The audacity of restraint

On the domestic front, Obama refused to be defined as a liberal Democrat, who might tax and spend his way through the next four years. He has in fact promised a tax cut for the middle classes, a sacrilege from the perspective of the Democratic Party’s left. On social issues too, Obama has sought to bridge the deep divide between liberals and conservatives in America.

On the external front, however, his pronouncements have been closer to the liberal internationalist view that dominates the Democratic Party’s foreign policy establishment. Obama can emerge a statesman on the world stage, if he can resist the activist temptations of American liberal internationalism and choose instead strategic restraint as the over-arching theme of his foreign policy.

A number of factors demand American restraint today. One, Obama faces constraints on the conduct of American foreign policy that no post-American president had to cope with. His emphasis, then, must be on the domestic — the renewal of American national strength.

Two, despite the outpouring of goodwill for him across the world, Obama will not find it easy to make nice to the world. There is no doubt that many of President George

W. Bush’s policies made America unpopular around the world. That does not necessarily mean that the world’s resentments against America started with Bush and will end with his departure from the White House. Anti-Americanism has been an enduring world wide phenomenon since the ’60s.

Just recall the so-called “golden age” of Bill Clinton. It was one of America’s European allies, France, that referred to Clinton’s America as a “hyperpower” during the ’90s. If Bush’s Iraq intervention was attacked as illegitimate, so was Clinton’s war in Kosovo by Russia, China and many others. Neither of them had the mandate of the United Nations Security Council.

If Bush has been criticised for short-circuiting the UN, many in the third world attacked Clinton for using the UN Security Council to undermine the concept of national sovereignty in the name of “humanitarian intervention”. Whether America rejects the UN or embraces it, there will be objections.

Put simply, power breeds resentment. So long as it remains the sole superpower, America’s actions, irrespective of intent, will always generate suspicion.

Three, the limits on the use of American power are real and Obama will pay dearly if he ignores this like Bush. After the Cold War the US establishment believed it had the freedom to pursue any external goal it chose. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven otherwise. Yet there is nothing to suggest that the liberal internationalists have grasped this lesson.

Like the much-reviled neo-conservatives, the liberal internationalists too believe that American power can and must be deployed to achieve specific political objectives. If Bush gambled on Iraq, Obama’s liberals are rearing to have a go at Sudan and “save” its Darfur region. “Arrogance of power” is a trait that afflicts America’s liberal internationalists as acutely as it does the neo-conservatives.

Fourth, the negative consequences of recent American adventurism around the world should tell Obama that doing less might actually mean more for the US. But the liberal internationalists, who will populate the next administration, are getting ready to pursue their favourite lost causes.

The arms controllers want an early implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and negotiate a universal moratorium on the production of fissile materials. Some of them want to abolish nuclear weapons altogether. The list goes on from building peace in West Asia to resolving the Kashmir dispute, from rejuvenating multilateralism to rebuilding failed states.

Leadership is about defining priorities. Those who try to do everything achieve nothing. Given the current US preoccupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is unlikely if the US has the resources and energy to chase the whole laundry list of the world’s problems.

Fifth, leadership is about delegation. An America that sheds many of its secondary burdens will be better placed to shape the larger security architecture of the world. An America that cuts some geopolitical slack to other powers and acts as the balancer among them will create more options for itself. If the US continues to jump in first everywhere, Obama will invite as much resentment as Bush did.

Finally, despite his lack of foreign policy experience, Obama should trust his own judgments rather than the conventional wisdom of American liberal internationalism, and its many single-issue groups who are bound to spread American power thin.

The one original proposition that Obama took during the campaign was the hint of direct US talks with Iran. Under pressure from the liberals of his own party, who tend to be even more hawkish on Iran than the Republicans, Obama did add caveats.

That he held on to the essence of the argument that America must talk even to its enemies, despite the political controversy it generated, suggests Obama may be willing to rethink many entrenched but self-defeating American foreign policy positions. That surely offers some hope.

The writer is a professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

expressexpressindia.com