bobdina
10-22-2009, 11:14 PM
Is Obama pushing the wrong buttons?
By BOGDAN KIPLING
Thu. Oct 22 - 4:46 AM
CHARLES DORAN, America’s foremost Canada scholar, was on the mark when he predicted an "imaginative" foreign policy shortly after Americans elected Barack Obama 54 weeks ago.
President Obama, Professor Doran told me at the time, would astound the world with foreign policy initiatives no one in Washington has articulated in decades.
Mr. Doran is head of Canadian studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies and professor of international affairs at his university and at the Sorbonne.
Nine months into his presidency, Mr. Obama is proving Charles Doran right in spades. He "reset the button" on relations with Russia and opened a new chapter in the Washington-Caracas book. He invited direct talks with Iran — the first in three decades. In a dramatic speech at Cairo’s legendary university, he offered friendship to the Muslim world.
I’ll start with Venezuela and leave Russia to the end. So far, not so good. Hugo Chavez. The Venezuelan dictator is hurling anti-American invective in Mr. Obama’s face. Still the newly minted president accepted a viciously anti-American book Mr. Chavez gave him at the last Organization of American States summit. Instead of having both hands suddenly busy, he said thank you.
It is too bad for Mr. Obama, but dictators have a special talent for spotting wobbliness and know how to exploit it.
The opening to Iran is now playing in Washington, Tehran and Vienna — and diplomacy is in full swing. Mr. Obama wants Iran to forswear nuclear weapons or face sanctions.
Iran’s theocratic despots want nuclear weapons, call them scientific experiments, and do not fear Mr. Obama’s sanctions.
Weapons grade uranium is in play and the rest is immaterial. All sides know that cheating is an ever-present danger and fully effective policing merely wishful thinking. Iran has cheated for years — and can be presumed to cheat in future.
Mr. Obama has given Iran ultimatums before. Meet this or that deadline, he would say — and Iran ignored him every time. His current ultimatum demands that Iran commit by the end of this month to cheat no more and abandon nuclear weapons ambitions.
Iran knows that Mr. Obama’s threats are hollow — at least until Vladimir Putin is born again as a lamb. He is Russia’s prime minister in name and supreme leader in reality. He said No to sanctions and chose to do so on the eve of the talks initiated by Mr. Obama.
Giving the press an opportunity to query him once a year, Mr. Putin declared, "Dialogue is always better than threats and sanctions."
Translation: Keep dreaming, Barack.
Mr. Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world is in a different category. Clearly a very long-range initiative, it is exempted from prejudgment. Moreover, all can agree that a return to the largely peaceful coexistence that lasted for centuries would be a blessing.
Now to Russia. Mr. Obama has advertised himself as an apostle of change. He would heal America’s relations with other nations and re-establish multilateralism as America’s national policy.
But looking at how Mr. Obama’s multilateralism works in practice, I am disturbed. For instance, he radically changed America’s policy toward Russia without consultations with America’s allies.
Assume that this serves the interest of the United States. But what about the effects of his decision on America’s allies and the rest of the world? Yet he made it without so much as a by your leave from the allies with most at stake.
It is not good for Canada, Britain, Poland, the Czech Republic, and even France and Germany to see Mr. Obama opening up the gates to Russia’s sphere of influence returning to Central Europe. Where will the spread of Russia’s power stop? At the Seine in Paris?
That this should be happening exactly 20 years after the Berlin Wall crumbled is tragic and ironic. However, this is what Mr. Obama’s imaginative foreign policy produced thus far. He shredded NATO’s unanimous decision, reached less than two years ago, to place American military power in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Held behind the Iron Curtain, Central Europe used to be the Soviet Union’s exclusive domain, but America’s military presence would put it out of Moscow’s reach for good.
The button reset got Mr. Obama Russian promises on nuclear disarmament and stopping Iran. Russia has pinned its national security on its nuclear arsenal and Iran has long become a Russian protectorate.
Vice-President Joe Biden was in Warsaw on Wednesday on a mission to soothe and promise. He is in Bucharest today and will be in Prague on Saturday. Asked by Polish journalists to comment on the distrust of the United States spreading the region, Mr. Biden intoned that Washington will do "nothing about you without you."
