Impressed by Donald Trump’s announcement of his first foreign-policy acts as president: building the Mexico Wall, the No-Muslims Wall, the End-of-NATO Wall, the anti-European Wall and the forthcoming China Trade Wall? These are just the foreign policy appetizers with the main course(s) to come as yet unknown. The more initiatives Trump announces, the better Barack Obama looks in retrospect. As the 44th president's time in office recedes from public consciousness and we are treated to pictures of the former man of the people cavorting with Richard Branson, this might be an appropriate time to a bird's eye look at his non-domestic record, all the while keeping the emerging Trump Doctrine of “America First” in the back of our minds.
How should we evaluate Obama’s record? Contemporary historians have been fast off the mark. In a recent C-SPAN poll just one month after he left office a panel ranked him 12th, just three positions behind Ronald Reagan, ahead of consequential leaders like James Monroe and James Polk (each of whom solidified America's dominance as a continental power). Neither Clinton, Bush (41) nor Bush (43) scored as highly.
That many of these views were influenced by Obama's not inconsiderable domestic achievements is understandable. Nonetheless, to have validity, any assessment must be balanced, impartial, and nuanced -- taking into account the entire record. In that sense such rankings are doubtlessly tinged with rose-coloured glasses, especially in the light of his successor's disruptive start.
Conservative critics will flay Obama for perceived weakness against adversaries like Russia and China, negotiating with instead of subverting Cuba and Iran, eviscerating the US military, and allowing relations with Israel to deteriorate. To progressives, Obama is just another liberal leader in the mode of Jimmy Carter whose actions failed to deliver on his promises, from closing Guantanamo to the Middle East where a two-state option was ineffectively pursued, not to mention forays into military adventurism in Libya. In short, partisans will always have plenty of things to quarrel about, but neither do we need the false immediacy of subjective academic elite judgments in order to make some simple, pragmatic observations.
Let’s start with the positives: two major victories for engagement of adversaries, and some progress on environmental issues.
1. Positives
i) Engagement
Cuba -- Via the medium of his extraordinary visit to that troubled isle in March 2016, Obama signaled the effective end of the Cold War in the Americas and, while criticizing Cuba’s human rights record, promised nonintervention in its internal affairs.
Iran -- Engaging Iran has been substantially more challenging. Some members of Congress -- and right-wing groups -- continue to pressure the Trump administration to renounce the nuclear deal and US businesses to maintain remaining sanctions. Iran’s economy has yet to benefit significantly from the negotiated settlement and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei is still lobbing the occasional verbal potshot at the US. Unless liberal Democrats gain the advantage in 2018's Congress, and President Rouhani wins the upcoming Iranian election, the trade embargo on Iran (and on Cuba too) will continue, endangering the legacy of Obama’s engagement effort. Still, current signs are that the nuclear deal is being fulfilled. Unfortunately, US diplomacy is not trying to build on that deal by ending the trade embargo and bringing Iran into a bold Middle East peace process that would encompass Iraq’s and Syria’s civil wars. Trump has indicated a desire to engage the Gulf and Arab states, though like many such voiced policy pronouncements from his administration, details are in short supply and may indeed turn out to be a victim of his fickle moods.
ii) The Environment
Last Earth Day Obama and China’s president Xi Jinping inked the Paris Agreement on climate change, committing the US to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% to 28% from 2005 levels by 2025. Whether or not that target can be achieved depends on a Supreme Court decision that will not be adjudicated until well after Obama's retirement. His administrative act to curb emissions from power plants, has been blocked by the Court. Responding to environmental pressure groups, Obama rejected the Keystone XL fracking project, imposed a three-year moratorium on coal mining on public lands, and, in a policy reversal, banned drilling along the Atlantic coast for five years. Trump has since moved to reverse Obama's reversal in all of these areas.
