US Domestic Politics Not Affected by Events on Global Stage

President Barack Obama’s three years in the White House may represent the most fertile period for the United States since the end of World War II in the augmentation of its areas of influence and control.

By contrast, during its greatest military interventions (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq), the United States lost vast zones of influence. And, of course, there is the loss of influence in Africa with the U.S. having supported the apartheid regime and territorial divisions in Angola, Congo and Mozambique during the administrations of Ronald Reagan.

In the analysis of the last 30 years elaborated by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, neither man predicted that the United States would, in 2011, position troops and arsenals — some of them nuclear — of great magnitude from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. It was considered an aspiration that would never materialize. The idea of invading Syria and Iran with the support of Turkey and the monarchies of the Persian Gulf, as is a current possibility, was also unthinkable.

The foreign policy of the current administration has been, without question, more ubiquitous and less rigid than the last Republican administrations, and has avoided the multiple strident threats that characterized them.

Nevertheless, this is the American voter we’re dealing with: careless, and it appears, incapable of balancing two unconnected areas of policy.

It is plain to see that foreign policy has minimal effect on the U.S. president’s approval. It’s as though the economy, employment levels and the amount of money in people’s pockets are more decisive variables than security against external threats or the capacity of the United States to assume a global leadership role.

On the contrary, a sort of public resignation or distance can be detected with respect to what the United States does in the Arab world or in its relationships with China or Russia. The more the U.S. expands its external influence, the less weight this influence seems to acquire in domestic politics.

With elections in Nov. 2012, the rapid collapse of the regimes in Iran and Syria (which have long frustrated Republican administrations) could contribute to a reversal of Obama’s lost public acceptance, although the connection is not that simple or direct.

Because of his current approval level, the situation of apparent achievements in the international sphere do not hand Obama a “free pass” to re-election. They are two different areas of analysis, and what happens on the global political stage doesn’t influence the local one.

In November, after three years of presidency, Obama barely displays 43 percent approval. Meanwhile George W. Bush, after the same period of three years, had, in Nov. 2003, 52 percent approval, according to Gallup polls.

It would be simplistic to conclude that this difference in approval levels reflects the perceptions of the public toward the invasion of Iraq in 2003, in the case of Bush, and towards the Arab riots for regime change in 2011, in the case of Obama.

Of course, it is easier to identify Hussein as an external enemy and, perhaps, applaud the invasion of a country than to process theories about Arab democracies and how they affect the internal life of the United States.

In sum, Obama’s trend of approval ratings that are significantly lower than 50 percent — despite a more favorable foreign policy environment— demonstrates that the foreign factor is having less and less influence on the perceptions of the public. After the death of Gadhafi, the percentage of disapproval was parked between 54 and 56 percent. It didn’t decline.

The current world financial crisis requires maximum possible security and a predictable energy context. For the Western Allies it is indispensable to have a strategic foot in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, both regions rich in petroleum and adjacent to the Islamic nations of Central Asia, also rich in energy resources.

In this sense, the Obama administration has been a surprise for critics and supporters. The global leadership of the United States, which for many is nothing more than the presence of a new kind of imperial colonialism in close alliance with Western Europe, has never been in better hands than with Obama in the lead.