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September 24, 2008
Fossilized Foreign Policy
On the international scene, Barack Obama is five years out of date.
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online

Much of what Barack Obama has said about the world beyond our shores is about five years out of date. Its pedigree is the stale campaign rhetoric of years past. But the world of 2009 will be far different from 2003. And if elected, a President Obama would probably not do much differently abroad than what we are doing right now.

Take Afghanistan. It is not the proverbial “good” war — as if the Taliban thinks they are more likely to lose than was al Qaeda in Iraq, because the United Nations and NATO were always more supportive of American operations in Afghanistan than in Iraq. Even the tired cliché “Taking our eye off the ball” rings hollow, given that radical Islam suffered a terrible defeat in Iraq in a way it did not in the Hindu Kush. Seasoned American troops also gained critical anti-insurgency skills in Iraq in a way short-leashed NATO soldiers in Afghanistan did not.

Instead, the dilemma of the last seven years remains the de facto sanctuary offered to the Taliban and Islamic terrorists by nuclear Islamic Pakistan. Yet our options do not include overt invasions into Pakistan as once suggested by Obama. Most likely, after the election we will continue to do what we are doing — killing terrorists on Pakistani soil through airborne drone attacks and occasional stealthy incursions — most denied by both us and the Pakistani government; promoting democratic reform; using American aid and the threat of its suspension to force government action against the tribal badlands; and strengthening ties with democratic India.

The Afghan government, while constitutional, remains far more ossified than is the much maligned Maliki administration in Iraq. It cannot win the hearts and minds of Afghans unless it proves to tribes that it is less corrupt and more competent than the seventh-century Taliban thugs who once ran the country. Rhetoric about Iraq timetables, surges, and who voted for this and should apologize for that are talking points of the 2007 primary that were already fossilized when they were made. Like it or not, much of Iraq is quiet. Fewer Americans are being killed in Baghdad each month than are in Detroit, Chicago, or Los Angeles.

The argument is now only over when and how — rather than if — Americans withdraw. Two paradoxes predominate: We have to leave carefully as conditions on the ground allow and the autonomous Iraqis advise. And once we start leaving, it is highly unlikely that we will return in force. The general public consensus has been that the American occupation was aimed at achieving post-Saddam calm, not an endless guarantee of a perpetual quiet that does not currently pertain in Pakistan, Yemen, Turkey, or any other Islamic country. The objectives of the removal of Saddam and the creation of a calm landscape for constitutional government have been achieved. What follows in the next decade will be the choice and responsibility of the Iraqi people as our own dwindling presence reverts to something analogous — albeit to a much smaller degree — to the insurance forces now in Korea and Europe. Obama advocated all forces out by March 2008; he would be lucky to accomplish half that by 2010.

Obama also has suggested that both sides were at fault in Georgia, that the U.N. might solve the crisis, and that Iraqi preemption was the green light for Russian invasion. All that was mostly incorrect, and again part of the old 2003 blame-America-first, rely-on-the-U.N. harping. The fact is that a past bipartisan American effort to offer former Soviet republics constitutional government and integration with Western economies — while often clumsily enacted and poorly thought out — was, in principle, well worth the risk. The gambit worked. The result is that, despite hotheaded Georgian leaders, today we are dealing with a shrinking, isolated Russian oligarchy of 140 million people, not an imperial colossus of 300 million with compliant puppet states.

Wounded Russian pride and the soaring price of oil have honed Russian foreign policy into whatever the U.S. is for, they are against. We should understand that to expect any Russian help in Iran or the Middle East, or full integration with European countries, we would probably either have to see true democracy emerge in Russia — or, barring that, our own acquiescence to Russian attempts to subvert the proud democratic republics on its borders. Neither is likely. Obama’s past sermonizing about dismantling nuclear weapons, stopping weapons development, high-level talks with Russia to reduce strategic arms, ending anti-ballistic missile development, and cutting the Pentagon sounded like glitzy “hope and change” on the eve of the Iowa caucus, but is embarrassing to listen to a near year later.

