Obama’s foreign policy – “business as usual”
Published: 01 November, 2009, 21:51
Edited: 12 February, 2010, 15:39
Over the past 10 months I considered myself as a holdout. I said we must give the new American administration a chance to demonstrate that Washington had shed its neocon convictions and policies. Well, I have to say I have had enough. The verdict is in – it is “business as usual” in Washington. America’s foreign policy is not about change when it comes to substance – only the tone is different.
I like to think I am a patient person (most people who know me would probably disagree). I had hoped for a new American approach toward Russia. It hasn’t really happened. Operation “re-set button” was a public relations ploy – and a cheap one at that. Nothing has really changed. When Hillary Clinton was in Moscow she couldn’t refrain from the usual Washington lecturing on how it was a pity Russians aren’t like Americans – as if America is a beacon of human rights with Gitmo still open and “processing” suspects.
Nonetheless, Russian-US relations are slowly on the mend. Moscow is helping Washington to understand something called pragmatism. Washington needs Russia’s help when dealing with Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, North Korea, non-proliferation of nuclear technologies and a host of other issues. But please tell me – when, how and where does Russia lecture the US about foreign policy? It doesn’t – Russia is only interested resolving global problems and not lecturing anyone. The Obama administration is still in need of a hearing aid!
While visiting the Middle East, Clinton said Israel’s “new” stance regarding the building of settlements in the West Bank was “unprecedented.” Seriously, I lost my lunch all over my keyboard when reading these words. The fact is Obama has again caved in, and caved in badly. Obama, for a very short interval, had the chance to say and do something very different from traditional American foreign policy in the Middle East. Instead the new president folded and what could have been a meaningful peace process folded as well. Israel needs only a few more months to complete its colonization of the West Bank to make the possibility of a Palestinian state a very real impossibility. Clinton’s words will have horrific consequences.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is now Washington’s man by default – this is more than a pity, it is a catastrophe. The main opposition candidate in the run-off election after the tainted first round in August, Abdullah Abdullah, has pulled out. It has always been a fool’s errand to make Afghanistan into a democracy of any sort. Abdullah Abdullah is no saint, mind you. He too wants to court Washington using the democracy card, and again with no thought about what the Afghan people think. The Taliban and their Pakistani friends must be having a great laugh. Washington continues to fight a war it can never win and everyone involved except the Americans and NATO know this.
I find all this quite amusing in a bizarre way. The Pakistanis say they are fighting the “bad” Taliban in Pakistan, while making deals with their “good” Taliban. (The “good” Taliban are groups that Islamabad supports in the hope of dominating Afghanistan).
On the Afghan side, the US appears only want to fight Al Qaeda and not the Afghan Taliban. Well, isn’t that convenient. The “bad” Pakistani Taliban can go to Afghanistan for rest and recreation without worrying about the Americans and NATO (which has no stomach for a fight anyway). All of this would be amusing if it weren’t so dangerously wrongheaded.
It is obvious that the Obama administration has not learned from the Bush people. America’s global empire, I guess, has nothing to do with the party of power in Washington. Obama’s words are only words and will do nothing to stop the utter decline of the empire. Obama is not leading on anything on the world stage, it is only playing out a lost cause. I suppose it was naive to think otherwise.
