Photo : Pete Souza [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
The new US administration takes charge on January 20 and the political pundits and experts appear to be in the “wait and see” mode.
A lot of political science theories, which were widely accepted and were the basis of drawing the future projections about how the coming days would look like, were turned upside down when a businessman, Donald Trump, won a decisive victory in the 2016 election.
The result initiated a debate about the eight years of President Barack Obama’s performance and outcome of his internal and foreign policies.
Apparently, the Obama administration achieved success on many fronts, both domestically and abroad. However, a careful examination of some of those foreign policies reveals he was only partially successful in very few areas. He inherited the Afghan and Iraq wars and the situation in both countries is dismal after eight years. The Middle East is caught in several conflicts with implications for countries around the world.
He might have tried sincerely to keep America out of more direct conflicts but that has not worked well for the United States, and many experts now contend the U.S. seems to have ceded international place to powers like China and Russia.
One post-election assessment says a large number of voters simply voted against Hillary Clinton just because they did not want continuation of those policies.
President Obama’s handling of climate change was favored by almost half of the Americans. However, critics argue that his administration’s proposal were expensive and the president did not do enough. That was more so after the U.S. Supreme Court, in February 2016, delivered a major blow to President Obama by putting on hold federal regulations to curb carbon dioxide emission mainly from coal-fired power plants, which, the Obama administration considered the centerpiece of strategy to combat climate change.
President Obama’s foreign policy is – in many quarters – considered a complete disaster. From Russian invasion of Crimea, the on-going war in Iraq to the burning civil war in Syria and the unchecked growth of ISIS all are attributed to Obama administration’s hesitant foreign policies.
Although, in his speeches he tried to convince the people about how, under his administration, America had been safe and strong, but, the ground realities remained very different. As John Hennah noted in his piece in Foreign Policy Magazine in January 2016, history is not going to look particularly kindly on his tenure as America’s commander-in-chief.
During the third presidential debate Hillary Clinton defended her support for the no-fly zone over Syria. Although, President Obama and Gen. Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had raised concerns about the action which could escalate the war and even resulted in a direct conflict with Russia.
Such worries were undoubtedly genuine and real. However, if this policy had been adopted by President Obama at a very early stage, and he would have imposed the no-fly zone over Syria, it would not have provided Russia an opportunity to get involved.
It is true that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) started taking roots after the Bush administrations disastrous Iraq policy. However, it is also to some extent true that Obama administration has to bear some responsibility for strengthening of the ISIS especially in eastern Syria and now in Afghanistan. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) declassified report dated August 12, 2012 stated: “The West, Gulf countries and Turkey [which] support the [Syrian] opposition… There is a possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”
The document clearly showed that US intelligence agencies rightly predicted the rise of ISIS but a coalition to deal with the threat of the militant organization came very late.
In Afghanistan, Obama’s 30,000 troop surge in 2009 was widely supported by the military commanders. However, without ascertaining the ground reality, he also announced a pullout of the troops in 18 months. That announcement not only gave a signal to insurgents in Afghanistan that they had no need to negotiate a settlement with the legitimate Afghan government. Analysts point out that all that militants needed was to dig in and wait. Later, the deteriorating situation also encouraged ISIS to slowly have a foothold in the country.
Since then the ISIS has already spread its narrative successfully in Afghanistan, getting some support from militants.
Simultaneously, interests of old adversaries in the region are converging and a new regional alliance is forming in the area which exclude the US and its Western allies.
Another major part of the Obama foreign policy was the 2012 regional strategy stressing a pivot to East Asia. It predominantly emphasized the “strengthening bilateral security alliances; deepening working relationships with emerging powers, China inclusive; engaging with regional multilateral institutions; expanding trade and investment; forging a broad-based military presence; and advancing democracy and human rights.”
China sees the Pivot to East Asia strategy as a part of America’s policy to contain and confine Beijing’s military power and economic expansion with the help of India, Japan, Australia and the coastal states in the South and East China Sea.
According to some commentaries, the main goal of the US military’s “Air-Sea Battle” doctrine is to blockade sea lanes, such as the Straits of Malacca, the Sunda Straits and Lombok Straits, to cut off China’s access to oil, gas and other raw materials from the Middle East and Africa. Such extreme interpretations suggest the United States needs a militarily, economically and socially weak and divided China to continue American dominance.
Others term such interpretations as far-fetched and argue that Washington simply wants to protect sea trade and energy routes and assure its allies of cooperation against any hegemony.
As part of its Asia pivot, the Obama administration considered India a very important partner. To woo India, the Obama administration adopted policies inimical to its old ally, Pakistan, and defined its relations with Pakistan on the basis of what India and Afghanistan say about Pakistan.
Former CIA station chief in Islamabad, Robert L. Grenier, in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the 15th anniversary of 9/11 terror attacks warned against such approach : “Long-term US strategic interests in Pakistan in fact dwarf those in Afghanistan. Arguably, we have allowed the tail to wag the dog for too long, and it is time to reorient our policy.”
For longtime South Asia observers, the policy to ignore Pakistan’s interests has never been a good idea. In fact, it alarmed a number of experts. No major country could afford to alienate a country of such size, economic and strategic importance.
The New York Times perhaps referred to such apprehensions in April 2015, on the eve of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Islamabad. The Times noted among other things that “laden with tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure and energy assistance on a scale the United States has never offered in the past decade of a close relationship, a gesture likely to confirm the decline of American influence in that nation.”
Times also focused on the fact that “significant amount of assistance, including a port facility at Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, and rails and roads leading from the port across Baluchistan Province and into western China, will be in areas close to the tribal areas where the militant groups operate. The route from Gwadar to Kashgar, in Xinjiang — a project officially called the Economic Corridor — also serves as a shortcut for the shipment of goods from Europe to China, avoiding the Strait of Malacca farther east”.
Clearly, the Asia pivot, particularly too much reliance on New Delhi, has not been able to advance U.S. interests in South Asia.
One area, where the Obama Administration is credited with success is the conclusion of Iran nuclear deal. But that too has come with much controversy about Iran’s open backing of militancy and its destabilizing role in the Middle East as Tehran saw an opportunity to counter Saudi Arabian influence in the long-running fight between two conservative countries.
Other notable successes include elimination of Osama Bin Laden and almost complete annihilation of al-Qaeda central in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as taking out of al-Qaeda preacher Anwar al-Awlaki. President Obama’s use of drone attacks against terror targets remained controversial. While drone operations did take out some dangerous terrorists, such tactics were also counterproductive and raised concerns about transparency, legal and constitutional authorities.
President Obama’s policy in the Middle East and his inability to address longstanding conflicts like Kashmir and Israeli-Palestinian dispute have also drawn scathing international and domestic criticism.
While, the U.S. still has a huge influence around the world, the last eight years have given Russia and China many openings to increase their involvement in international affairs. While Chinese role understandably comes with its economic expansion, Russia has maneuvered things its way wherever it found any gaps, as in Syria.
This piece is part of a series articles Views and News is publishing as a new US Administration assumes charge. Opinions expressed by writers do no necessarily reflect editorial views of the magazine.