2. Negatives
i) Great Power Impasse
The cause of peace in the Middle East has not advanced an iota under Obama. His decision to follow Hillary Clinton’s advice rather than his own inclinations and intervene in Libya after the overthrow of Muammar el-Qaddafi was disastrous for the same reason he opposed George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq as an example of "stupid wars" -- there was neither a coherent endgame nor a blueprint for what would come after Qaddafi. Libya today is a failed state. The civil war in Syria has emptied the country. As many as 400,000 people have died, perhaps 10 times as many have become refugees, and millions more are either internally displaced or seeking refuge in Europe. No further military investment can make life better for the remaining population and anti-Assad fighters. There, as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan, the peace process has collapsed and good governance is but a wishful dream. Far from developing a strategy to extricate the US from Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama's administration kept more than 5,000 troops in Afghanistan into 2017 and gave every indication that the US could resume a combat role in Iraq despite the endless litany of political squabbling, corruption, and sectarian violence taking place. Obama’s reliance on elite forces and drones may have reduced US casualties, but it still amounts to intervention and avoidance of creative peacemaking, something Trump and his team also seem reluctant to undertake. The difference is that Trump has James Mattis, a tried and tested front-line commander during Obama's tenure, who knows the political/military lay of the land and just may have enough strategic vision and first-hand knowledge to achieve some stability in that lawless region.
The failed promise of the Arab Spring virtually everywhere has been equaled by the US's abject inability to find faithful (or consistent) partners amidst what Trump characterized during the 2016 presidential campaign as a sea of extremists. The US has no reliable allies in the Arab Middle East. Making matters worse, the Obama administration followed the traditional, unimaginative path of supporting anti-democratic regimes that thwart US policy goals domestically but win American favor by proclaiming their anti-terrorism internationally. For example, the US continues to provide the Pakistani military with billions of dollars in aid, carries out drone strikes that cause "collateral damage" by killing civilians, and looks away while Pakistan’s intelligence service cultivates ties with the Afghan Taliban. Saudi Arabia’s criticism of US Iran and Syria policies has not stopped the US from providing the Saudis with intelligence and material support for a largely ineffective bombing campaign in Yemen. The civilian toll in death and destruction is running high, and both al-Qaeda and ISIL/ISIS has gained a harvest of propaganda and recruits as a result as despotic regimes appear as allied with the "Great Satan". Obama’s celebrated “rebuke” of the Saudis and his urging that they accept a “cold peace” with Iran has not fundamentally altered the US-Saudi relationship, testimony to a failure of will and a triumph of optics.
US support of authoritarian, military-backed regimes is not limited to the fractured Middle East. There is Thailand, where the military has rewritten the constitution with an eye to maintaining its power base while the economy sinks; Egypt, where the military under President Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi has practically dismantled the constitution and conducted widespread repression; and Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is gutting the secular democracy with a ruthless efficiency that would make tin pot dictators everywhere rise up in spontaneous applause.
Most damning, Obama proved both unwilling, not just unable, to craft a new approach to Israel. Obama, like every president before him, did not take the crucial step of sanctioning Israel over its expansion of settlements and denial of basic rights to the Palestinians. He basically mouthed platitudes regarding the hoary old two-state solution option, even while it was evident that the more "moderate" Fatah movement had no will, no leadership and no credibility to overcome Hamas' stranglehold on the hearts and minds of those living in the Gaza Strip. Without a united front among the Palestinians there can be no hope of bringing Israel to the table. The Trump approach may not be original, but it is at least different, and getting the Arab states involved at least offers a wider umbrella of parties from which ideas might be generated. Furthermore, Israel has been quietly building bilateral arrangements with many of these countries who have come to the pragmatic conclusion that the Jewish nation is going nowhere so they might as well find some modicum of peaceful coexistence with it.
ii) Weaponized World
Instead of a breakthrough on creating Obama’s nuclear-free world, we see the continued development of new weapons of mass destruction, including nearly $20 billion on nuclear weapons in 2016 as part of a $1 trillion Pentagon plan for weapons upgrading. That direction hardly improves prospects for reducing the nuclear danger, for Obama did not undertake nuclear arms reduction treaty discussions with Russia like so many of his predecessors did. Regarding the nuclearization of the Korean peninsula, why the Obama administration did not do as Trump did (intentionally or otherwise) and use an aggressive trade negotiating stance to get China (the great Kim dynasty enabler)'s attention and halt coal purchases from Pyongyang to punish the rogue regime, represented a missed opportunity. China plays a double-faced diplomatic game, using the appearance and lingo of diplomacy, while employing force and intimidation. Trump has cut away the posturing and pretense -- hopefully he knows where to draw the line.
