Article published November 11, 2009
U.S. faces irrelevance on international issues
LAST week, President Obama's foreign policy suffered three body blows - in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The administration is now in the corner, patching up its cuts. One situation has improved, but, if it does not now come out counterpunching effectively, it may well be dead meat for the rest of his term. No one will end up with much respect for Mr. Obama.
Getting hurt in the crucial first rounds of these frays would make it more difficult for America to be taken seriously in the world and for Mr. Obama to be seen as much more than an engaging speechmaker who does not know how to put his promises into effect. Whether these shortfalls would cost him politically at home would remain to be seen.
In none of these cases is the battle truly over. There is still room and time to turn these setbacks into wins. But each will require fast, strong, decisive action. Even one turn-around would make a difference. Three would show the world that Mr. Obama and the United States under his leadership must be taken seriously. It can be done. But time is wasting.
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and other Afghans basically made fools of the United States and Mr. Obama in the past few weeks. They took our naive attachment to the supposed sanctity of democratic elections to roll us. Millions of dollars were spent to hold elections. Mr. Obama surged U.S. troops in the country by 21,000 to try to assure security.
Mr. Karzai then directed massive fraud to assure his victory. He was caught doing it, which anyone with half a brain would have known would occur. Mr. Obama then astonishingly tied his own decision to increase, keep level, or reduce U.S. troops there to successful completion of the elections through a runoff. Mr. Karzai's tame opponent turned that ploy into farce by saying he saw no point in proceeding with the runoff because its result was already determined.So who was left holding the bag? Who was left looking as if he thought the elections were a serious effort to put a government with an electoral mandate in place in Afghanistan? It wasn't Mr. Karzai and the Afghans. It was the dopey Americans, and there is the possibility that they might put more troops into the country to fight and die to keep the Karzai government in power.
How to fix this? How to regain control of our own role in Afghanistan? Mr. Obama should announce that he has completed his review of the situation and that a phased withdrawal of all 68,000 U.S. forces there will begin Dec. 1, with the process to be completed by June 1 of next year.
What's turning into another bad joke in U.S. foreign policy is our troop withdrawal from Iraq, where we have 120,000 troops. The withdrawal of 70,000 troops by August cannot begin until after the Iraqi national elections, set for Jan. 16. The idea, again, is that 120,000 U.S. troops need to be there to assure safe, democratic elections. The elections are supposed to put into place an Iraqi government with a mandate to rule the place happily ever after, or at least until we get our troops out by 2011.
So what were the Iraqis doing? To have an election Jan. 16, the Iraqi parliament had to pass an elections law; it did so Sunday. Its members wrangled over it at length, with Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, and smaller groups pitted against each other over oil money. There are signs that Mr. Obama might let them torpedo our troop withdrawal schedule while they postpone the elections.
What to do about this one? To keep the pressure on, Mr. Obama should announce that U.S. troop withdrawal will proceed on schedule, starting Jan. 17. For good measure, he could announce that he was advancing withdrawal of the first 10,000 to Dec. 15.
The third debacle was the collapse of the Middle East peace process - the negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians to result in two states, living side by side, recognized by each other.
Hopes launched by Mr. Obama of a revival of the peace process collapsed during last week's disastrous visit to the region by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has successfully stiffed Mr. Obama on the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Mrs. Clinton signed onto his ploy, rather than stiffing him back, which would have been consistent with U.S. opposition to the settlements. There can be no agreement while Israeli settlers are in what would be the Palestinian state.
In response, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he wouldn't run in presidential elections in January because there wasn't any point, given Mrs. Clinton's praise of Mr. Netanyahu's position on the West Bank settlements. On that basis, the key Middle East peace process is dead, failing major resuscitative action, for Mr. Obama's term.
How to fix it? Mr. Obama should tell the Israelis through a senior envoy that U.S. aid of $3 billion a year to Israel will be cut by $100 million monthly until settlement construction is stopped, and demolition of the current settlements begins. Decisive action on these issues would put Mr. Obama and America back in the world-affairs game. Otherwise, we will have to resign ourselves to increasing irrelevance.
Dan Simpson, a retired diplomat, is a member of the editorial boards of The Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
E-mail dsimpson@post-gazette.com
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