After his setback in the US midterms, it seems global diplomacy will offer little respite for Barack Obama
WHEN US president Barack Obama was elected two years ago, the world seemed full of opportunities. He was forced to neglect them, to concentrate on domestic policy. Now, after the setback of last week’s midterm elections, there is speculation the US president might turn his attention to foreign policy.
But a panel of experts who convened yesterday at the Brookings Institution made it clear that prospects for foreign policy successes are bleak.
Relations with China and Russia are increasingly tense, while the threat of extremist attack, the crisis over Iranian nuclear weapons and the abeyance of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians present more immediate dangers.
The most alarming prediction came from Bruce Riedel, a veteran of 30 years at the CIA who has advised Obama about al-Qaeda, Pakistan and Afghanistan. “Al-Qaeda is resilient. It is agile,” he said. Last year, the group abandoned its “self-constraining” strategy of plotting an attack more spectacular than the atrocities of September 11th, and is now determined to strike the US in any way possible, he said.
The attempt to ship bombs concealed in printer cartridges to the US late last month showed that “al-Qaeda can build a bomb which can go undetected through any system. It can bring down a cargo aircraft, and possibly a passenger aircraft . . . The odds are pretty good we will see a mass-casualty terrorist attack.”
Robert Kagan, a conservative commentator who was an adviser to John McCain during his presidential election campaign, said that if such an attack occurs, Obama “has to look like a strong leader”. A timid response would be condemned by Republicans and Democrats alike. “It will be very hard for the president not to take some kind of military action.”
Riedel said much would depend on the “postmark” of the attack. Al-Qaeda “would love another war in a mountainous region known for xenophobia,” he said, referring to Yemen.
An attack originating in Pakistan “would be much more complicated, a real nightmare”, because Pakistan is a nuclear power, and because it controls the supply line to 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan.
Suzanne Maloney, an expert on Iran at Brookings and an adviser to the US undersecretary of state Bill Burns, said the Republicans’ midterm victory made the use of force against Iran more likely. Last weekend, Senator Lindsey Graham, a leading GOP spokesman on national security, urged Obama to make it “abundantly clear” that if Iran obtains nuclear weapons, the president would “not just neutralise their nuclear programme . . . but sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard. In other words, neuter that regime. Destroy their ability to fight back.”
The state department hopes to convene talks with Iran, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany as early as the end of this month. “The best possible outcome would be a very basic, inadequate agreement,” Maloney said. “How do you sell that on the Hill, when your interlocutor denies the Holocaust and has conspiracy theories about September 11th? How can the administration argue that’s a successful engagement?”
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu is in the US this week. “Netanyahu is much more Republican than Likud,” said Martin Indyk, a former employee of the pro-Israeli lobby group Aipac, former US ambassador to Israel and director of foreign policy at Brookings. The Israeli leader “has a great relationship with Republicans”, Indyk noted. He’s been telling US lawmakers and Jewish groups that it’s time to “get much tougher” on Iran.
Indyk said Netanyahu “feels a new confidence, now that he has Congress with him”. This was shown by his brusque “Jerusalem is ours” response to Obama’s criticism on Tuesday of new Israeli housing units in Arab east Jerusalem.
Indyk said there was no hope that Obama would reach his goal of an independent Palestinian state attending next year’s UN General Assembly, unless the focus shifts from Israeli settlements to drawing up final borders. “Obama has raised expectations in the Islamic world and beyond that Palestine is coming in 2011,” Riedel said. “I don’t see it coming, unless he is willing to be really bold and break some domestic political china, big time.”