Obama’s world legacy one of minimal force, maximum outreach
BARACK Obama came to office believing his predecessor had overreached in the world, notably in his conduct of the global war on terrorism.
Convinced that the US had become overextended and stood more alone on the world stage than ever before, Obama ran on a platform of ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and regaining the trust of the world. Facing the most significant financial crisis in generations, he stressed the importance of sharing the burdens and responsibilities of global leadership.
The result was a foreign policy that minimised reliance on largescale military action and maximised co-operation with others. Obama reduced the US military commitment to Iraq and, after a brief surge, transformed the US presence in Afghanistan into a small training mission. He sharply increased the use of small, targeted military operations, but he steadfastly resisted getting drawn into another major engagement of the kind launched by his predecessors.
Instead, Obama reached out to other nations, convinced that meeting new threats, as he said in his first inaugural address, demanded “greater effort, even greater co-operation and understanding between nations”. Even to America’s enemies, Obama offered to extend a hand to those willing to receive it.
This more restrained policy was broadly welcomed by US allies and friends abroad. Favourable views of America’s role in the world rose sharply and generally remained there for the duration of his presidency.
Restraint
But critics blamed his minimalist approach to military engagement for many of the ills in the world today. To them, Obama’s restraint led to a world in which Syria has become a humanitarian nightmare, a source of destabilising refugee flows into the Middle East and Europe and an incubator of Islamic State. They blame him for allowing a world in which Vladimir Putin has returned as a Russian strongman, invading neighbours and flexing his military muscle in the Middle East and beyond, and where China has risen as a geostrategic adversary in the Asia-Pacific region.
As Donald Trump put it, the Obama legacy abroad is “death, destruction, terrorism and weakness”.
The critics have a point. While saying he would never take options off the table, Obama made clear that restraint was his primary choice. Exhibit No 1 for his critics was the president’s failure to enforce his own red line in Syria – a failure that contributed to a perception of weakness.
Obama is right to note that working with Moscow to get rid of Syrian chemical weapons was an outcome no amount of bombing could have accomplished. But he is wrong to dismiss the idea that a president’s words matter, especially in foreign affairs. When other nations come to doubt those words, they may hedge their bets in working with Washington, and our ability to get them to align with us against common foes or in pursuit of common purposes will be lessened.
Yet it is simplistic to assign blame for all the world’s ills to Obama’s restraint. It is not clear that a more aggressive policy would have resulted in better outcomes. As the decade preceding his presidency showed, the opposite may well have been true. At the same time, the assumption that everything in the world happens because of American action or inaction greatly overstates our power and influence.
The situations in Syria, Iraq and Libya, and the rise of Islamic State and terrorist networks have far more to do with the long-standing crisis of governance in the Arab world than with how much force America is willing to use. Similarly, Putin had his own reasons for invading Ukraine and intervening in Syria – above all, to bolster his standing at home and defend Moscow’s interests in both countries.
And whether we like it or not, China is a rising great power and will increasingly act like great powers do, seeking to extend their sphere of influence regionally and globally.
The challenge for US foreign policy is not to deny these realities, but to forge policies that protect and enhance America’s interests in ways that take them into account. Indeed, this world of diffused power and increased global threats requires a different kind of American leadership – a 21st-century form of leadership.
That is the kind in which Obama believes, and which he largely exercised. To Obama, not every global problem has an American solution. Although few such problems can be solved without America’s direct involvement, in most instances it requires the active participation of others to succeed. Effective leadership in today’s world isn’t just about who is in the driver’s seat, but about who comes along for the ride. More often than not, it requires sharing of responsibilities, of burdens and of credit.
“The time has come to realise that the old habits, the old arguments, are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people,” Obama told the UN General Assembly in his first annual address there. “Together we must build new coalitions that bridge old divides.”
America seeks “a future of peace and prosperity”, but this can be achieved only “if we recognise that all nations have rights, but all nations have responsibilities as well. That is the bargain that makes this work. That must be the guiding principle of international co-operation.”
Perhaps nowhere was Obama’s view of US leadership more evident than with respect to the Iranian nuclear threat. From the outset, he made clear that he sought to engage Tehran to end its nuclear weapons programme. Although he did keep the option of force on the table, Obama preferred a negotiated deal, which he believed would be more lasting and less costly.
The result was a deal that capped Iran’s nuclear ambitions for a decade or more and put in place the most intrusive inspection regime ever negotiated.With all its flaws, the course Obama chose abroad was arguably a realistic one for turbulent times and a new century. – The Washington Post
Dalder is president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He served as US ambassador to Nato from 2009 to 2013.