When Barack Obama was elected the president of the US in 2008; he made history. In a country built on the back of slavery, where racial difference and superiority is ingrained, the election of a black man to America’s highest office was no mean achievement. And not surprisingly, many Americans felt that the US had entered into a post-racial era and, in doing so, they had redeemed themselves. At the time I was in a liberal university town in California where many people felt a sense of pride and jubilation over what had been achieved, with more to come in a new America. However, it was not how it panned out, which I will take up in a separate article. Here, I would deal with its international dimension.
Internationally, there was great relief when Obama was elected because this also meant the end of George Bush as the US president. Bush’s eight year as president was marked by turmoil and war in the Middle East; following the 9/11 al Qaeda inspired terrorist attacks in the US. His ‘global war on terrorism’ led the US to invade Iraq, as Saddam Hussein was believed to have links with al Qaeda and possessed ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (WMD), that didn’t exist. And thus the world was plunged into a seemingly unending war in the Middle East, with horrendous consequences still being played out. It was, therefore, with considerable relief that Obama’s election as president was internationally received, as he was seen as the peace candidate compared to Bush. He had opposed Iraq war and was committed to end it, and soon made a pitch for a new relationship with the Islamic world.
The world was expecting so much from him that he was awarded the Noble Prize for Peace mainly, it would seem, because he was not Bush. But that was not enough, as we found out during his presidency. He sensed that an opening with the Muslim world should help in lowering the temperature in that sensitive region. To this end, his administration sought to facilitate a settlement of the Palestinian question on the basis of a two state solution with both Israel and Palestine living in peaceful coexistence. But that required a commitment on both sides, particularly Israel, to believe in that, which was not forthcoming. Indeed, Israel was already unhappy at Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech reaching out to the Muslim world, as it had not been consulted prior to it. This kind of unilateral Obama initiative, without Israeli input, didn’t endear Obama to the Netanyahu’s government, thus setting the stage for his government’s obstruction of any US initiative to promote a peaceful settlement of the Palestinian issue.
About the same time, the Arab Spring rocked the Middle East with Hosni Mubarak regime as its main casualty, affecting seriously regional strategic stability. The Obama administration found itself in a difficult situation, finally deciding against bailing out Mubarak in the face of a popular upsurge against a corrupt and brutal system. Which angered US’ two major strategic partners, Israel and Saudi Arabia, basically because Mubarak’s Egypt had been the instrument of keeping the lid on any eruption of the Arab street, which was feared both by Tel Aviv and Riyadh for their own respective reasons. But the Arab Spring bloom turned into a withering winter when the old order, more or less, returned after Abdel Fattah el-Sisi staged a military coup and became Egypt’s new ruler. The US quietly sanctified the new order.
The US played a decisive role in overthrowing the Gaddafi regime in Libya, but this has thrown the country into perpetual turmoil, and it has become the staging post for refugees from Africa and Middle East heading towards Europe, creating all sorts of problems there. And in Syria, where the Arab Spring manifested itself in a rebellion against the Bashar al-Assad regime, the country was plunged into a bloody civil war, which is still playing itself out with even greater stakes from multiple jihadi/terrorist groups aided and abetted by regional powers and those from outside the region. The US and its allies could have brought down the Assad regime early on, but the Obama administration was unwilling to commit troops on the ground.
With the sad experience of Afghanistan and Iraq in mind, President Obama was prepared to use all the lethal power except putting American troops on the ground. His administration wanted regional powers, like Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, to do real fighting on the ground with all the backing of US aerial power. Russia’s direct intervention on behalf the Assad regime has put the rebels on the defensive. At the same time, a new power equation between Russia and Turkey has created further complications. And out of all this power play, and failure to stabilize Middle East, emerged IS which, despite its setbacks here and there in Iraq and Syria, continues to be a major threat regionally and elsewhere in the world with ‘lone wolf attacks’ like the ones in Paris, Belgium, Turkey and elsewhere.
Obama’s record in the Middle East’s has been marked by ambivalence because he seemed to have recognized the limits of US power, unable to extinguish bushfires anywhere and everywhere. And that was inherent in the situation when he took over from the Bush administration. His one important achievement was the agreement with Iran to freeze its nuclear program for many years in return for lifting sanctions on that country, even though it has created tensions in US relations with Israel and Iran.
During Obama’s presidency, US-China relations were marked by growing tensions, particularly on the South China Sea issue, where China has claimed virtual control with the US seeking to assert, mostly unsuccessfully so far, the right to freedom of navigation. And it has also failed so far to create an effective regional coalition to contain/balance Beijing’s projection of power. At the same time, North Korea continued to defy much of the world by building its nuclear arsenal.
At the same time, the Obama administration and its allies failed to successfully push forward the process of Ukraine’s integration into European Union and eventually North Atlantic Treaty Organization (EU), when Russia hit back with the annexation of Crimea and encouraging/aiding separatism in eastern Ukraine. And with the Obama administration, in its last days, sending troops and heavy armor, like tanks, into Poland and its rotation through NATO’s Baltic states, it has further increased volatility in Europe. In other words, the Obama administration hasn’t been successful in defusing or resolving some of the world’s most intractable issues, partly because of the limits of US power, as it no longer can impose solutions.
The writer is a senior journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia. He can be reached at [email protected]