The Middle East Will Not Let Obama Go

If there is a defining feature of Barack Obama’s time in office, it is his efforts to differentiate himself from George W. Bush. Bush started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; Obama ended them. Bush called for his allies to submit themselves to American leadership; Obama calls for multilateralism. Bush saw America as a stabilizing power in the Arab world; Obama wants, at most, to intervene diplomatically, preferably from the back seat. Bush favored “hard power,” military enforcement; Obama favors “soft power,” the power of speeches and persuasion.

Obama’s new definition of America as a restrained, benign superpower with limited liability is being severely put to the test in the Middle East at the moment. Washington has many balls in the air in the region. There are the efforts to force the Syrian dictator Assad to give up his most dangerous weapon, poison gas, more or less voluntarily. The key partner in this is Vladimir Putin, the very man who hindered the formation of an international front against Assad and whose domestic policies are full of anti-Western rhetoric. There is also the attempt to bring Israel and the Palestinians to the table once more, despite the resistance. And most important strategically: There are the efforts to enter into fresh dialogue with Tehran.

Some situations have drawn him in, others he has fallen into: Obama has stumbled into all of these situations rather than initiating them. In actual fact, he wanted to dedicate his presidency to domestic policy and in his foreign policy look toward China and Asia, where the economic-political action of the 21st century is taking place. But the Middle East is not letting Washington out of its clutches. In Iran, the security of the region and the principle of nuclear nonproliferation are at stake. In Syria, rival powers are tying themselves in knots and a further key part of the international set of norms is at stake, namely the use of chemical weapons, which oversteps a red line drawn by Obama. And finally, in reviving the Middle East peace process, Obama presumably gave into the pressure from Secretary of State John Kerry.

Obama cannot get away from the fact that America is a world power. When there is trouble somewhere, the world looks away. America is too large to be able to hide. The U.S. remains the only actor on the global political stage that has the means and the ability to shape regional events. The Chinese, the Russians and even the Europeans can only stage selective interventions and influence dynamics, and only then as part of an alliance. Only Washington can initiate foreign policy by enticing, threatening, building coalitions, gaining legitimization and, where necessary, deploying what is still the strongest instrument of enforcement: the American military.

But the biggest uncertainty in America’s current Middle Eastern policy is how serious Obama is about it. “Speak softly and carry a big stick” is the founding motto of American diplomacy. Does Obama only heed the first part of the saying, or is the “big stick” of military power still in the background? That is the key question which drives all those involved, and presumably also the American president himself.

The negative reaction to Obama’s intention to persuade Congress to support punitive action against the Assad regime seems like a veto against any use of military force in the Middle East. But what would happen if Assad uses chemical weapons again? If Iran clearly oversteps the red line for the use of nuclear weapons? Would America then get out its “big stick”? Or will it not come to this, since America’s diplomatic juggling skills are cutting the many connected Gordian knots in the region at the same time? The moment of truth is drawing nearer either way.