God’s teeth! It must be all that imagination screwing up Polish and Czech minds.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Opinion/1148902.html
By BOGDAN KIPLING
Thu. Oct 22 - 4:46 AM
CHARLES DORAN, America’s foremost Canada scholar, was on the mark when he predicted an "imaginative" foreign policy shortly after Americans elected Barack Obama 54 weeks ago.
President Obama, Professor Doran told me at the time, would astound the world with foreign policy initiatives no one in Washington has articulated in decades.
Mr. Doran is head of Canadian studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies and professor of international affairs at his university and at the Sorbonne.
Nine months into his presidency, Mr. Obama is proving Charles Doran right in spades. He "reset the button" on relations with Russia and opened a new chapter in the Washington-Caracas book. He invited direct talks with Iran — the first in three decades. In a dramatic speech at Cairo’s legendary university, he offered friendship to the Muslim world.
I’ll start with Venezuela and leave Russia to the end. So far, not so good. Hugo Chavez. The Venezuelan dictator is hurling anti-American invective in Mr. Obama’s face. Still the newly minted president accepted a viciously anti-American book Mr. Chavez gave him at the last Organization of American States summit. Instead of having both hands suddenly busy, he said thank you.
It is too bad for Mr. Obama, but dictators have a special talent for spotting wobbliness and know how to exploit it.
The opening to Iran is now playing in Washington, Tehran and Vienna — and diplomacy is in full swing. Mr. Obama wants Iran to forswear nuclear weapons or face sanctions.
Iran’s theocratic despots want nuclear weapons, call them scientific experiments, and do not fear Mr. Obama’s sanctions.
Weapons grade uranium is in play and the rest is immaterial. All sides know that cheating is an ever-present danger and fully effective policing merely wishful thinking. Iran has cheated for years — and can be presumed to cheat in future.
Mr. Obama has given Iran ultimatums before. Meet this or that deadline, he would say — and Iran ignored him every time. His current ultimatum demands that Iran commit by the end of this month to cheat no more and abandon nuclear weapons ambitions.
Iran knows that Mr. Obama’s threats are hollow — at least until Vladimir Putin is born again as a lamb. He is Russia’s prime minister in name and supreme leader in reality. He said No to sanctions and chose to do so on the eve of the talks initiated by Mr. Obama.
Giving the press an opportunity to query him once a year, Mr. Putin declared, "Dialogue is always better than threats and sanctions."
Translation: Keep dreaming, Barack.
Mr. Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world is in a different category. Clearly a very long-range initiative, it is exempted from prejudgment. Moreover, all can agree that a return to the largely peaceful coexistence that lasted for centuries would be a blessing.
Now to Russia. Mr. Obama has advertised himself as an apostle of change. He would heal America’s relations with other nations and re-establish multilateralism as America’s national policy.
But looking at how Mr. Obama’s multilateralism works in practice, I am disturbed. For instance, he radically changed America’s policy toward Russia without consultations with America’s allies.
Assume that this serves the interest of the United States. But what about the effects of his decision on America’s allies and the rest of the world? Yet he made it without so much as a by your leave from the allies with most at stake.
It is not good for Canada, Britain, Poland, the Czech Republic, and even France and Germany to see Mr. Obama opening up the gates to Russia’s sphere of influence returning to Central Europe. Where will the spread of Russia’s power stop? At the Seine in Paris?
That this should be happening exactly 20 years after the Berlin Wall crumbled is tragic and ironic. However, this is what Mr. Obama’s imaginative foreign policy produced thus far. He shredded NATO’s unanimous decision, reached less than two years ago, to place American military power in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Held behind the Iron Curtain, Central Europe used to be the Soviet Union’s exclusive domain, but America’s military presence would put it out of Moscow’s reach for good.
The button reset got Mr. Obama Russian promises on nuclear disarmament and stopping Iran. Russia has pinned its national security on its nuclear arsenal and Iran has long become a Russian protectorate.
Vice-President Joe Biden was in Warsaw on Wednesday on a mission to soothe and promise. He is in Bucharest today and will be in Prague on Saturday. Asked by Polish journalists to comment on the distrust of the United States spreading the region, Mr. Biden intoned that Washington will do "nothing about you without you."
God’s teeth! It must be all that imagination screwing up Polish and Czech minds.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Opinion/1148902.html