Obama's can't-do style

He -- and thus, America -- may mean well, but it's going to take more than that to address the world's issues.

By Robert J. Lieber

January 4, 2010

For a president with a daunting domestic agenda and limited experience in foreign policy, Barack Obama has taken on an unusually active world role. He has made important policy overtures to America's adversaries, delivered major addresses in Cairo, Prague, Moscow and at the United Nations, and set a White House record with visits to more than 20 countries in his first year in office. And with his December speech on Afghanistan, he now owns that war.
Yet it will be at least a year before we know whether the Afghan surge is bringing the hoped-for results. Iran, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela and Cuba have failed to accept Obama's outstretched hand. Russia has been grudging in its support for more effective policy toward Iran's nuclear program, as has China, which also shows no sign of allowing its undervalued currency to rise against the dollar.

Among allies, Europeans have shown only very limited willingness to provide more troops for Afghanistan and have been mostly unwilling to accept Guantanamo inmates, and South Korea and Colombia are irked about trade policy.

Meanwhile, Obama's assertive Middle East initiative has left the Israeli-Palestinian peace process worse off than before, has failed to gain support from Arab states and has lost the support of the Israeli public.

Early assessments have focused on specific policy details and missteps not unusual for a new president, but an underlying explanation may have to do with President Obama's unique operational style.

First, there is Obama's remarkable solipsism, i.e., his penchant for projecting himself as the personification of U.S. policy. Personal attraction can be a useful political and diplomatic tool, and polls in Europe and to a lesser extent in Asia and the Mideast confirm that foreigners strongly prefer him to his predecessor. Nonetheless, the emphasis on the president's own persona is quickly wearing thin.

Obama's pitch to the Olympic Committee in Copenhagen showcased his Chicago roots but fell flat. In his September speech to the U.N. General Assembly, he declared, "I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world," but achieved little substantive result. And in a video to Germany on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which ignored the roles played by Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, Vaclav Havel and others, he managed to observe that "few would have foreseen . . . that [Germany's] American ally would be led by a man of African descent," while leaving his audience miffed at his failure to appear in person. The impression is emerging of overreliance on his own powers of explanation, reassurance and rhetoric.

Second, Obama overestimates the extent to which America's adversaries determine their policies in reaction to U.S. rhetoric and policy rather than as expressions of their own values, history and interests. Emphasis on interdependence, good intentions and the belief that "the interests of nations and peoples are shared" does not go very far in explaining the motivations of Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar Assad or Hugo Chavez. The message conveyed is that if only he could assure adversaries or allies that he -- and thus America -- means well, threats or problems could be mitigated or overcome altogether.

In a quest to bridge differences, the president sometimes slips into mirror-imaging by downplaying the distinction between allies and adversaries, and in seeking to equate very different kinds of responsibility. For example, his Cairo speech suggested Western sources for the region's problems and downplayed local causes such as authoritarianism, corruption and internal obstacles to social and economic progress. Anxiously anticipating how others will react may also explain Obama's curious downplaying of human rights, as in his muted response to massive protests by the Iranian people over the rigged outcome of the June presidential election, and in his recent China visit.

Third, there remains the president's inexperience, coupled with a proclivity for Olympian detachment. Obama came to office with a very limited legislative background and without having run any large public or private organization. The result has been missteps that to foreign leaders suggests uncertainty and indecision. Some have been minor flaps, as in presenting a minimal gift of DVDs of American films to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, bowing to the Japanese emperor and occasional factual misstatements in speeches.

But other lapses have been more telling. These have included embarrassing leaks concerning Afghanistan policy, as the president weighed troop requests and carried out a protracted reassessment about what he had described in August as a necessary war. And allied leaders have begun more openly to voice their doubts. For example, Polish and Czech leaders expressed dismay at the reversal of the decision to deploy an anti-missile system on their soil. And after the U.N. speech, French President Nicolas Sarkozy acidly remarked that "President Obama dreams of a world without weapons . . . but right in front of us, two countries are doing the exact opposite. . . . What good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community? More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe a U.N. member state off the map."

And, most recently, there was the president's delayed public response to the Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airplane. His remarks, delivered three days after the event, drew criticism -- both for the delay and for using the word "allegedly" in reference to the attacker's attempt to ignite an explosive device, and led him to follow up a day later with a more forceful statement.

To be sure, presidents typically face a steep learning curve during their first year. And given Obama's political skills, his handling of foreign policy could become more adept. Yet the impact of his operational style on policy remains considerable and arguably not well suited to managing two wars and an intransigent Iran, let alone a major foreign policy crisis of the kind that is almost certain to arise at some point during his term.

Robert J. Lieber is a professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University. His most recent book is "The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century."

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times


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January 02, 2010, 7:00 a.m.
The Joke’s on Us

The Pantybomber wasn’t the big joke. We are.

By Mark Steyn

On Christmas Day, a gentleman from Nigeria succeeded (effortlessly) in boarding a flight to Detroit with a bomb in his underwear. Pretty funny, huh?

But the Pantybomber wasn’t the big joke. The real laugh was the United States government. The global hyperpower spent the next week making itself a laughingstock to the entire planet. First, the bureaucrats at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) swung into action with a whole new range of restrictions.

Against radical Yemen-trained Muslims wearing weaponized briefs? Of course not. That would be too obvious. So instead they imposed a slew of constraints against you. At Heathrow last week, they were permitting only one item of carry-on on U.S. flights. In Toronto, no large purses.

