from Somalia brought in their train the current messes in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan. The misinterpreted success in Bosnia gave plausibility to "shock and awe" and adventures in regime change generally.

The Clinton Administration's concern with process over outcome assured that the North Korean problem would not only be unsolved in its earliest stage but would fester on becoming less amenable to solution with each passing year.

If the Geek could talk face-to-face with the Nice Young President, he would say, "Look, bucko, you have an agenda, I know. You want to change the US in many pertinent parts. That's OK. But, the world ain't going to leave you alone to carry out your Saul Alinsky inspired vision. To have a country which can exist as first among equals in the future you had best do one thing..."

The Geek imagines the dude interrupting, "Give it over, fast!"

"You had best not only fake an interest in foreign policy, you had best get a grip on the reality that foreign policy will in large measure dictate your overall success. Your place in history."

Then the Geek will light a cigarette. The president will eat his heart out.