Foreign Policy: Obama’s America Lacks Direction

Having intensified chaos in the Middle East in the past, the United States no longer has the desire necessary to carry out its responsibilities. This is explained by the disparity between its own priorities and the evolution of the world.

“There is no Obama doctrine. American foreign policy is not Asian-centric or Chinese-centric, but instead revolves around America.” In the wake of the humiliating fall of the cities of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria – and the start of the 2016 presidential election campaign – critics in opposition to U.S. foreign policy grow louder not only in the U.S. but also elsewhere in the world. “Does Obama know what he’s doing in the Middle East? Does he have a strategic vision that is even the slightest bit consistent?” ask not only the Republicans but also some in the Democratic Party. What if the solution was to do nothing and to simply leave the warring nations to kill each other until the weariness of seeing blood flow prevails over all other sentiments? This neo-isolationist temptation is now expressed more openly. The problem is that this option does not exist. “If you break it, you own it,” Gen. Colin Powell, secretary of state under George W. Bush, said not long ago in comparing the Middle East to a pottery store. America broke Iraq. It is not its army that collapsed, but the nation itself. Why lose lives for a country that no longer exists?

Having intensified chaos in the region not long ago, America today no longer has the desire necessary to carry out its responsibilities. It is almost as if America, like a player with significant losses, intends to recuperate its profits under a single astonishing stroke, which is of course the signing of an agreement with Iran. But Tehran is well-aware of this situation and intends to exploit its tactical advantage as best it can. “You still need an agreement with me: It’s up to you to make the most concessions,” the Iranians seem to be thinking.

If America seems to no longer be in control of a Middle East that increasingly slips from all standards of order, it is for reasons that go beyond the region itself. In reality, it is the Obama administration’s foreign policy that today finds itself called into question.

America finds it easy to denounce – alas, sometimes rightly so – a Europe that is decadent, egotistical and inconsequential. But doesn’t the United States, in its connection to the world, suffer – certainly in infinitely more ways – from the same evil as Europe? Isn’t there a disparity between its ambitions, its priorities – if not its own transformation – and the evolution of the world? The European tragedy is that it dreamed of becoming the vanguard of a postmodern international system, like an exemplary civil power, reinventing the concept of sovereignty for the 21st century, all at a time when the world around it was undergoing profound transformations, often for the worse. What the European Union did not foresee was the explosion at its borders of a world that was premodern in its emotions and in its operation.

Isn’t there today, in the same way, a profound incompatibility between the ambitions declared by Obama’s America in the wake of George W. Bush’s two terms and the international environment? Historians will without a doubt remember the dual responsibility of President Bush, Jr. Not only did he drag his country into catastrophic military affairs, but he also left a legacy such that his successor wanted only to do the opposite of what he had done. Thus, in a short amount of time, America has gone from “too much” to “too little” in its connections to the world.

In also clearly giving priority in his concerns to domestic policy – more than legitimate, for that matter – Obama has not been able to respond to the challenges of an increasingly tumultuous world, a chaos to which America has greatly contributed, by its hyperactivism, then followed by its refusal to act, as in Syria, or its hesitations, as in Libya. There was no “reset” with Putin’s Russia. The latter saw the nonintervention of the United States in Syria – in spite of the fact that the Bashar al-Assad regime had, in Washington’s own words, crossed a red line – as a carte blanche to seize the Crimea.

And China can only have the impression that it alone is able to set limits to its regional, if not international, ambitions. By making its objectives clear and adopting a more “aggressive” military doctrine facing an increasingly uncertain America, China conveys the true nature of its ambitions. Why should it exercise more caution facing a dispirited America?

Of course, Obama’s track record in external actions is without a doubt more nuanced that his critics suggest. The elimination of bin Ladin consisted of risk-taking culminating in success. Conversely, the retreat from Iraq in 2011 appears retrospectively premature and terribly counterproductive considering the current situation.

Barack Obama’s ambition to enter history as a president who profoundly transformed America from the inside, and for the better, was perfectly legitimate in itself. But it was doubtlessly not compatible with the evolution of the world under his two terms. And that is the tragedy.