Um, the Pantybomber didn’t have a purse. He brought the bomb on board under his private parts, and his private parts weren’t part of his carry-on (although, if reports of injuries sustained in his failed mission are correct, they may well have been part of his carry-off). But no matter. If in doubt, blame the victim. The TSA announced that for the last hour of the flight no passenger can use the toilets or have anything on his lap — not a laptop, not a blanket, not a stewardess, not even a paperback book. I can’t wait for the first lawsuit after an infidel flight attendant confiscates a litigious imam’s Koran as they’re coming into LAX.

You’re still free to read a paperback if you’re flying from Paris to Sydney, or Stockholm to Beijing, or Kuala Lumpur to Heathrow. But not to LAX or JFK. The TSA were responding as bonehead bureaucracies do: Don’t just stand there, do something. And every time the TSA does something, you’ll have to stand there, longer and longer, suffering ever more pointless indignities. Last week, guest-hosting The Rush Limbaugh Show, I took a call from a lady who said that, if it helps keep her safe, she’s happy to get to the airport “four, five, whatever hours” before the flight. Try to put a figure on “whatever” and you’ll get a sense of where America’s transportation system is headed. Ten years ago, you got to the airport 45 minutes, an hour before the flight. Now, thanks to the ever more demanding choreographers of the homeland-security kabuki, it’s two, three, four, whatever. Look at O’Hare and imagine the size of airport we’ll need. And by then the Pantybomber won’t even need to get on the plane; he can kill more people blowing up the check-in line.

And remember, this was a bombing mission that “failed.” With failures like this, who needs victories?

Joke, joke, joke. The only good news was that the derision was so universal that the TSA promptly reined in some of their wackier impositions a couple of days later. But by then Janet Incompetano, the homeland-security secretary, had gone on TV and declared to the world that there was nothing to worry about: “The system worked.”

Indeed, it worked “smoothly.” The al-Qaeda trainee on a terrorist watch list, a man banned from the United Kingdom and reported to the CIA by his own father, got on board the plane, assembled the bomb, and attempted to detonate it. But don’t worry ’bout a thing; the system worked.

Twenty-four hours later, Secretary Incompetano was back on TV to protest that her words had been taken “out of context.” No doubt, the al-Qaeda-trained CIA-reported cash-paying crotch-stuffed watch-list member’s smooth progress through check-in was also taken “out of context.”

But by then the president of the United States had also taken to the airwaves. For three days, he had remained silent — which I believe is a record. Since Jan. 20, 2009, it’s been difficult to switch on the TV and not find him yakking — accepting an award in Oslo for not being George W. Bush, doing Special Olympics gags with Jay Leno, apologizing for America to some dictator or other . . . But across the electric wires an eerie still had descended. And when the president finally spoke, even making allowances for his usual detached cool, he sounded less like a commander-in-chief addressing the nation after an attempted attack than an assistant DA at a Cook County press conference announcing a drug bust: “Here’s what we know so far. . . . As the plane made its final approach to Detroit Metropolitan Airport, a passenger allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device. . . . The suspect was immediately subdued. . . . The suspect is now in custody and has been charged.” Etc, etc, piling up one desiccated legalism on another: “Allegedly . . . ” “suspect . . . ” “charged . . . ” The president can’t tell an allegedly alleged suspect (which is what he is in Obama fantasy-land) from an enemy combatant (which is what he is in cold hard reality). But worse than the complacent cop-show jargonizing was a phrase it’s hard to read as anything other than a deliberate attempt to mislead the public: The president referred to the Knickerbomber as an “isolated extremist.” By this time, it was already clear that young Umar had been radicalized by jihadist networks in London and fast-tracked to training in Yemen by terror operatives who understood the potentially high value of a Westernized Muslim with excellent English from a respectable family. Yet President Obama tried to pass him off as some sort of lone misfit who wakes up one morning and goes bananas. Could happen to anyone.

But, if it takes the White House three days to react to an attack on the United States, their rapid-response unit can fire back in nothing flat when Dick Cheney speaks. “It is telling,” huffed the president’s communications director, Dan Pfeiffer, “that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the administration than condemning the attackers.”

“Condemning the attackers”? What happened to all the allegedly alleged stuff? Shouldn’t that be “condemning the alleged isolated attacker”? The communications director seems to be wandering a bit off-message here, whatever the message is: The system worked, so we’re inconveniencing you even more. The system failed, but the alleged suspect is an isolated extremist, so why won’t that cowardly squish Cheney have the guts to condemn the attacker and his vast network of associates?

The real message was conveyed by Fouad Ajami, discussing the new administration’s foreign policy in the Wall Street Journal: “No despot fears Mr. Obama, and no blogger in Cairo or Damascus or Tehran, no demonstrator in those cruel Iranian streets, expects Mr. Obama to ride to the rescue.” True. Another Iranian deadline passed on New Year’s Eve, but the United States will set a new one for Groundhog Day or whenever.

And, just as the thug states understand they now have the run of the planet, so do the terror cells. A thwarted terror attack at Christmas is bad enough. Spending the following week making yourself a global joke is worse. Every A-list despot and dimestore jihadist got that message loud and clear — and so did American allies already feeling semi-abandoned by this most parochial of presidents. Expect a bumpy twelve months ahead. Happy New Year..