A Superpower Doesn’t Quit that Easily

Western conservatives accuse Barack Obama of hesitation in Syria, and claim he is a weak president who lets Vladimir Putin lead him around by the nose. Oh, really?

That judgment was expressed by Britain’s Economist magazine, when it fell like a guillotine blade with its headline, “Putin Dares, Obama Dithers.” Conservatives complain that Barack Obama is unnecessarily giving ground because he is weak. First, he pulled U.S. troops prematurely from Iraq and then did the same in Afghanistan. He initially stayed out of Syria altogether. Superpower U.S., the conservatives claim, is abdicating its crown.

But it hasn’t deteriorated to that point, nor is it likely to do so. The fact is, Obama has put limits in place for U.S. action to which the rest of the world must first become accustomed. And they are precisely the reason Obama was elected in the first place. Obama was the response to George W. Bush, whose style was to shoot first and ask questions later. Obama wants to be Bush’s antithesis, and go down in the history books as the president who got his country out of old wars and didn’t lead it into new ones.

In January 2015, Obama put it this way: “We have to understand with a certain humility that we do not have the option to just march into a country where disorder breaks out, and that the citizens of those countries have to find their own way. We can help them do that, but we cannot do it for them.”*

Currently, more than just disorder runs rampant in Syria, and people may argue whether or not U.S. involvement there in 2012 might have prevented worse from happening. But even sober analysis is likely to conclude that such an intervention then would have been as unpredictable as it is today.

One fact is indisputable: America was then already tired of the war — or as the conservative historian Robert Kagan thinks, the U.S. was world-weary. Naturally, a world power that is world-weary is problematic — above all for those who have gotten accustomed to the fact that when push came to shove, the United States had always been first to send in the tanks and launch the combat planes. That’s one thing both friends and foes of the U.S. had always had in common.

Syria’s Fight Is Theirs, Not Ours

And now? In reference to the civil war in Syria, a senior intelligence official calmly says, “It’s their war, not ours.” And a former four-star general, asked what his country should do about mass-murderer Assad, categorically says, “We should not go to war in any case. We did that for 13 years in two different countries, and we lost 10,000 soldiers. And now you want us to take on the burden of a war against Assad? Not us!”*

Accordingly half-heartedly, the United States began its air war against the Islamic State group. Only Putin’s intervention appears to have prodded the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State group coalition into further action. In that regard, the old reflexes are functioning as they always have, i.e., don’t worry: The world power isn’t world-weary.

No one should mistakenly think that Obama — or any other U.S. president — would hesitate to use the world’s most powerful military machine to protect the nation and its interests. But Washington would likely react more circumspectly when it come to the interests of other nations, especially if the nation in question were acting incompetently or irresponsibly, as America’s ally Saudi Arabia is currently doing in the Middle East. No nation has done more to help spread political Islam, a force it now fights against in Syria and Iraq, since it has developed into such a barbaric form as the Islamic State group.

Obama the Diplomat

It would be absurd to assume the United States could possibly abandon as important and dangerous a region of the world as the Near and Middle East. Neither will America abandon Europe. But what it will do is to ask its allies to take on a larger role in sharing the costs of mutual security.

In that regard, George W. Bush was the more comfortable president. The more demanding is Barack Obama. He may at times have sent out the wrong signals, as when he drew his “red line” for chemical weapons in the Syrian sand, and then did nothing about it when Assad crossed it. But all in all, the world is a much safer place with Obama because he always gives policy priority and patiently looks for diplomatic solutions. His most important success in that regard to date is the nuclear agreement with Iran.

Unfortunately, the pendulum of American politics changes direction regularly and drastically. May merciful fate protect us from President Trump becoming the next Bush. Should that come about, today’s critics will be looking wistfully back toward the time when Barack Obama hesitated and dithered in the White House.

*Editor’s Note: These quotations, accurately translated, could not be verified.