The old mantra is still to talk with Iran. But we have done that frequently in past administrations, and the present Bush rhetoric is hardly bellicose. Our present uninterest in provoking Iran may explain why Teheran keeps screaming to nonexistent audiences about destroying Israel. Meanwhile, the mullahs look at Pakistan and North Korea and see that prestige, influence, money, and latitude are given to nuclear powers, even as the world claims proliferation brings ostracism and global disdain.

All choices with Iran are bad. Obama may grandly talk with Ahmadinejad, but will end up doing about what he is criticizing Bush for doing now — hoping that Iraq stabilizes and thus destabilizes Iran, rather than vice versa; hoping that sanctions weaken the Iranian economy to the point of prompting democratic reform; hoping that Europe, China, or Russia might help in stopping nuclear proliferation — all the while insisting that the military option is still open while privately expecting that Israel may act at the eleventh hour, bringing as much Western relief as it does condemnation of Israeli preemption and unilateralism.

Obama for years has been talking grandly of curbing anti-Americanism. But reciting myths to screaming Berliners — that the world, rather than the U.S. Air Force, once saved Berlin from the Russians — or citing our own misdemeanors to applause, is not a remedy. Mobs in Turkey, Pakistan, and Egypt may scream, “Death to America!” But each of those countries — all recipients of billions of American aid — is undergoing Islamic fundamentalist challenges that transcend what we say or do. Their former furor was spurred on by the idea we had invaded Iraq and failed, and is subsiding as we are restoring calm and sponsoring reform.

The truth is that much of Africa, India, and Japan are pro-American. So are the governments of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. It is easy to cite the old acrimony of 2003 over Iraq. But privately, disarmed Europeans these days are terrified of an energy-rich bullying Russia, Islamic terrorism and their own demographic nightmares, a nuclear Iran, and a carbon-spewing, commercial China — and look for “unilateral” U.S. leadership.

In the war against terror, Obama may dismantle Guantánamo in deference to global furor. But he will then be presented with a dilemma of what to do with captured insurgents. He will earn new problems of his own, either having to let jihadists go, set up Guantánamo-like prisons out of sight in Afghanistan, or to conduct costly trials — as if a killer without a uniform caught in combat on the Pakistani border shares the same Miranda rights as a teenager pulled over for an open beer container.

For all the rhetoric about a shredded Constitution, Obama will do nothing about the FISA laws. He won’t repeal the Patriot Act. Homeland Security will stay as it is. A President Obama won’t overhaul domestic security because we all privately assume that we have stopped hundreds of planned terrorist operations through vigilance here and fighting abroad over the last seven years. Even as a President Obama does nothing differently, watch the talk of America as a police state among his loud supporters suddenly cease.

When Obama talks of change abroad, he really means nothing much of substance, however effective his own personal story and multilateral rhetoric might be to win friends. But to achieve real enhancements in our global stature and influence, we need a financially stronger and less dependent United States. For that to transpire, we would have to curb the near trillion dollars we send abroad for energy imports; develop more oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear power at home; curb government spending; pay down debt; and forgo further government expansion and new programs.

The worst thing a new administration could do to weaken American influence abroad would be to repeal free trade agreements and rail at foreign producers, while ignoring fossil fuel production and nuclear power at home; to create a trillion-dollar new network of government entitlements; and to raise taxes in times of American uncertainty.

So far the Obama foreign policy has been whatever George W. Bush does, it must be inherently wrong — without realizing that the current administration is simply doing abroad what any sane president, liberal or conservative, would do in similar circumstances. Obama won’t change much overseas, but his policies at home of trade renegotiation, higher taxes, more government spending, strategic-arms cuts, billions invested in subsidies to unproven energy sources, and less fossil fuel production are reminiscent of the Carter administration. They would make us weaker, and thus ultimately even less liked abroad — disdain being the stronger emotion than envy.