EDITS | Thursday, January 21, 2010 | Email | Print | 
A year later, not so tall
G Parthasarathy
Just over a year ago, when Mr Barack Obama was sworn in on January 20, 2009 as the 44th President of the United States, he was seen at home and abroad as a catalyst for ‘change’, someone who would usher in a revival of the economy and national self-confidence at home and a new era that would see his country provide moral leadership for global peace, security and cooperation. He had an approval rating then of 68 per cent. Barely a year later, Mr Obama’s popularity has plummeted to 46 per cent.
Former President Jimmy Carter had a 57 per cent rating for a comparable period of his presidency while the charismatic John Kennedy’s popularity rating was 77 per cent at the end of his first year as President. Given the dominant global role of the US and the crucial influence of domestic events on American foreign policy, how will these developments affect the American leadership’s approach to international issues?
While Mr Obama has lost popularity primarily because of growing unemployment, criticism has also begun to mount on his conduct of foreign policy. Even his supporters acknowledge that rather than focussing on a few critical areas, he has lost momentum because of simultaneously taking on too many issues — ranging from climate change and nuclear disarmament to West Asian peace initiatives and challenges posed by existing crisis points like Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The fiasco in Copenhagen placed the US in the embarrassing situation of being unable to provide moral leadership by agreeing to fulfil the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol on the one hand while expecting emerging and developing countries to make unacceptable sacrifices on the other. Hopefully, realism will prevail in 2010 and the US will realise the need for equity in dealing with others.
Globally, promises to ink a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia and close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Mr Obama’s first year in office remain unfulfilled. Recently, the US faced its first airborne terrorist threat since 9/11 following intelligence shortcomings. Yemen has emerged as a new centre of global terrorism. The West Asia peace process has come to a halt, with Israel continuing settlement activity. North Korea remains adamant in retaining its nuclear programme while demanding that the US conclude a peace treaty, whereas the world remains averse to calls for new nuclear sanctions on Iran, even though Mr Obama has shown considerable flexibility in fashioning a new approach to the Islamic republic.
Mr Obama has crafted his entire approach to global relations on the mistaken belief that he can build a new world order based on a Sino-American condominium in which the US and China would work cooperatively and jointly guarantee world peace and security. What has emerged instead is an assertive China, emboldened by the belief that the US has been weakened by the economic downturn and that it was losing its military edge in the Western Pacific.
Moreover, China’s increasing assertiveness has been making its neighbours like Japan, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, and India, with whom it has differences on maritime and land boundaries, quite edgy. With China asserting that the US should recognise the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean as its sphere of influence, it is only a matter of time before the starry-eyed approach to Beijing starts being questioned in American circles. The decision of Internet giant Google to review the continuance of its operations in China, the suspicions evoked in Japan’s Hatoyama dispensation, and China’s development of anti-missile capabilities have led to uncomfortable question marks about some of the basic assumptions of Mr Obama’s foreign policy team.
If the Obama Administration’s policies to India’s east have been marked by miscalculations of China’s imperatives, its policies towards Afghanistan and Pakistan have been marked by uncertainty and vacillation. Even as the Pentagon was calling for reinforcements, Vice-President Joe Biden urged that his Administration should avoid involvement in counter-insurgency against the Taliban and focus exclusively on eliminating Al Qaeda. Mr Obama, in turn, tried to placate domestic criticism by declaring that he would begin scaling down troop levels in Afghanistan by mid-2011.
The net result is that the Taliban leadership and the Pakistani military establishment appear convinced that it is only a matter of time before the Americans cut their losses and run from Afghanistan. No amount of effort by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defence Secretary Robert Gates in stressing that the Americans will stay in Afghanistan as long as it takes to stabilise the situation there has changed this perception. This approach also appears to have convinced the ISI that the use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy against Afghanistan and India should be sustained.
India has emerged relatively unscathed from the dithering in Washington, DC. Suggestions by sections of the Obama Administration to nominate a Special Envoy to meddle in India-Pakistan relations were scotched. But concerns over Mr Obama’s quip — “Say no to Bangalore and yes to Buffalo” —remain. Similarly, during his visit to Beijing, he appeared ready to concede to China, a country that continues to supply nuclear weapons and missile know-how to Pakistan, a special role in relations between India and Pakistan and to “strengthen dialogue and cooperation” in South Asia. It is to the credit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that he did not mince his words about developments in India’s neighbourhood, whether it was on terrorism or on the Obama Administration’s earlier illusions about China, during his US visit.
At his joint Press conference with Mr Singh, Mr Obama described India as a “responsible power”. He added: “The US welcomes and encourages India’s leadership role in helping to shape the rise of a stable, peaceful and prosperous Asia.” Moreover, the Manmohan Singh-Barack Obama Joint Statement reiterated their “shared interest in the stability, development and independence of Afghanistan and in the defeat of terrorist safe havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan”.
The India-US relationship has vast potential for expansion in key areas ranging from agriculture, education and energy to space, defence and high technology cooperation. But New Delhi will have to bear in mind that it is dealing with a US Administration that is anything but sure-footed. Despite this, the world’s two largest democracies can work together on global issues like climate change and in facilitating a global economic recovery, apart from countering terrorism, building an inclusive architecture for cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region and establishing a stable balance of power in Asia.
Email | Print | Rate:
|