Obama, Version Bush Senior?

In the beauty contest of American presidents, foreign policy section, Barack Obama has gotten off to a bad start. The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize is barely noticed by his fellow citizens — and not much more outside of his country. Was it justified? Surely not.

The predecessor to which he is most readily compared, Democrat Jimmy Carter (1976-1980), passes for having been a catastrophe. This pious Baptist from Georgia, cultivating a simple and modest appearance, is accused of having lowered the status of the United States on the international scene. He is taken to have incarnated a sort of depressing weakness from which the enemies of America, from the Soviet Union to the Iran of the Islamic Revolution, ignobly profited.

It was necessary to elect a flamboyant ex-governor of California, arriving by way of Hollywood, Republican Ronald Reagan (1980-1988), to re-establish the image that America likes to have of itself: the light shining on a hill — an “exception” among nations.

Before he launched his campaign of bombardments against the jihadi group called the Islamic State, the most severe criticism addressed to Obama was contained in one expression: The president was on the road to “advanced Carterization.” In the polls, a majority of Americans reproached him for having given the impression of a passive and powerless America facing the perils of the day; a vengeful Russia increasing in power, and the regional imperialism of a China desirous of assuring its domination in Southeast Asia.

But the comparison with Jimmy Carter falls flat, for good reason: the 39th president of the United States left a solid balance sheet in foreign policy. Without his assiduous mediation, Israel and Egypt — even in the opinion of Prime Minister Menachem Begin and President Anwar al-Sadat — would never have finalized the monument to strategic wisdom that is the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979. It’s not nothing, just the end of the great wars between Israel and its neighboring states …

Americans, who adore rehabilitating what they have burned, will one day bury Jimmy Carter as a great president. After all, they hallowed Republican Richard Nixon on the day of his death, April 22, 1994 — even he who, though a major president in foreign policy, was chased from the White House halfway through his term in 1974 for political behavior falling under the jurisdiction of the common law.

Those who accuse Obama of “Carterization” are in general those who praise his opposite, Reagan, a charmer with big shoulders and the costumes of a prince. The adopted Californian knew how to project a forceful and confident image, smile radiating with optimism. It is not clear that it is necessary to attribute the fall of the Berlin Wall to him just because he demanded it, but still, he no doubt contributed to it — substantially aided, it’s true, by a certain Mikhail Gorbachev.

He Acts with Prudence

But “who had it easier, Reagan or Obama?” asks the journalist Thomas Friedman in the New York Times. The Republican was a man of the Cold War. This conflict between the United States and the USSR represented a form of world order — a bipolar age. The Democrat at the beginning of the 21st century is a man of global chaos — an “apolar” era. Obama is a man of this world where multiple poles of power, old and new, which still haven’t fixed the rules of their game and which many non-state actors, such as the Islamic State, come to disturb, coexist. “In several critical areas, Reagan had a much easier world to lead in than Obama does now,” concludes Friedman.

What has fashioned the president’s foreign policy is that of his immediate predecessor, Republican George W. Bush. All of Obama’s reflexes go against the heritage of “W.” This runs from the will to remove the United States from two theaters of combat, Afghanistan and Iraq, to the conviction that there are limits to what the American military machine can accomplish — particularly in conflicts as complex as those of the Middle East. On the basis of the last 15 years, who could argue otherwise?

A hesitant warrior, Obama is living through a key moment in his presidency: He’s going to war. Worse, he’s doing it in this accursed region from which he wanted to disentangle the United States. Worse still, he has assigned himself an objective which is too ambitious to be achieved from the cockpit of a fighter plane — finishing off the Islamic State would no doubt require a ground invasion and the reconstruction of two states in ruins, Iraq and Syria.

But he can weaken the Islamic State, contain its expansion, and having done this, limit the scope of the massacres in progress and the number of unhappy people condemned to exile. He acts with prudence by announcing a long-term operation. More importantly, he implicates the Arab nations in this aerial campaign, which is no small diplomatic success. America — particularly “W” — perhaps has much to be ashamed of in the region. But the president is convinced, with reason, that the future of the Arab world is first and foremost the affair of the Arabs.

In all this, if Obama reminds us of one of his predecessors, it is George H.W. Bush (1988-1992), who accompanied the difficult phase of the final breakdown of the USSR with a certain tact. A comparison which is almost a compliment.