My latest from the Guelph Mercury.

September 17, 2009

On Aug. 27, Polish media began reporting that the Obama administration would not pursue an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) shield for eastern Europe. Since that time, other media have confirmed Washington’s growing reluctance to see the initiative through.

An undertaking of Obama’s predecessor, president George W. Bush, the ABM program for eastern Europe would have featured a radar system in the Czech Republic and 10 missile interceptor sites in Poland. The Bush administration sought to justify the implementation of this eastern European ABM shield — which required America’s withdrawal from the ABM treaty — as necessary to defend Europe from Iranian missile attack.

Obama reportedly agreed to spike the initiative in exchange for the Russian Federation’s co-operation in securing Iran’s verifiable suspension of all military nuclear activities. This, the reasoning goes, would have undercut the need for the program in the first place, enabling the United States to achieve its security objectives without pursuing a policy antagonistic to Russia. This was all part of “resetting” — Obama’s diplomatic shibboleth — U.S.-Russian relations.

This was a mistake on the administration’s behalf, however, which leaves the U.S. weaker, eastern Europeans more vulnerable, and Iran dangerously emboldened.

First of all, Obama traded away a bargaining chip to Russia in exchange for future payment — specifically, Russia’s help in making sure Iran does not achieve a military nuclear capability. This is naiveté worthy of the Carter administration, and reveals what more hawkish security analysts suspected all along: Obama was simply searching for an excuse to abandon a project ideologically antithetical to his own views.

As a result, Iran is now no less dangerous and Russia is now no less obstructionist. In fact, the Russian Federation vigorously broadcasts its opposition to further sanctions on Iran, let alone military strikes. As a permanent, veto-wielding member of the United Nations Security Council, this all but ensures the UN no longer represents a viable platform for decisively managing Iran’s ongoing nuclear activities.

Second, Obama’s abandonment of an ABM shield for eastern Europe is precisely the wrong move at precisely the wrong time. Why? Under Obama, ABM defence for Europe makes sense. Under Bush, it didn’t.

ABM defence was always a suspicious, illogical initiative under Bush’s watch because the Bush administration would never have accepted Iranian nuclear armament in the first place. Rejecting defensive containment strategies as flaccid and dangerous, Bush instead pursued a policy of nuclear counter-proliferation in the Middle East: a forward-leaning policy of ensuring nuclear threats from rogue states never materialize.

Under Obama, however, ABM defence is logical. This defensive policy of nuclear containment fits with the current president’s less-hawkish, more-multilateral approach to international relations. Since Obama’s Washington remains unwilling to commit the U.S. to attacking Iranian nuclear or missile facilities should diplomacy fail, the abortive ABM shield would have given U.S. allies in the region an insurance policy against the Obama administration’s possible resignation to Iran’s nuclear trajectory.

Having adopted a less assertive global security strategy than his predecessor, the ABM shield was an opportunity for Obama to show strength to the international community and build confidence in his restrained and cautious foreign policy. He could have shown resolve in the face of Russian intransigence, Iranian belligerence, western European insouciance, and American war fatigue.

Not only has he lost that opportunity, but in forgoing ABM defence for eastern Europe, Obama has predicated American foreign and defence policy less on American capability, and more on Russian good will.

Not a good bet. Just ask the Poles and the Czechs.

Matthew Bondy writes on international relations and domestic politics, and is a featured commentator at PolicyNet.org, an online academic community administered by the Centre for International Governance Innovation, in Waterloo. He can be reached at m.j.bondy@gmail.com

My latest from the Guelph Mercury, printed today, 19 March.
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After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, the George W. Bush administration embarked upon what many have called nothing less than a revolution in foreign policy. Counselled and encouraged by his inner cadre of hawkish, ideologically driven advisors, George W. Bush made US global military dominance, pre-emption and American exceptionalism central tenets of US security strategy.

It’s taken Mr. Obama about five minutes to nix the Bush Doctrine, and recalibrate America’s military goals and diplomatic agenda. Three recent examples are especially revelatory, as the world seeks to understand how the Obama team view the world.

First is the phased closure of the American detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This signals to the world that the Obama administration believe international terrorism is an issue to be treated more through the prism of criminality than war.

Dealing with transnational crime means stepping up efforts at interdiction, and tweaking international and national law to manage those charged with crime. It means soliciting the partnership and solidarity of the international community in an effort ultimately premised on co-operation – not confrontation.

While the Bush administration viewed international terrorism fundamentally through the prism of war – terrorists are the enemy, and the ones captured are like POWs without states, deserving little or no rights – the Obama team believe Gitmo undermines the basic principles of liberty and civilisation from within, and is therefore corrosive to American society and reputation.

This change in how the Oval Office approaches terrorism has deeper and broader implications for American strategy and action on the global stage, let alone on that tiny, irrelevant mosquito of an island we call Cuba. Bring on the second example.

When’s the last time you heard an administration official say the words Global War on Terror (GWOT)? A multitude of serious scholars believe that the Bush administration’s fashioning of the Global War on Terror was a brilliant attempt to deepen and broaden and legitimise America’s global military primacy indefinitely (even if said strategy has fallen out of favour with said scholars and their little cousins in the commentariat).

It matters how issues are framed, and how they’re packaged for mass consumption. Tossing ‘GWOT’ aside is a way for Mr. Obama to not only signal the dramatic end of President Bush’s relatively militaristic foreign policy, but it is also a means to re-frame terrorism in a way that they feel more accurately represents the stakes. Fact is, small arms, drugs and traffic accidents cause more death to citizens of the free world than do crackpot jihadists.

Though the Bush administration was right to focus American and international attention on the nexus of failed states, terrorism and nuclear proliferation, the Obama administration advocate an approach to this challenge that focuses on improving procedures for managing and accounting for dangerous nuclear technology and materials, working with allies and partners to detect terrorist activity, and using American military power more as a scalpel to kill gangs of terrorists than as a battleaxe to bring down rogue regimes.

Finally – and perhaps most significantly – the Obama administration have reached out to Russia in a way that is meaningful, apparently generous, and possibly brilliant. Whereas the Bush administration was hell-bent on basing anti-ballistic missile (ABM) technology in Poland and the Czech Republic – right on Russia’s doorstep – Mr. Obama and his staff have offered to scuttle these controversial plans if Moscow will endorse tough sanctions against Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.

This is a serious display of diplomatic ingenuity. It gives Mr. Obama – who’s never been big on high-tech ABM systems – a way to ditch the expensive programme whilst seeming tough on Iran. And more importantly, it puts the US on a conciliatory footing with Russia, whose co-operation is necessary to ensure a peaceful immediate future for the former Soviet satellites in Central Asia, and dependable energy for Europe.

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It is still too early to tell whether these basic and profound changes to American foreign policy are positive. In light of the Bush Doctrine, which sought to legitimise a martial, exceptionalist version of American global dominance by framing terrorism as a massive and existential threat to US and global security, the Obama team clearly envision a new era of American leadership premised on power, persuasion, prudence and patience.

As such, even those of us who’ve supported major planks of Mr. Bush’s foreign policy must recognise that the Obama Doctrine – however it matures, and however it fares – is at least an impressive attempt to reassert American moral leadership, and it is obviously founded upon a learned and careful estimation of how the world works.