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Obama's First 100 Days
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PRESIDENT OBAMA'S FIRST 100 DAYS
FOREIGN POLICY REPORT

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Crisis Management in the Era of the Emerging  Multipolar World Order

President Obama’s first 100 days of foreign policy engagement were without equal in America’s modern presidential experience. Inheriting a foreign policy agenda in disarray and widely condemned in capitals around the world for its strident unilateralism, the new administration launched a diplomatic offensive that took President Obama to 23 countries in three months. The new president acquitted himself well, demonstrating the gravitas, discipline and competency needed to manage America’s expanding foreign policy portfolio. In London, he served as de-facto Chief Executive Officer of the G-20 meeting before going on to address the European Union and NATO’s 60th anniversary conference.  As Commander-in-Chief he escalated troop levels in Afghanistan, announced an 18 month withdrawal plan in Iraq and battled pirates on the high seas. Acknowledging the rising eastern powers, the President proffered a nuclear arms reduction deal with Russia, agreed to meet China’s Hu Jintao in Beijing this summer and strengthened the bonds of affection with India’s Prime Minister Singh at their London meeting.

President Obama’s superintendence over multiple flashpoints of crisis foreshadows the new reality that the era of America’s unipolar global supremacy is coming to an end. In its place a new multipolar world order of shared decision making by major and emerging powers like Russia, China, Japan, India, Brazil and Mexico is rapidly becoming the source code of international relations. Although the U.S. will remain the principal world power in the near term, increasingly America will require working agreements and real partnerships if its wants to solve global problems. Thus, Barak Obama must not only guide America ’s ship of state as president, he is obligated by the confluence of world events to preside as maximum leader over a stormy and uncertain transition to a new global architecture. How he handles the most significant transformation of global security arrangements since the Cold War doctrine was adopted in 1949, is of critical importance. Since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, President Clinton and George W. Bush failed to craft a grand strategy to lead the world toward a more durable era of global peace and stability; the former conducting foreign policy on an ad-hock basis and the latter on the foundation of militarist unilateralism. The window of Obama’s first 100 days is too small to provide a definitive answer as too whether he will repeat the same mistake of lurching from crisis to crisis in the absence of an overarching grand strategy, but it does reveal the outlines of a new framework that is a work in progress.          
 
Arguably, Barak Obama may be the first president since America’s emergence as a world power to effectuate a tactical retreat to reconstitute American power and leadership. The economic recession that reached its nadir in 2008, has drained the nation’s treasury. Economic stimulus spending, bailout packages and the cost of underwriting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ballooned American debt upwards of five trillion dollars. The debilitating impact of the two conflicts on America’s armed forces has “hollowed out” U.S. military strength and severely degraded Washington ’s capacity to project power and sustain long-term commitments across the world. As the American peoples’ support for continued U.S involvement in these conflicts remains “soft” and can only be maintained if U.S. troop fatalities remain low, President Obama is walking a thin line with little margin for error on the battlefield. 
 
Similarly, the crisis of globalization has calcified reluctance in the European community to support the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq . Notwithstanding his efforts at the G-20 and NATO summits to combat Europe’s political stasis and incoherence, President Obama will not receive substantial troop additions or funding increases needed to prosecute the war in Afghanistan and support counter-terrorism efforts in Pakistan . The hemorrhaging global economy has Eastern European countries like Ukraine and Hungary teetering on the edge of financial insolvency and has accelerated the number of failed states in the developing world--Somalia being an extreme case in point. As the United States can no longer bear the burden of policing the entire western empire, President Obama will be increasingly confronted with difficult decisions concerning the deployment of American resources.     
 
President Obama’s detractors will undoubtedly decry his scaling back U.S. imperial hubris and condemn some of the compromises he will inevitably make. His strong reorientation of American foreign policy towards diplomacy will be casts as weakness and Obama portrayed as naïve to the realities of raw power. But President Obama is acting in a manner that is prudent and mature. His willingness to concede some ground to stabilize America ’s international position flows from a sobering assessment of the current limitations of American power, the strength of his adversaries and the capacity of America ’s allies to respond to the fluid international situation.    
 
