OBAMA PIVOTS PRAGMATIC, ANYTHING BUT BUSH GONE
By David Paul Kuhn
RealClearPolitics
http://www.realclearpoliti cs.com/articles/2009/06/01/obama_pivots_pragmatic_ anything_but_bush_gone_96765.html
June 1 2009
The illusions appear gone. On the world stage, the idealistic candidate
has become the pragmatic president.
George W. Bush took five years to pivot away from neo-conservative
idealism. Obama has turned away from his tepid idealism in a matter of
months. The words will remain grandiose. But the gauntlet before Barack
Obama has compelled him to be practical. Marriages of convenience
are again dominating U.S. foreign policy.
Obama flies off to Saudi Arabia and Egypt this week, ahead of traveling
to Europe to commemorate the 65th anniversary of D-Day. We recall
D-Day as a big moment of last century’s big moral war. Good and evil
were clear and we were good. But we were also willing to ally with
Joseph Stalin’s repressive regime to face down the far greater evil.
Today’s Middle East politics offer more shades of grey. But democracy,
as with World War II, is not this president’s chief concern. At
this point, it’s the avoidance of war from East Asia to the Middle
East. Obama has responded to rapid escalation with a rapid, and
healthy, turn towards full-on pragmatism.
Every new administration has a learning curve on international
affairs. In recent decades, there has been a pattern of a new White
House attempting the opposite of its predecessor.
George W. Bush’s early strategy was ABC (Anything but Clinton). Clinton
engaged North Korea so Bush would not. Clinton tried a shotgun
wedding on Palestine and Israel. Bush left the fraught relationship
alone. Clinton conveyed the image of consensus on treaties like
Kyoto. Bush scuttled them. Clinton tolerated a Saddam Hussein who
stayed within his borders, and Bush, well we know what happened there.
Obama initially attempted an ABB (Anything but Bush) policy. Bush
spoke in Manichean terms about national security threats. Obama would
do nuance. Obama directed the Pentagon to trash the term "Global
War on Terror" in favor of "Overseas Contingency Operation." It was
rhetorical de-escalation. He pledged to close the detention center
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a bold stroke to symbolize his turn
away from Bush (though Bush eventually moved towards that policy as
well). Obama publicly reached his hand out to Iran, where Bush only
finally resigned himself to quiet efforts. Obama is engaging the
Israel-Palestine issue early and hard.
But Obama has kept more Bush than he intended. Obama has rankled his
left flank by continuing Bush’s military tribunals for Guantanamo
detainees despite calling them an "enormous failure" nearly a year
ago. Elsewhere, citing Bush’s argument that national security requires
secrecy, Obama has defended warrantless wiretapping and withheld
photos depicting prisoner abuse.
Obama’s talk in Prague of a world without nuclear weapons has given
way to the concern that Iran and North Korea could spark a nuclear
arms race in East Asia and the Middle East.
Obama’s open-ended promises for a "new beginning" on Iran now carry
a caveat. Obama recently set a year-end deadline for significant
diplomatic progress.
Last month, Obama sat beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and decided not to give him the full-court press. Obama did not say
all settlement building must stop. But last week, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton did. "Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural
growth exceptions," she said.
This White House initially shied away from setting diplomatic
trip-wires for North Korea, relying on consensus and containment. But
just this weekend, following North Korea’s latest nuclear test, Defense
Secretary Robert Gates offered the first explicit red line. Gates
said the Obama administration intends to hold North Korea "fully
accountable" should it sell or transfer any nuclear material.
Obama’s early decision to flip on his pledge to call the Armenian
genocide, genocide, now appears to be a harbinger of a full-turn toward
pragmatism. Even U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is walking lockstep.
The woman who in 1991 unfurled a banner in Tiananmen Square that read,
"to those who died for democracy in China" and attempted to push
a human rights petition to President Hu Jintao, was mostly mum on
human rights during her recent visit to China. The visit came only
days before the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Obama has more immediate needs from China: a partner on the economic
recession, North Korea and environmental policy.
Bush also shifted by the winter of his presidency. He quietly engaged
North Korea and Iran. His good-and-evil language faded as he came to
work with all but the most hardened adversaries in Iraq. Bush came
to mildly push for a two-state solution in the Middle East and even,
to the chagrin of Dick Cheney, moved to close the Guantanamo detention
center. Bush realized hard power was not enough.
Obama is now adding some hard to his soft power. It’s this move to
have realism reign over idealism that frames Obama’s speech in Cairo
Thursday, a heavily anticipated address to the Muslim world. Few
expect a sequel to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s 2005 speech
in Cairo, when she recanted a policy that put stability before "the
democratic aspirations of all people."
Democracy is not the ends for Obama in his Middle East. It’s
peace. More immediately, the absence of war between Israel and
Iran. Jordan exemplifies why some monarchs are better for peace, just
as Hamas’ 2006 victory demonstrated that elections can undercut peace.
Bush attempted in his last years to walk back his commitment to
"ending tyranny in our world." But it’s the Democrat who has ended
the democracy agenda. Obama heads to authoritarian Egypt with more
pressing problems on his mind than tyranny.
David Paul Kuhn is the Chief Political Correspondent for
RealClearPolitics and the author of The Neglected Voter. He can be
reached at david@realclearpolitics.com