August 23, 2013
Aside
from the carnage in Benghazi, the most enduring image from Hillary
Clinton's tenure as US secretary of state was the fake remote control
she brought with her to Moscow in 2009 with the word "Reset" in
misspelled Russian embossed on it.
Clinton's
gimmick was meant to show that under President Barack Obama, American
foreign policy would be fundamentally transformed. Since Obama and
Clinton blamed much of the world's troubles on the misdeeds of their
country, under their stewardship of US foreign policy, the US would
reset everything.
Around the globe, all bets were off.
Five
years later we realize that Clinton's embarrassing gesture was not a
gimmick, but a dead serious pledge. Throughout the world, the Obama
administration has radically altered America's policies.
And
disaster has followed. Never since America's establishment has the US
appeared so untrustworthy, destructive, irrelevant and impotent.
Consider
Syria. Wednesday was the one-year anniversary of Obama's pledge that
the US would seek the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad's
regime if Assad used chemical weapons against his opponents.
On
Wednesday, Assad's forces used chemical weapons against civilians
around Damascus. According to opposition forces, well over a thousand
people were murdered.
Out of habit, the eyes of the world turned to Washington. But Obama has no policy to offer. Obama's America can do nothing.
America's
powerlessness in Syria is largely Obama's fault. At the outset of the
Syrian civil war two-and-a-half years ago, Obama outsourced the
development of Syria's opposition forces to Turkey's Prime Minister
Recep Erdogan. He had other options. A consortium of Syrian Kurds,
moderate Sunnis, Christians and others came to Washington and begged for
US assistance. But they were ignored.
Obama's
decision to outsource the US's Syria policy owed to his twin goals of
demonstrating that the US would no longer try to dictate international
outcomes, and of allying the US with Islamic fundamentalists.
Both of these goals are transformative.
In
the first instance, Obama believes that anti-Americanism stems from
America's actions. By accepting the mantel of global leadership, Obama
believes the US insulted other nations. To mitigate their anger, the US
should abdicate leadership.
As for courting
Islamic fundamentalists, from his earliest days in office Obama insisted
that since radical Islam is the most popular movement in the Islamic
world, radical Islam is good. Radical Muslims are America's friends.
Obama
embraced Erdogan, an Islamic fascist who has won elections, as his
closest ally and most trusted adviser in the Muslim world.
And
so, with the full support of the US government, Erdogan stacked Syria's
opposition forces with radical Muslims like himself. Within months the
Muslim Brotherhood comprised the majority in Syria's US-sponsored
opposition.
The Muslim Brotherhood has no problem collaborating with al-Qaida, because the latter was formed by Muslim Brothers.
It shares the Brotherhood's basic ideology.
Since
al-Qaida has the most experienced fighters, its rise to leadership and
domination of the Syrian opposition was a natural progression.
In
other words, Obama's decision to have Turkey form the Syrian opposition
led inevitably to the current situation in which the Iranian- and
Russian-backed Syrian regime is fighting an opposition dominated by
al-Qaida.
At this point, short of an Iraq-style
US invasion of Syria and toppling of the regime, almost any move the US
takes to overthrow the government will strengthen al-Qaida. So after a
reported 1,300 people were killed by chemical weapons launched by the
regime on Wednesday, the US has no constructive options for improving
the situation.
A distressing aspect of Obama's
embrace of Erdogan is that Erdogan has not tried to hide the fact that
he seeks dictatorial powers and rejects the most basic norms of liberal
democracy and civil rights.
Under the façade of
democracy, Erdogan has transformed Turkey into one of the most
repressive countries in the world. Leading businessmen, generals,
journalists, parliamentarians and regular citizens have been
systematically rounded up and accused of treason for their "crime" of
opposing Turkey's transformation into an Islamic state. Young protesters
demanding civil rights and an end to governmental corruption are beaten
and arrested by police, and demonized by Erdogan. Following the
overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt last month,
Erdogan has openly admitted that he and his party are part and parcel of
the Muslim Brotherhood.
Obama's approach to world affairs was doubtlessly shaped during his long sojourn in America's elite universities.
Using
the same elitist sensibilities that cause him to blame American
"arrogance" for the world's troubles, and embrace radical Islam as a
positive force, Obama has applied conflict resolution techniques
developed by professors in ivory towers to real world conflicts that
cannot be resolved peacefully.
Obama believed
he could use the US's close relationships with Israel and Turkey to
bring about a rapprochement between the former allies. But he was wrong.
The Turkish-Israeli alliance ended because Erdogan is a virulent
Jew-hater who seeks Israel's destruction, not because of a
misunderstanding.
Obama forced Israel to
apologize for defending itself against Turkish aggression, believing
that Erdogan would then reinstate full diplomatic relations with the
Jewish state. Instead, Erdogan continued his assault on Israel, most
recently accusing it of organizing the military coup in Egypt and the
anti- Erdogan street protests in Turkey.