iii) Russian and Chinese Relations
Relations with Russia relations have turned opposite of the “reset” that Obama envisaged early in his first term. Of course, Russia's boorish behavior is half the explanation -- the absorption of Crimea and the intervention in Ukraine (which continues) -- but the other half was the strangely provocative US behavior along Russia’s western frontier. Historically Russia has been sensitive about its border with Europe (with good reason as Napoleon, the Kaiser and Adolf Hitler demonstrated) and has taken umbrage at the slow, progressively closer encroaching of NATO nation states. What has resulted is a potentially dangerous cat-and-mouse game, characterized by close encounters in the Baltic Sea, infringements by Russian bombers into American airspace and a low-grade cyberwar that culminated in the hacking of Democratic servers during the fall 2016 campaign. The fallout of this tension may be seen clearest in Syria, where hopes have been dashed for a reliable US-Russia agreement that might turn a cease-fire into a lasting political solution. Notwithstanding Donald Trump's voiced liking of Vladimir Putin, there is very little room on the world stage for two would-be Alpha males with rampant egos.
With China, the relationship devolved into “strategic mistrust” on Obama's watch. As with Russia, danger lurks in US and Chinese maneuvering and posturing in and around the South China Sea. China claims sovereignty over the tiny islands and the US claims freedom of navigation, setting the stage for a confrontation as each country escalates rhetoric (though Trump, with the recent sallying of the 'Carl Vinson' battle group) and shows of force to make its point. The election of a Filipino president who rivals Donald Trump for bluster and lack of national governmental experience adds to the potential for a miscalculation, since the US may be on the road to revitalizing military ties with Manila. Contentious US-China relations extends to many other issues, such as the Middle Kingdom's crackdown on civil society and human rights, its rampant military modernization, and differences over trade and currency values.
iv) Extra-legal Actions
The use of drones has dramatically expanded, and with it the unanswered question as to their effectiveness and lawfulness. Many commentators have questioned the former on the grounds that more terrorists are created than killed by drone attacks, and more civilians are killed then terrorists.
With regards to his administration’s response to Europe’s refugee crisis, partly fueled by his indecision over Syrian intervention, which emboldened further Russian military adventurism, Obama didn't build walls, but he took in a tiny number of Syrian and other refugees fleeing war. Neither did he present any coherent peace plan for the conflict, allowing Putin and Erdogan to essentially dictate any future settlement by hijacking responsibility for arranging talks between all sides.
Obama’s legacy of dancing on the edge of the law extends to the undeclared wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq over the last eight years, and the support of Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen. At the least, he did not uphold his promise to support the War Powers Resolution and its 60-day requirement to seek Congressional approval of the use of force. He and his advisers repeated the Vietnam model of intervention via increments, using Special Forces “advisers,” “trainers,” drones, and other devices in lieu of deploying major combat forces. But the scale of involvement aside, US forces were and are still in combat, with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle complicit and remiss in their duties by failing to challenge the 44th President’s succumbing to mission creep.
Obama’s tough line on whistleblowers, most notably Edward Snowden, is just the tip of the iceberg. Occasionally, his administration has surprised by declassifying once-sensitive material, such as US support of Argentina’s “dirty war” against leftists during the Nixon-Kissinger era. But that was then. Coinciding with his declassification decision was a visit to Argentina that, according to human-rights activists, appeared to legitimize an authoritarian regime that has overturned various democratic reforms.
3. Summary
Unlike his domestic policy, Barack Obama’s foreign policy has been eloquent on progressive rhetoric and (engagement with Iran and Cuba excepted) short on substantive accomplishment. To be sure, we need to make allowance for the congressional gridlock with which he had to contend; and we should give more than a little credit to Obama for bypassing that hive of inaction on Iran, Cuba, and climate change.
But, after the soaring eloquence of his 2008 campaign, we had come to expect more from him, especially on issues of war and peace. After all, wasn't he supposed to have learned from the tumultuous George W. Bush years that you “don’t do stupid shit” and get yourself bogged down in hopeless foreign adventures without either an exit strategy or plan? But Obama's caution and half-measures have resulted in a foreign-policy legacy that includes a costly and irremediable quagmire in the Middle East as well as hostile relations with Russia, frosty contention with China, and very modest advances on climate change.
Barack Obama has left a boiling pot and Donald Trump just so happens to like to stir things up.