Cognizant of the constraints on American power, President Obama’s foreign policy calculus calls for repositioning America ’s diminished but still formidable assets on the one hand, while stress-testing international organizations and institutions to mitigate international crises on the other. The IMF, World Bank and United Nations are Cold War institutions that no longer comport to the times and must be reformed. As articulated by President Obama, his overarching strategy to staunch the trajectory of global destabilization while renewing American leadership rest on a core six- point agenda: withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq to focus on broader issues; eliminating the al Queda and Muslim extremists’ threat in Pakistan and Afghanistan; rebuilding a weakened military; repairing America’s damaged international partnerships; dramatically reducing nuclear weapons and aligning U.S. foreign policy with traditional American values. In his first 100 days President Obama did not deviate from his course and emerged as a popular and trusted leader at home and abroad. In the weeks and months ahead he will need all the good will he can muster. His next year will likely be the most dangerous of his presidency.  
 
Over the next year, events in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan will dictate President Obama’s success or failure to stabilize a volatile international situation and halt the slide of American power. President Obama has decided that America ’s overall national security interest would be best served by cutting its losses in Iraq and Afghanistan . It is a very risky gamble in both countries. If renewed sectarian warfare can be avoided in Iraq -a big if absent a settlement on the status of Kirkuk --the U.S. can redeploy forces to Afghanistan and launch a major offensive to eliminate enough Taliban extremists and negotiate with moderate Taliban elements to join the national government. Eschewing grand visions of nation building President Obama hopes to secure support from his allies to finance and train enough national army, police and civil service workers to stand up a functioning country. Like Iraq , the drawdown of U.S. forces would begin as soon as the administration determined the Taliban/al Queda axis lacked the capability to use Afghanistan as a launching pad to attack the U.S and subvert its neighbors. What Obama seeks to avoid in Afghanistan is a long drawn out, demoralizing bloody war that would further stretch the military and divide the nation; hence the surge, strike and negotiate strategy.   
 
While the Obama administration has shifted its focus from Iraq to stopping the Taliban in Afghanistan , it is Pakistan that poses the greatest short-term danger to America ’s national security interest. The Zardari-Galani government is incapable of bringing order to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas or the Northwest Territories . The Pakistani Taliban and al Queda forces have now moved within 60 miles of Islamabad . Although President Obama continued to authorize limited Special Forces operations within Pakistan and Drone attacks, he cannot commit ground troops to Pakistan to neutralize the terrorist threat. To avoid the government’s collapse which would likely provoke a military response by India , President Obama must make preparations to support a temporary military takeover by Army Chief Kayani. The specter of a Taliban/al Queda inspired takeover of Pakistan would unravel the entire U.S. presence in the greater Middle East and heighten the danger of leaking nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorist elements. It is Pakistan where President Obama will likely meet his first supreme crisis, and he must be prepared to act.     
 
Outside the Middle East and Central Asian hot zone, the Obama administration turned its attention to the east, probing for parameters to engage Russia and China . Neither country has demonstrated enthusiasm to work with the U.S. to mitigate international conflicts. As regional hegemons both nations are seeking to solidify their spheres of influence and are united in their desire to push America out of Central Asia . President Obama came to office determined to recast U.S. -- Russia relations with a big initiative. At the G-20 Summit his quiet back channel diplomacy paid off with an announcement of nuclear arms reduction talks. Clearly, President Obama is attempting to generate momentum for positive relations with Russia , whose help he will need in Afghanistan and on the Iranian nuclear issue. It remains to be seen whether Moscow is willing to be a tactical ally or strategic adversary of the United States . As for Obama’s agreement to visit China this year, both sides want to establish ground rules that will lend predictability to solving critical debt, trade and financial issues in the aftermath of the global economic meltdown. This will be critical if Obama is to secure China ’s support on broader issues from global warming to North Korea .
 
Ironically, President Obama’s first one hundred days ended with very little said about Iran . With the first round of Iran ’s presidential elections coming up in June, what to do about Iran ’s nuclear enrichment program is going to move front and center on the foreign policy agenda. In truth, President Obama has few options to prevent Iran from mastering the uranium enrichment cycle, save an attack by Israel that at best could set the program back temporarily. By attempting to woo Syria from Iran’s sphere and offering to shelve deployment of missile defense shield systems in Poland and the Czech Republic in exchange for Russian cooperation to block Iran’s nuclear program, the Obama administration’s attempt to further isolate Iran is going nowhere. Should President Ahmadinejad be re-elected the standoff between the U.S. and Iran will sharpen considerably.       
 
