For President-elect Barack Obama, the Urgent Demands of a Perilous World
There will be moments, in the years to come, when Barack Obama will feel the weight of the world like no one else. And as this tumultuous first decade of the 21st century winds down—a decade seemingly bracketed by the horror of September 11 and an international financial meltdown—it has to be said: What a weight it is.
America's recession and its deepening problems in joblessness, healthcare, infrastructure, and so on might in the past have invited a period of national introspection, of singular focus on fixing the ailments at home. Obama, however, will not have that option—not in an era in which opportunities, problems, and threats all have been globalized in ways once unthinkable.
Even the most experienced foreign policy veterans marvel at Obama's heavy load. "It's a pretty fearsome number of issues that the new president has to face," says former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft.
Beyond the global economic woes and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there's the ongoing fight against terrorists and the specter of new nuclear powers. Add to that climate change and energy vulnerabilities. Anti-Americanism, strained alliances, and new, rising powers. And those are just some of the main points.
Obama will benefit from a few Bush administration achievements. After a hazardous start with China, for example, relations have stabilized with the next country that is likely to gain superpower status. Ties to other key emerging countries—India and Brazil—have also progressed. In a rare turnabout, Libya abandoned its nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs. And a possible framework for a future Israeli-Palestinian peace has been erected.
Eroded goodwill. But surveyed broadly, the world Obama faces in 2009 looks a good deal more complicated and dangerous than what George Bush encountered in 2001, even taking into account the radical Islamist caldron then building toward an eruption on a brilliant, sunny day that September. The global goodwill that poured forth afterward, as well as the deference often accorded U.S. leadership since World War II, has since eroded. The first years of the 21st century have rattled the certainties of the last one. "Many presidents inherit headaches," says former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. "Barack Obama has inherited the whole emergency room."
The Obama years will play out across a changing geopolitical landscape. By many accounts, America's relative clout has diminished. Emerging or resurgent powers—especially China, Russia, India, and Brazil—are demanding a bigger role in decisions on finance, trade, and security. China may become the world's largest economy as soon as 2027. It will also be growing into a much bigger political and military player.
Russia has fallen into an acutely nationalistic mood. The Russian resentments include NATO's expansion eastward, U.S. and western support for anti-Russian movements in Georgia and Ukraine and Kosovo's independence, and moves to build missile defenses. Russian leaders greeted Obama's victory with a warning to the United States: Proceed with your missile shield planned for Poland and the Czech Republic, and Moscow will install missiles in a Russian enclave next door. Russia's regression toward autocracy and its opposition to key U.S. interests may be the biggest strategic setback since the end of the Cold War.
America will very likely remain the most influential global actor but by a thinning margin. "The United States' relative strength—even in the military realm—will decline and U.S. leverage will become more constrained," predicts the U.S. intelligence community in its "Global Trends 2025" report.
America's soft power—its ability to persuade without coercion or force—has taken a major hit during the Bush years. The early overseas take on Bush as a unilateralist too quick to use force was never overturned, despite a more pragmatic second-term foreign policy. Go-it-alone tendencies on climate change, international justice, arms control, and—above all—Iraq harmed U.S. standing and invigorated anti-Americanism. America's moral authority was further battered by the way Washington waged the war on terrorism, especially reports of abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.
Foreign politicians have avoided appearing too close to the United States. "Being helpful to the Americans is the kiss of death in domestic politics," says Joseph Nye, a Harvard political scientist and former Pentagon official who coined the "soft power" term. "Obama will find there is residual suspicion of the U.S."
One partial antidote to that toxic mood is Obama himself. His racial heritage and improbable rise to the peak of global power have resonated deeply in much of the world. He reminds all of the American capacity for renewal and change and of what can happen in a real democracy. With an Obama presidency, predicts Kishore Mahbubani, a Singaporean college dean and former diplomat, "at least half of the anti-Americanism will vanish."
Obama vows to restore America's standing in the world. But he will find that his diplomatic machine is sputtering. Underfunded and understaffed, the American Foreign Service is not primed for the diplomatic surge Obama may want to unleash. "Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the diplomatic capacity of the United States has been hollowed out," charges a report by the American Academy of Diplomacy and the Stimson Center.
Recession. The reservoir of soft power available to Obama has been depleted further by the financial meltdown. The recession's mounting costs will limit foreign aid and other initiatives abroad. Obama is being handed both an apparent global downturn and, for the first time since 1982, a drop in world trade. The economic pain dims chances for reviving world trade talks. Poverty may balloon, provoking unrest where governments are fragile. More difficult, too, will be the transition to a new-style energy economy, with its considerable technology investments and costly steps to curb greenhouse gases. Bearing down early on the Obama administration are negotiations for a new global climate-change pact, due next December.
The new president also inherits an unprecedented two wars that have each lasted longer than the U.S. role in the two world wars, combined. Bush's elective war to topple Saddam Hussein will live on as a scene-setter for the Obama years. As a candidate, Obama rode to victory in part on his opposition to the Iraq invasion. He has been calling to withdraw U.S. combat troops within 16 months, leaving a residual force of thousands to train the Iraqis and for contingencies. Now, he will confront a separate timetable laid out in a new U.S.-Iraqi security agreement that establishes a Dec. 31, 2011, withdrawal date. Obama will benefit from the reduced insurgent violence that reflects both Bush's gamble on a U.S. troop surge (still at 146,000) and shaky truces by key Shiite and Sunni parties.