As for
Egypt, as with Syria, Obama's foreign policy vision for the US has left
Washington with no options for improving the situation on the ground or
for securing its own strategic interests. To advance his goal of
empowering the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama pushed the Egyptian military to
overthrow the regime of US ally Hosni Mubarak and so paved the way for
elections that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power.
Today he opposes the military coup that ousted the Muslim Brotherhood government.
The
US claims that it opposes the coup because the military has trampled
democracy and human rights. But it is all but silent in the face of the
Muslim Brotherhood's own trampling of the human rights of Egypt's
Christian minority.
Obama ignores the fact that Mohamed Morsi governed as a tyrant far worse than Mubarak.
Ignoring
the fact that neither side can share power with the other, the US
insists the Brotherhood and the military negotiate an agreement to do
just that. And so both sides hate and distrust the US.
Wresting
an Israeli apology to Turkey was Obama's only accomplishment during his
trip to Israel in March. Secretary of State John Kerry's one
accomplishment since entering office was to restart negotiations between
Israel and the PLO. Just as the consequence of Israel's apology to
Turkey was an escalation of Turkey's anti- Israel and anti-Semitic
rhetoric, so the consequence of Kerry's "accomplishment" will be the
escalation of Palestinian terrorism and political warfare against
Israel.
As Jonathan Tobin noted Wednesday in
Commentary, to secure Palestinian agreement to reinstate negotiations,
not only did Kerry force Israel to agree to release more than a thousand
Palestinian terrorists from prison. He put the US on record supporting
the Palestinians' territorial demands. In so doing, Kerry locked the US
into a position of blaming Israel once the talks fail. When the
Palestinians escalate their political and terrorist campaign against
Israel, they will use Kerry's pledges as a means of justifying their
actions.
The current round of talks will fail
of course because like the Turks, the Syrians and the Egyptians, the
Palestinians are not interested in resolving their conflict.
They are interested in winning it. They do not want a state. They want to supplant Israel.
Clinton's
Reset button was played up as a gimmick. But it was a solemn oath. And
it was fulfilled. And as a result, the world is a much more violent and
dangerous place. The US and its allies are more threatened. The US's
enemies from Moscow to Tehran to Venezuela are emboldened.
The
time has come to develop the basis for a future US policy that would
represent a reset of Obama's catastrophic actions and attitudes. Given
the damage US power and prestige has already suffered, and given that
Obama is unlikely to change course in his remaining three years in
power, it is clear that reverting to George W. Bush's foreign policy of
sometimes fighting a war on nebulous "terrorists" and sometimes
appeasing them will not be sufficient to repair the damage.
The US must not exchange strategic insanity with strategic inconsistency.
Instead,
a careful, limited policy based on no-risk and low-risk moves that send
clear messages and secure clear interests is in order.
The
most obvious no-risk move would be to embrace Israel as America's most
vital and only trustworthy ally in the region. By fully supporting
Israel not only would the US strengthen its own position by
strengthening the position of the only state in the Middle East that
shares its enemies, its interests and its values.
Washington would send a strong signal to states throughout the region and the world that the US can again be trusted.
This
support would also secure clear US strategic interests by providing
Israel with the political backing it requires to eliminate Iran's
nuclear program. Moreover, it would bring coherence to the US's
counter-terror strategy by ending US support for Palestinian statehood.
Instead, the US would support the institution of the rule of law and
liberal norms of government in Palestinian society by supporting the
application of Israel's liberal legal code over Judea and Samaria.
Another
no-risk move is to support former Soviet satellite states that are now
members of NATO. Here, too, the US would be taking an action that is
clear and involves no risk. Russia would have few options for opposing
such a move. And the US could go a long way toward rebuilding its
tattered reputation.
Low risk moves include
supporting minorities that do not have a history of violent
anti-Americanism and are, in general, opposed to Islamic fascism.
Such
groups include the Kurds. In Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran, the Kurds
represent a national group that has proven its ability to self-govern
and to oppose tyranny. With certain, easily identified exceptions, the
stronger the Kurds are, the weaker anti-American forces become.
Then
there are the Christians. The plight of the Christians in the Islamic
world is one of the most depressing chapters in the recent history of
the region. In country after country, previously large and relatively
peaceful, if discriminated against, Christian minorities are being
slaughtered and forced to flee.
The US has done next to nothing to defend them.
Strong,
forthright statements of support for Christian communities and
condemnations of persecution, including rape, forced conversions,
massacre, extortion and destruction of church and private
Christian-owned property from Egypt to Indonesia to Pakistan to the
Palestinian Authority would make a difference in the lives of millions
of people.
It would also go some way toward
rehabilitating the US's reputation as a champion of human rights, after
Obama's embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Under
Obama, America has made itself worse than irrelevant. In country after
country, it has become dangerous to be a US ally. The world as a whole
is a much more dangerous place as a consequence.
Nothing short of a fundamental transformation of US foreign policy will suffice to begin to repair the damage.
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