Perhaps the most controversial actions taken by President Obama in the first 100 days of his administration was not the handshake with Hugo Chavez or relaxing travel restrictions with Cuba, but his decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and release documents detailing torture techniques used during the Bush administration. Both actions sparked a furious debate about whether these actions made America safer or were necessary to reestablish that the rule of law and American values will be upheld in “wartime.” President Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus and Roosevelt interned Japanese-Americans. It was a gutsy but ultimately correct position for President Obama to take, but one that will come back to haunt him politically if there is a terrorist attack on American soil.
 
What the first 100 days of the new administration reveals to us is that President Obama came to office with a solid plan and was fully prepared to execute a new foreign policy agenda. He has passed if not exceeded the threshold of competence and shown he is a capable manager of America ’s increasingly complex international affairs portfolio. It will be his response to a crisis that is surely to come, and his ability to craft a long-term grand strategy articulating America ’s place in the new multi-polar world order that will determine if he is the right leader to match the unprecedented historical moment.                         
From the Editor's Desk
For the next two decades, Middle Asia—the predominantly Muslim region of the Middle East, the Caucuses and Central Asia—will dominate international security concerns. Extricating U.S. armed forces from Afghanistan and Iraq and containing Iran’s nuclear program will occupy the center of President Obama’s foreign policy agenda. From Turkey to the West Bank, from Yemen to Pakistan, Middle Asia is the world’s most dangerous region. Rent with the currents of Islamic empowerment, nationalism, secessionist struggles, terrorist movements and nuclear proliferation, it is a cauldron of global instability. Middle Asia is also home to sixty percent of the world’s oil and natural gas reserves in the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea Basin and Central Asian steppes. For these reasons Middle Asia has become the focal point of war and great power rivalry between Europe, Japan, China, India and Russia over spheres of influence and energy resources. Thus, the pacification and reorganization of Middle Asia is the central task of the U.S.--European global project. The precipitous decline of U.S. power in “Middle Asia” now poses the most serious threat to American global hegemony and its role as the ultimate guarantor of international security.  The Obama administration’s setbacks in the region during his first year in office underscore the urgent need to reassess American grand strategy and the direction of its foreign policy.
 
America’s grand strategy to sustain its preponderance of global power rests on two pillars; maintaining the unfettered flow of Middle Asia’s energy resources to the U.S.-Atlantic alliance and preventing any single power or constellation of hostile powers from dominating Eurasia. The ascendency of an adversary to political and military dominion over Asia or the Middle East would inevitably reduce America to a second rate power. While Europe remains firmly committed to the Atlantic alliance, American hegemony in Middle Asia is the geo-strategic lynchpin sustaining U.S. global pre-eminence. President Bush’s wars to subdue Iraq and Afghanistan were part of a larger regional strategy to establish a permanent forward military presence on China and Russia’s doorstep while encircling Iran to foment regime change. Seeking to leverage America’s “unipolar moment” after the Soviet Union’s collapse, President Bush sought to achieve overwhelming control of Middle Asian energy resources as a strategic component of preventing the “rise of a global peer.” But wars have uncertain outcomes. Bush’s “imperial overreach” resulted in American engagement in two unwinnable wars that drained its treasury, unleashed domestic dissent and tarnished Washington’s image around the world.

Assuming the Oval Office with America’s power on the wane, President Obama moved quickly to re-position his exhausted U.S. military forces and repair Washington’s damaged international image. By reducing America’s military footprint in Middle Asia President Obama attempted to balance Washington’s global overextension with the need to reinforce America’s core national security interests. However, the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan has resulted in a major contraction of American power in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. President Obama’s actions may minimize America’s short term losses, but the long-term impact of America’s strategic retreat in Middle Asia will have far reaching implications.

Despite the surge of 30,000 U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan, scheduled troop withdrawals in 2011 were a tacit acknowledgement that the Taliban cannot be defeated militarily. Even if efforts to bring the Taliban into the Karzai government succeed the Taliban will likely remain a powerful non-state actor. The pullout of U.S. forces will also increase Pakistan’s need to preserve Taliban and Al Queda forces along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border as a hedge against India’s encroachment in Afghanistan and Kashmir. The possible outbreak of civil war between the non-Pashtun Northern Alliance majority and the Taliban cannot be dismissed. Intervention in Afghanistan by Russia, Iran, India and Pakistan is also a contingency if the government collapes. At best, Kabul’s weak central government will exercise nominal control over a highly fragmented country—making Afghanistan a very dangerous country and flashpoint for a regional conflagration for years to come.

