Obama is betting on a success story in foreign policy to prove his global leadership to an increasingly suspicious constituency at home. The troubles with Obama's health care plan quickly turned into a debate about how fit Obama is to lead America. With some of the Obamania steam subsiding, his approval ratings are going down not because he has achieved nothing since taking office but because he is perceived to have performed below his own standards -- an expectation he himself created through his historic election and inspiring speeches.
As an internationalist president, Obama is right to fix his gaze on foreign policy. An America that is at peace with the world is not going to come by fixing its health or educational system alone. Troubles on a global scale affect the US more than any other nation on earth, a fact the intelligent American policymakers know too well.
Obama's call for multilateralism is a good thing for everyone, Americans and others alike. The world's problems are so huge and so intertwined that no super, giant, gigantic or whatever power can handle them alone. As Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in his address at the UN, the global problems of our world require global solutions and this means embracing everyone as an equal partner.
But multilateralism does not mean executing preset agendas. Rather, it means identifying the problems together, working to solve them together, sharing the burdens together, claiming credit together. In short, it means setting the agenda together. There is no reason to doubt Obama's sincerity in his plea for multilateralism. The trouble is that the three issues of Palestine, Iran and Afghanistan, which Obama identified as the key areas of his foreign policy, require more than giving a hand to US plans (whatever they are, because they keep changing).
The reports from the three fronts are not promising. Afghanistan is dreadfully turning into a graveyard of empires. There is no military solution to the slew of problems in Afghanistan: tribalism, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, underdevelopment, corruption, the opium trade, the lack of basic services, mistrust of foreigners, intrusions from outside and an increasingly desperate Afghan society. Since his appointment last May, Stanley McChrystal, the US general in Afghanistan, has brought only more bad news: The Allied Forces (read “the US”) need more troops, anywhere from 25,000-30,000, to manage the situation.
Obama's bet on diplomacy to deal with Iran is still hanging in the air. So far, there has been very little progress with 5+1 negotiations. The Western countries and Israel have done very little to build trust with Iran. By contrast, they portray Iran as the number one enemy of world peace. Iran has acted no better. News of a new nuclear facility near the city of Qom has only made things worse. Obama had to get Britain's Gordon Brown and France's Nicolas Sarkozy behind him to give a strong message to Iran, to which Iran will respond only with more subtle tactics of Persian diplomacy. Obama's promise of talking to Iran is looking more and more like a distant possibility. Failure with Iran will also mean failure of Obama multilateralism.
Finally, the Palestine issue is the most troubling because the Arab and Muslims world will judge Obama's presidency on his ability or failure to deliver on Palestine. Regional peace still hangs on Palestine and the Middle East peace process. Focusing on the settlement freeze in the occupied Palestinian lands was the right move, but the Obama team has underestimated the resistance put up by the Israelis. Not only has there been no freeze on the settlements, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu has openly defied the US president and secretary of state and approved the building of more settlements. A meeting between Mahmoud Abbas and Netanyahu at the UN with Obama in the middle is not a good picture at all for Obama's Middle East peace plan. The proof is how Mr. Netanyahu interpreted it: He called it the “resumption of negotiations without preconditions,” meaning no freeze on settlements. This is a major defeat for much of what Obama has tried to build since taking office.
Yes, we all need multilateralism, but it looks like no one is ready to step up to the plate.