The advances have come at enormous cost: more than 4,200 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead and outlays approaching $700 billion. The gains are very fragile, and a core uncertainty remains: Will Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish Iraqis restrain their sectarian and ethnic rivalries long enough to hold together as a nation?
By contrast, Obama sees Afghanistan as "the right war," though one allowed to drift amid Bush's Iraq fixation. The incoming president promises to bolster the current 34,000 U.S. troops with at least two brigades; they will join 30,000 from other countries. But the war instigated seven years ago to root out the perpetrators of 9/11 has entered, warn U.S. intelligence agencies, "a downward spiral." An insurgency in impoverished rural areas fights on, with sanctuaries in the mountainous tribal realms of Pakistan. It is fueled by opium money and disdain for a Kabul government unable to clamp down on corruption or extend its dominion. At least 153 U.S. soldiers perished there in 2008, more than in any previous year.
Pressure for a new strategy in Afghanistan is building. "We're not going to defeat them on the battlefield," says Scowcroft. Instead, the coming troop surge is likely to be paired with a broader campaign to ease poverty, provide services, and buck up the Kabul government. The idea of negotiating with some insurgents is gaining support in national security circles. Such a political process would try to peel off elements of the Taliban vaguely called the "reconcilables." But the period for a purely military defeat of the Taliban, if it ever existed, appears to have slipped away.
Bush also passes on the campaign to vanquish al Qaeda. The often clandestine conflict has seen tactical victories but promises to go on for years. Al Qaeda has adapted to U.S. and allied pressure by morphing into a far-flung network of Islamist terrorist groups. Osama bin Laden remains at large, most likely holed up in Pakistani tribal lands.
Other risks are growing. Footloose foreign militants who gravitated to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan could well stage attacks elsewhere. Pakistan and its tribal areas are already considered the main wellspring of international terrorism, as November's stunning attacks in Mumbai help illustrate.
Plenty of other unfinished business awaits Obama. He and his choice for secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, will likely need to train much of their diplomatic energy on the Mideast. Bush recently argued that it "is a freer, more hopeful, and more promising place than it was in 2001." That is not the view there. Instead, the U.S.-led Iraq invasion and occupation, along with Bush's democracy-promoting "Freedom Agenda," are seen as having shaken, rather than settled, the region. Iran and the radical movements Hezbollah and Hamas have expanded their influence. U.S. activism for an Israeli-Palestinian peace came late, and the effort is stalled. Palestinians are divided into two camps, with Hamas having taken over Gaza after winning U.S.-promoted elections. Washington is distrusted by most Arabs as reflexively pro-Israel, leaving America's Arab allies on the defensive.
Advancing peace. Against that backdrop, the Israeli-Palestinian question is likely to see new attention. For all its frustrations, such peacemaking is still key to U.S. aims: reducing terrorism and anti-Americanism, blunting the influence of Iran and radical movements, bringing security to Israelis and Palestinians, and winning over Arab help on stabilizing Iraq and other issues.
Obama has said he will try to advance peace "from the minute I'm sworn into office." He may well feel compelled to, if only to ease the volatility of a region that can overwhelm other priorities and propel tragedy onto faraway shores. "What happens in the Middle East won't stay there. We're not talking about Las Vegas," says Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
If Tehran went for broke, it might be able to build a nuclear weapon in two to five years. That could well trigger a nuclear arms race in the region and tempt a pre-emptive Israeli strike, if not a U.S. attack. Obama favors "tough but direct diplomacy" with Tehran without preconditions. Yet any initiative will prove difficult. Iran seems determined to proceed, having elevated its nuclear program to a national cause.
The other leading proliferation challenge comes from the far end of Asia. Under Bush, North Korea has gone from holding one or two bombs' worth of plutonium to as many as eight. Much of that advance occurred while administration hard-liners, hoping for regime change, resisted serious, direct talks with the North. It has now become a de facto nuclear power, testing one bomb in 2006. In the second Bush term, U.S. diplomats participated in a six-nation negotiating framework that yielded a general denuclearization agreement, a freeze on nuclear work, and some moves to disable its reactor complex in exchange for aid. But the secretive regime tirelessly assembled roadblocks, throwing the problem over to Obama. The North Koreans now apparently hope that Obama will offer more incentives for them to quit the nuclear business. Indeed, it is not at all certain that the North is even willing to give up all of its bombs and nuclear infrastructure.
Other problems will occupy the new administration as well. In Europe, old alliances need more repair work. Differences over handling a resur-gent Russia are widening, and Obama will press NATO to send more sol-diers to Afghanistan.
In Latin America, U.S. inattention has taken a toll, and Obama will feel pressure to correct it. The populist left has been winning elections. Venezuela's Hugo Chávez remains a champion to anti-U.S. movements. And Washington's fruitless Cuba policy, including the decades-old embargo, offends many in the region.
Then there is Africa, most of which rejoiced that the son of a son of Africa would attain the pinnacle of international power. Obama's first visit as president to the continent, especially to his late father's native Kenya, may prompt one of the most remarkable outpourings of emotion ever witnessed. Yet humanitarian and security crises from Darfur and Somalia to Congo and Zimbabwe will force Obama to clarify what America is, and is not, willing to do for Africa.
Obama's overarching challenge will be to bring closure to the foreign policy problems bequeathed by Bush while initiating his own changes. Changes, that is, that garner what Bush so often lacked—the aura of legitimacy that comes with broad international support.
Obama is often touted as a transformational figure. He may need to be if he is to meet the soaring expectations of a troubled world.
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