On the heels of America’s retreat in Afghanistan, Russia and China have strengthened their efforts to push American military bases out of the Central Asian states of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Moscow and Beijing are also seeking to block U.S. efforts to underwrite new energy pipelines from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to Western Europe. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) led by China and Russia has evolved as the key vehicle for both countries to exert political and military control over Central Asia’s “Four Stans” that hold 21 percent of the world’s oil reserves and 45 percent of the world’s natural gas reserves. China has substantial energy interests in Central Asia. And maintaining stability in neighboring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan is critical to China’s efforts to suppress its restive Uighur Muslim minority in Xinjaing Province. In furtherance of China’s efforts to limit U.S. influence in Central Asia, Beijing has been conducting annual joint military exercises with its SCO partners and expanded its naval presence and ports in the Indian Ocean. Assuming all the trappings of a rising world power China’s presence in the Middle East is growing. With 17 percent of its oil imports coming from Saudi Arabia and 15 percent from Iran, more than half of all Saudi oil imports now come from the Middle East. China is not only locking up long-term access deals but purchasing exploration and development rights. China's economic muscle in the Middle East and Central Asia is undermining U.S. influence and its long-term energy agreements with Iran and the Sudan is further undercutting U.S. attempts to isolate hostile regimes. 

Similarly, Russia’s backing of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and its strategic energy alliance with Tehran threatens to reconfigure the balance of power in Middle Asia. The convergence of Iran and Russia’s interests in controlling gas and oil pipelines transiting Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Armenia and Turkey enhances both countries potential to exert strategic leverage over Europe, India and China—all massive energy importers. In 2008, with Russia’s support, Iran was granted “Observer Status” in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Although the 2008 announcement by Qatar, Iran and Russia to form an international gas cartel never matured, the trace lines of an “Eastern Energy Alliance” anchored by Moscow and Tehran is an idea in search of a viable organizational structure.  In this light, Russia’s military action in the breakaway Caucus republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia that torpedoed Georgia’s ascension to NATO and threatened Tbilisi’s energy pipelines to the Caspian Sea reinforced Moscow’s contention that the former Soviet Union’s republics are its “near abroad” security perimeter.

It remains to be seen whether Russia's actions are those of a strategic competitor or adversary. However, President Obama’s hopes of securing Russia’s cooperation to derail Iran’s nuclear program by canceling missile defense deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic in return for Moscow’s support for sanctions against Tehran was rejected by President Medvedev.  Moscow has helped build and protect Iran’s nuclear program from sanctions precisely because a nuclear armed Iran threatens America’s allies and its dominance in Middle Asia. Increasingly, the Obama’s administration is conceding that it cannot stop Tehran from crossing the nuclear threshold. Therefore the administration is accelerating the deployment of sea and land based missile defense systems in the Persian Gulf while trying to avert a nuclear arms race in the region. With Russia expanding its sale of weapons systems and arms to Iran, Turkey, Syria and most recently Saudi Arabia, Moscow’s re-entry into the Middle East is a unsettling enterprise undermining U.S. influence. 

America’s decline in the region has also been complicated by its troop withdrawals in Iraq to avoid entanglement in another Vietnam-style quagmire. For the first time since World War 2, Iraq and Iran--the two nations that policed America’s imperial order in the Persian Gulf--have vacated Washington’s orbit, leaving Saudi Arabia more vulnerable than ever. Notwithstanding the possibility of Iraq fracturing into another round of sectarian violence, Iran has become the dominant foreign influence over Baghdad’s Shi’a-led government. Greater access to Iraqi oil and a friendly Shi’a led government on its rival Saudi Arabia’s border has enhanced Iranian strategic depth across the Middle East and Southern Caucuses. As the leader of the Shi’a Muslims empowerment movement in the Middle Asia Iran also spearheads the anti-U.S. rejectionist front that includes Syria, HAMAS and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Iranian enlargement has effectively split the Middle East into pro-America and anti-American camps. Iran's ascendency to the nucluer club will only exacerbate the split in the Middle East and exert enormous pressure on the pro-U.S. Gulf states, many of which are already seeking accomodations with Tehran. President Obama hasn’t ruled out missile strikes against Iran to degrade its nuclear program. However, with America’s regional allies opposing air strikes and Iran’s opposition movement against President Ahmadinejad and the clerical establishment growing, surgical strikes against Iran are less likely to occur.  

