In just 100 days, US President Barack Obama has reshaped US foreign policy. He’s turned the focus of the anti-terror war away from Iraq and toward Afghanistan, lifted decades-old restrictions on Cuban-Americans’ visiting and sending money to their homeland, moved to reverse a slide in relations with Russia and reached out to tell Muslims worldwide that the US is not their enemy. He’s declared repeatedly he knows the US isn’t immune to mistakes.
The scope, sweep and breadth of the new president’s engagement abroad — two major trips, significant policy directives — are dizzying, and all the more so given he took office in the midst of the country’s worst economic and financial crises in decades.
Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said Obama has initiated a “vast diplomatic agenda.”
Kissinger wrote in a recent opinion column in the Washington Post: “The possibility of comprehensive solutions is unprecedented.”
That doesn’t guarantee success.
Failure could lurk in the unforeseeable future. One hundred days are just a snapshot as the horses leave the starting gate. The finish line is distant.
All in all, “it’s a risky gamble,” said Chris Dolan, a political scientist at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania. “It’s a coordinated, selective strategy of trying to improve the US image, to show humility, banking in return on more cooperation from the rest of the world.”
HO-HUM
While the world is paying rapt attention, there’s been an initial ho-hum response at home.
Does it signal a US public that was ahead of its most recent leaders, believing, as Obama does, that their country’s image abroad has been badly tarnished, especially during former US president George W. Bush’s eight years? Does the muted response perhaps reflect that Obama has taken on so many foreign policy tasks at once that potential critics are flummoxed about how to respond? Or are Americans simply so deeply absorbed with their frightening economic prospects that they aren’t paying attention?
Whatever the answer, Obama’s absorption with foreign policy “puts him in the mold of a grand strategist,” said Andrea Hatcher, professor of political science at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.
“The scope of what he has done far exceeds what was expected,” Hatcher said.
Unable to predict an outcome, students of what Obama is trying to accomplish are racing to keep current the catalog of what he already has set in motion.
In his first three months, he has set a 2011 end date for US involvement in the unpopular Iraq War, while increasing troop levels in Afghanistan for the fight against al-Qaeda and a resurgent Taliban. He named veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke to serve as special envoy to the region.
He appointed former senator George Mitchell, famous for negotiating a peace deal in Northern Ireland, as envoy to the Middle East, signaling a determination to refocus on an accommodation between Israel and the Palestinians. Most recently he invited Israeli, Palestinian and Egyptian leaders to the White House for separate talks on a peace plan. Jordanian King Abdullah II has already paid a visit.
For the first time, Obama put a US negotiator at the table along with European nations working to convince Iran that it should back away from its perceived drive to build a nuclear weapon.
He has lifted restrictions on Cuban-Americans’ returning to their homeland and on the amount of money they can send to family in Cuba. Obama has left the impression he is ready to do even more to repair the half-century of estrangement should the Castro brothers improve their treatment of dissidents.
He has shaken hands with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, disregarding the leftist president’s vitriolic attacks on the US during the Bush years.
CHINA RELATIONS
He has also made known that China’s poor human rights record, while still important to Washington, is not the defining issue in the countries’ relationship.
He has reprimanded North Korea for its test launch of what was seen as a ballistic missile capable of carrying one of its handful or nuclear warheads toward the US or one of its allies. At the same time, he stressed a determination to bring the North back into negotiations to rid the divided Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons.
He has sought to reset relations with Russia to reverse a dangerous slide under Bush. Obama’s effort turns on an offer of negotiations on a nuclear reduction treaty to replace the START II pact that expires soon.
Obama has also gone out of his way on important and early travel to Europe and Latin America to acknowledge what he viewed as past US errors in relations with both regions.
He has conceded that fault for the deep recession gripping the globe had its origins, in part at least, in unregulated greed among the US’ financial barons and freewheeling, credit-card fueled spending by US consumers.
He has ordered the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, closed within 12 months and rejected interrogation techniques used by the Bush administration that have been viewed broadly as torture.
Most dramatically, Obama released memos from the Bush Justice Department that gave legal cover for “enhanced interrogation” techniques. Obama said he would not rule out a decision by the Department of Justice to launch an investigation of those who issued those legal rulings.
It’s quite a start, but there’s a long way to go.
Will Obama be overwhelmed by what Kissinger says is a broad diplomatic agenda that is still fuzzy about how it can be achieved?
It’s easy to set lofty goals, but much harder to bring them to fruition.
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