Chasing Obama’s Foreign Policy

THE morning after Barack Obama’s dramatic transformation from United States Senator from Illinois to the 44^th   President of the United State, I drove a short distance to a neighborhood cards-and-gifts store to buy a copy of the New York Times at around 9 a.m.  All copies were sold out.  The next day I tried to buy a copy; again, all copies were sold out.  I then walked across the street to the bank to check on my finances, where I struck up a conversation with a bank teller I knew casually.  I told her that the day after the presidential elections I failed to buy a copy of the New York Times.  One patron, a woman from Haiti, overheard our conversation.   In the early morning after the election, she said, she managed to buy three copies of the New York Times and posted the front page on EBAY, with a bid starting at a thousand dollars!  

There is no doubt that Barack Obama’s elevation as this nation’s 44^th president of the United States and the nation’s first black sitting president is a historic one.  Our nation’s elementary and high-school history text-books will be re-written to reflect this historic reality.  One black clinical psychologist, Jeffery Gardere, appearing on MSNBC last week, remarked that black mothers and fathers can now tell their young children that, yes, they can be whatever they put their minds to.  Mr. Gardere’s remarks point to an uneasy cultural reality that directs young black boys and girls to aspire to lead lives as entertainers or sports-figures.  The president-elect is not only black, but an intellectual as well. 

With the economy in tatters the president-elect, along with his “economic advisors” – none of whom have yet been confirmed by the Senate – appeared before the press last Saturday to outline his priorities once he takes office in January of next year.  General Motors, America’s automotive giant, will face bankruptcy soon if the federal government fails to act swiftly on a bail-out package.  If GM goes bankrupt, untold millions of workers will lose their jobs.  Last Friday the U.S. government announced it lost 1.2 million jobs since January, more than half of them lost within the past three months.  The nation’s unemployment rate rose to 6.5%.  In a CNN interview just days before the election, Mr. Obama hinted at his priorities as president, none of which related to foreign policy.   

For the past few days, however, I can’t help thinking what shape Barack Obama’s foreign policy will be for the next four, or, if he’s lucky, the next eight years.  Will his “steady demeanor”, as former Secretary of State Colin Powell asserts, allow for a more stable, global climate? 

Maybe the assertions posed by “right-wing” conservative talk-show heads – Shaun Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levine – still ring in my head – that his typical liberal tone will define his foreign policy aspirations.  They assert that Barack Obama is a “liberal dreamer” who will somehow “charm” America’s enemies into submission, that his insistence on diplomacy rather than military prowess will “soothe” the terrorists to sleep and thus allow for another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. 

They say that an Obama administration will fail to rally strong alliances with European powers with the intent of crushing terrorist forces against Western civilization while simultaneously wielding military might against them.  Or, as Shaun Hannity succinctly put it – will Barack Obama “drop the ball” in the war on terror?

Last week the leader of a jihadist group in Iraq that claims to be an umbrella organization for Al-Qaeda, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, issued a 25-minute audio-tape asserting that the election of Barack Obama represents a “victory” for radical Islamic groups.  He cites Obama’s future challenge on removing U.S. military troops from Iraq without giving such groups ample propaganda for future recruitment.  In point of fact, Omar al-Baghdadi offered Mr. Obama a chance at negotiation:  he offered a truce in exchange for the removal of all U.S. forces in the region. Don’t expect Barack Obama to accept such a truce.   

Shaun Hannity and his ilk are dead wrong.  Common sense alone tells us that Barack Obama, or any other president, will protect and defend this nation against all enemies, foreign or domestic with all necessary force.  An Obama administration will not negotiate with terrorists.  Mr. Obama estimates that there are about 40,000 extremists who cannot be talked to.  “Our job”, he says, “is to incapacitate them, to kill them”.  Expect the Obama administration to “beef up” intelligence capabilities both here in the United States and abroad by enrolling traditional “foot-soldiers” in areas like Pakistan and Afghanistan to break-up or eliminate terrorist cells.  

If Arabs hope for a more “balanced” view of Israeli-Palestinian relations, they may be disappointed.  Like the Bush administration, we should expect an Obama administration to be a staunch supporter of Israel and to continue the call for a two-state solution.

In a stark departure from the Bush administration, expect the Obama administration to negotiate with “rouge states” such as Iran only when necessary, while at the same time instituting safeguards that prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.  If Iran asserts, as it has done repeatedly for some years now, that they are harnessing nuclear power for civilian purposes only, then allow for independent atomic energy inspectors to validate this assertion. 

Indeed, an Obama administration will strive to enlist other world powers in a spirit of cooperation in order to achieve global political stability. Expect president-elect Barack Obama to reverse some of George W. Bush’s policies:  he would strive to end torture at Guantanamo Bay and close it; he would strive to renounce unilateralism and prevent unnecessary wars; he would strive to re-build ties with European allies; and he would put the threat of terrorism in its proper perspective.   

We should not expect an Obama administration to continue the Bush doctrine of dividing foreign powers in the Arab world such as Iran, Syria and Lebanon, or elsewhere, into Manichean terms of “good” and “evil”. 

Mr. Obama rarely speaks in moralistic terms characteristic of the Bush administration, which has refused to deal diplomatically with “rouge states” for the last eight years.  He refuses to view radical terrorist movements as monoliths or “blocks”; instead, he sees them as complex units that are largely motivated by greed, power and fear; and, viewed from this perspective, he thinks that by infiltrating their operations, these groups are vulnerable to division.  Mr. Obama is not “fixated” on the Bush doctrine of spreading “democratic elections” and “political rights”.  More to the point:  he doesn’t view the world in a-historical terms.  His view of democratic change in Arab countries features a bottom-up approach instead of a top-down approach. He argues that people’s aspirations are more basic, like food, shelter and jobs.  “Once these aspirations are met,” he told the New York Times’ James Traub recently, “it opens up space for the kind of democratic regimes we want”.  He is against the idea of imposing democracy abroad.  

Richard Danzing, a national security advisor to the Illinois senator, had this to say:  “It’s helpful to point out that Barack Obama is not the messiah.  There is a tendency to see him in messianic terms”.   Barack Obama, the president-to-be, is not an idealist when it comes to foreign policy; instead, he is a realist. 

The writer is a recent revert to Islam and can be contacted at:  drummondhugh@verizon.net