Beyond the dangers posed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Iran's destabilizing expansion, the Obama administration has been buffeted by other setbacks in the region. The failure to counter Al Queda’s buildup in Yemen and force President Saleh to broker agreements with the Shia-based al Houthi insurgency and the secessionist Southern Movement finds Yemen tottering of the brink of collapse. The volatile situation has left Saudi Arabia with a war on its southern border and Al Queda with a launching pad to attack the Kingdom. President Obama’s attempt to renew Israeli-Palestinian peace talks by demanding Israeli concessions on settlement activities was an embarrassing failure. In reviving the talks Obama hoped to remove the conflict as the source code of Arab—U.S. tension and accelerant of Islamic radicalism across the Middle East. The peace talks debacle demoralized the “Arab street” and squandered the political capital Obama amassed in the Cairo Address. President Obama’s back channel efforts to coax Syria out of Iran’s orbit never got off the ground. Worse still, Turkey’s President Erdogan’s refused to back U.S. sanctions against Iran, stating that Ankara’s energy relationship with Iran and Russia are not negotiable. And although, Hezbollah failed to win Lebanon’s hotly contested parliamentary elections, Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah’s militia forces maintain control of most of the country.       

With the United States retreating in Afghanistan and Iraq and U.S. power being challenged across the region, America’s project to pacify and re-organize Middle Asia is faltering. The expansion of Russian and Chinese power in Central Asia and the Middle East is a new reality that must be managed with great diplomatic skill. No longer dominant enough to impose its will on the region, Obama’s foreign policy must strive to achieve two strategic goals. First, prevent a China-Russia-Iran alliance that severely curtails American power in the region. While Moscow and Beijing have substantial interest in Middle Asia, China's foreign policy seeks to dominate East Asia while Russia's ultimate fate is tied to continental Europe. Just as Richard Nixon's "Opening to China" in the 1970's help divide the two powers, Obama must wedge the Eastern Alliance while simultaneously engaging Moscow and Beijing in policies that promote regional stability, contain terrorism and foster the equitable sharing of energy resources.

Second, the Obama administration must increase its pressure to reform the authoritarian regimes whose repressive policies and stagnant economies are fueling radical movements and anti-American sentiment. America’s defense of dictatorial Arab kings, sheiks and presidents in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Yemen and the other Gulf states has placed the United States on the wrong side of history and the majority of Middle Asian citizens. Middle Asia is engaged in a historical course correction where the artificial borders and nations created by the British and French after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and World War 1 are crumbling. A mass awakening of political, ethnic, Islamic and nationalist movements is in full bloom. So too, the breakup of the Soviet Union has put the energy rich, but predominantly poor Muslim Central Asia states in play as the revival of the “Great Game” drags the world powers into the vortex of  struggle for hegemony over energy resources.  Accommodations and political space for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Kurds, the Al Houthi, the Baloch, the Shi’a and other must be made. And the sooner the better. The overwhelming majority of these movements are not jihadist struggles and therefore must be embraced. Indeed, recent history suggests that radical and even anti-American forces participating in more democratic environments in Iraq and Lebanon tend to moderate over time. The burden of governing often proves to be sobering check on radicals-come-to-power. In short, America must stop defending the dead hand of the past in Middle Asia. 

Finally, while America still enjoys a preponderance of global power, it can no longer dominate the new international system. In the new multi-polar world order of competing great powers and rising middle powers, President Obama must now lead by forging international consensus to legitimize America’s global leadership role--always seeking to balance American national interests with the interest of a shared global community. Over the next three years that leadership must be exercised with great energy, intellect and diplomacy in Middle Asia.  *****

OBAMA'S GRAND STRATEGY IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND CENTRAL ASIA
March 1, 2010
Webster Brooks, Editor
Brooks Foreign Policy Review