Obama-Putin: Diplomacy Is Not Enough

Foreign policy from the White House is insufficient for resolving the new international challenge, where aggression pays more than diplomacy — as is the case with Crimea.

This morning The Washington Post, a renowned daily newspaper, offered its readers a series of reflections on U.S. foreign policy, via an article doubtfully titled, “Will Obama Rethink His Global Strategy?” In particular, the Watergate paper questions the current importance of “constructive rethinking” — in other words, the constructive rethinking of the U.S. international strategy. In order to do so, it takes the cases of Syria and Ukraine as a reference (how could they otherwise be?). It explains what options the White House has today in order to not be subjected to the political aggression of the other players in the great geopolitical game.

If, as the editorial writer Fred Hiatt writes, in the cases mentioned the bad guys are Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin (and not President Obama), it is also true that Obama’s attempt to search for conciliation with both of them has not produced significant or desired results. In fact, diplomacy — at least, what has been offered by Secretary of State John Kerry — seems to have weapons thrown in front of a growing aggression, marking almost the entire European and Middle Eastern affair.

The diplomatic road was and for the moment remains Obama’s only choice — a theory that he always seems profoundly convinced by and that he wanted to experiment within the field to mark a strong discontinuity regarding the “strong” Bush administration. Having applied the theory, it produced some results, but are these results sufficiently positive that continuing down this road will pay off in the end?

Crimea and Ukraine: U.S. Errors in Confrontation

Regarding the taking of Crimea by Russia, Obama decided not to act. As both Obama and NATO highlighted, there weren’t any practical military options before, and there still aren’t any now. Therefore, he is essentially accepting how much Russia is accomplishing via the public, except for giving importance and significance to the economic sanctions imposed on President Putin’s inner circle. Nevertheless, these sanctions, regardless of how strong they are, do not represent a definite solution.

On the other hand, with regard to Syria, stalling a military attack has done nothing but favor the Assad regime. The same regime that — as The Washington Post recalls — had its “days numbered” already in 2012 and that was expected to collapse under the rebel strikes. Thus, today Damascus is stronger than before, it has significant support from Russia, and the humanitarian catastrophe in the whole region is under the eyes of everyone. Even the jihadis, who Obama wanted vanquished forever, have regained strength in the Middle East, making Syria a base for their raids of the entire region.

Therefore, in both cases, the attempt to get diplomatically closer to Russia has failed miserably, and the relationship between the two countries has never before seemed to turn back 30 years like it has today. The sentence is yet to come, but the judgment on the Obama administration — at least for The Washington Post — seems to be going in a specific direction: Obama believed that the military responses were an option to relegate to the 20th century, but he was wrong.

Will Obama’s Strategy Be Subject to a Transformation?

The commander in charge believed that in the 21st century he could have exceeded past logic and that, with him in charge, the U.S. could finally resolve international disagreements without the use of weapons (or even better, without actual military intervention). From this guideline originates the urbi et orbi reduction of weapons and soldiers, the progressive pull-out of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, the disinterest in Libya, the false steps in Syria, the removal of Egypt, and the parallel upheaval toward Asia and the Pacific, from Iran to China.

But if the past is the history and you cannot overlook history when looking to the future, then we must observe that Vladimir Putin’s attempt to reinforce his country and recreate the splendor of the USSR, at the moment, pays more than opening talks with his American rival. To quote Fred Hiatt, Barack Obama, “judged the world safe enough to sharply decrease military spending, and Europe and the Middle East safe enough to justify a ‘pivot’ to Asia.” Instead, with the retrenchment of the U.S., “the world became more dangerous.”

We know full and well the instinctive response of the White House to these criticisms, which obviously do not only come from The Washington Post: entrenching behind the denial of the fact that the “disengagement” will never truly occur. And yet, if for The Washington Post, three years of Obama’s presidency are enough to change the course of action (thanks also to the economic recovery in the U.S.), the difficult international circumstance that we find ourselves in does not favor the Nobel Peace Prize, whereas it reinforces the new Russian czar, who is gambling everything on the political vulnerability of the U.S.