Since January 20, 2009, the beginning of our new era of “smart power” diplomacy –
Kyrgyzstan has expelled U.S. forces from an air base that was a key link in supplying our troops in Afghanistan;
A. Q. Khan, formerly a marketer of nuclear secrets to North Korea and other noxious regimes, has been freed from house arrest;
Pakistan has conceded control of the Swat Valley and vicinity (population 5,000,000) to the Taliban; and
NATO countries have unanimously declined to commit additional troops to the Afghan campaign.
Elsewhere, Iran has continued its uranium enrichment and declared that it won’t negotiate a halt to its nuclear program. North Korea has renounced its armistice with the South and unveiled a missile that reportedly can reach the western United States. Just today comes the embarrassing news that Secretary of State Clinton’s downplaying of human rights abuses in Red China was followed promptly by the arrest of a dozen dissidents.
If there are positive developments to set against this gloom, they have been overlooked by the media. The new Administration gives the impression that its highest priority is to apologize for America’s past misconduct. Certainly, that is the one area in which it has enjoyed “success”.
As an instance of President’s decision to send a delegation to the preparatory meetings for the UN’s “Durban II” conference. The first Durban, from which the U.S. walked out in 2001, was an “anti-racism” gathering that found racism only in Israel. Work on the follow-up, whose explicit aim is to “to foster the implementation of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action”, is being overseen by a troika of Libya (chair), Iran (vice chair) and Cuba (rapporteur). Ostensibly, the Obama Administration wants to improve the agenda. That is obviously a naive hope, and the U.S. representatives have in any event pursued it tepidly:
[I]t didn’t take President Obama’s delegation two days before it sat in silence while Israel was singled out as guilty of racism — again.
Why would the delegation behave this way? The idea, seemingly, is to make it appear to an American audience that the Conference’s prospects are improving, that there are no intense disagreements. Just business as usual at the U.N., where multilateral engagement is always a force for good. The less said by the United States, the smoother multilateralismproceeds. . . .
U.S. strategy is evidently to announce the United States participated actively in the planning session, made proposals, and was given a warm welcome. Continuing efforts to improve the final result, it will be argued, are therefore warranted. The pace is sufficiently slow that this refrain will be repeated until it is so late in the day that walking out would cause a major diplomatic furor, which will in turn be used to justify attendance at the Conference itself. Obama’s hunger for engagement, in and of itself, is apparently his first priority. Israel is way down on the list and and American first principles are now subject to discussion.
UN talkfests are a small matter. Afghanistan is a big one. Candidate Obama insisted that it is the central front of the War on Terror. He has already authorized the deployment of 17,000 more troops there (nearly a 50 percent increase over the current 38,000). From an abstract geopolitical point of view, one can argue about how crucial Afghanistan really is, but there’s no doubt that the President has made it crucial through his rhetoric. Both our friends and our enemies will be watching see whether America can secure a victory like the one in Iraq or will revert to the status of “paper tiger”.
There are two reasons to question how “smart” it is to place so much emphasis on this particular conflict.
First, it is hard to imagine a possible outcome in Afghanistan that would be an unequivocal victory. When was that country last united under an effective government? The reign of Sultan Babur, perhaps? By comparison, Iraq is a modern, first world nation. It is far from likely that a friendly government in Kabul will rid the provinces of warlords, drug merchants, bandit gangs, mufsidun, etc. or that Afghan democracy will, for the foreseeable future, be more than skin deep. With only a little mismanagement, the American effort to foster constitutional government could end as badly as the Soviet Union’s attempt to impose communism a generation ago.
Second, having taken on this immense challenge, the new President has avoided the essential job of building up domestic support. His “surge” was announced in a Friday afternoon press release instead of a prime time television speech. He has done nothing, so far as I can tell, to move his base of supporters away from their default position against further involvement in foreign wars. Does he imagine that he can fight a war with the backing of only the Republican minority in Congress, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and the right side of the blogosphere? George W. Bush will wish him lots of luck.
The foreign policy of President Bush’s final year was, with the shining exception of Iraq, rather shambling and pointless. His successors so far have managed only to continue and accelerate the downward trend. If Smart Power were traded on the stock exchange, it would be doing about as well as the Dow.
Further reading: Herschel Smith, “Rapidly Collapsing U.S. Foreign Policy”
Update (2/28/09): The Obama Administration has decided not to attend Durban II, continuing President Bush’s non-participation in the process that produced “Zionism is racism” and a bevy of attacks on freedom of expression. One can only hope that this face-to-face encounter with the world’s despots peeled away a layer of “realism” from the new President’s foreign policy. That is change we would like to believe in, albeit some Obama enthusiasts may be upset.
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