The United States should provide global leadership with less recourse to military might, President Barack Obama said yesterday, proposing a foreign policy doctrine focused on diplomacy and launching financial grants to fight terrorism through international partnerships.
In a speech to graduates at West Point military academy, the president sought to carve a middle way between the relentless US interventionism of recent decades and a growing isolationist tendency that some fear will leave the world less stable and without a dominant superpower.
The much anticipated foreign policy address came after Mr Obama presented a delayed timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan amid growing criticism from Republicans of foreign policy “weakness” triggered by setbacks in Syria and Ukraine.
In one of the concrete policy proposals of the speech, Mr Obama gave an example of alternative ways to protect US national security by calling on Congress to support a $5 billion (€3.6 billion) counterterrorism partnerships fund to train and support partner countries in areas such as the Africa’s Sahel. “We must shift our counterterrorism strategy – drawing on the successes and shortcomings of our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan – to more effectively partner with countries where terrorist networks seek a foothold,” he said.
The president rejected the choice between fighting wars and withdrawing from foreign challenges, arguing it was possible for the US to lead through example and by creating international alliances. “We have been through a long season of war,” he told the first West Point class.
“US military action cannot be the only – or even primary – component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.”
Less aggressive
The promise of a less aggressive US foreign policy comes despite Mr Obama’s increased use of drone attacks and continued failure to shut the Guantánamo Bay detention facility.
Between the end of the cold war and 9/11, US presidents intervened militarily every 17 months on average, including in Panama, Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo, but Mr Obama said the end of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq offered the chance of a new approach. “Here’s my bottom line: America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will,” he said. “The question we face . . . is not whether America will lead, but how we will lead.”
The president also announced limited steps in response to the Syrian civil war, promising greater assistance to neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq to “host refugees, and confront terrorists”. He also defended his decision not to intervene in Syria militarily and expressed a willingness to expand US assistance to groups trying to oust Bashar al-Assad.
But much of the speech dealt with the need to use international institutions to tackle broader global problems such as climate change and border disputes.
“American influence is always stronger when we lead by example. We cannot exempt ourselves from the rules that apply to everyone else,” he said. “What makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it’s our willingness to affirm them through our actions.”
The president said the US would have fewer partners and be less effective if a perception took hold that it was conducting surveillance against ordinary citizens.
Senior administration officials acknowledged after the speech that the Edward Snowden revelations had played a part in the president’s decision to stress the need to lead by example.
The overall tone of the speech was of a president promising less armed conflict than in recent years to a military and a nation he believes is weary of war.
“To say that we have an interest in pursuing peace and freedom beyond our borders is not to say that every problem has a military solution,” added Mr Obama.
Referring to West Point graduates who have died in Afghanistan, he said: “I am haunted by those deaths. I am haunted by those wounds. And I would betray my duty to you, and to the country we love, if I sent you into harm’s way simply because I saw a problem somewhere in the world that needed fixing, or because I was worried about critics who think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking weak.”
– (Guardian news)