A lot of foreign policy is “really hard,” as the president recently allowed in a Captain Obvious moment. Indeed, the practice of diplomacy, alliance management, winning wars, fighting terrorists, stopping proliferation, and building peace is bloody difficult. And though the bubble of Barack Obama’s hubris has popped so many times (it feels almost callous to take the pin to it once again), there appears to be almost no learning process going on in the White House.
Today, on what was meant to be a mini-break to rekindle the romance in the Israeli-American relationship, Vice President Joe Biden stepped in it, freaking out over an announcement of Israeli “settlement” building in Jerusalem. Never mind that it wasn’t the Israeli prime minister who announced the settlements, but one of his coalition partners aiming to poke a stick in his spokes; never mind that the trip was supposed to rebuild the trust that has evanesced between Jerusalem and Washington; never mind that the vice president is a well-advertised foreign policy maven. Rather, Biden took 90 minutes away from a dinner scheduled with Bibi and spouse to help craft and then blurt out a rare “condemnation” of Israel for the settlements announcement. Jackson Diehl rips him to shreds here.
Biden is Biden, and the temptation will be to write this off as another flare up of his infamous hoof-in-mouth disease. But it isn’t. Rather, this episode is symptomatic of an almost stunning mismanagement of foreign affairs. Don’t get me wrong: I know the president made some courageous choices in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And while many have caviled at his repeated emphasis on America’s exit from the two theaters, rather than underscoring the importance of victory, these are quibbles. But on the “soft” side that was ballyhooed as this president’s hallmark, things are, well, awful.
Consider that the president’s own staff can’t gin up a single special relationship with a foreign leader and that the once “special relationship” with the United Kingdom is in tatters (note the latest contretemps over Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s bizarre intervention on the Falkland Islands); that neither China nor Russia will back the United States’ push for sanctions against Iran; that Iran, it seems, doesn’t want to “sit down” with the Obama administration and chat; that the “peace process” the president was determined to revive is limping pathetically, in no small amount due to missteps by the United States; that one of the key new relationships of the 21st century (advanced by the hated George W. Bush)—with India—is a total mess; that the hope kindled in the Arab world after Obama’s famous Cairo speech has dimmed; that hostility to America’s AfPak special envoy Richard Holbrooke is the only point of agreement between Delhi, Islamabad, and Kabul; that there isn’t a foreign ministry in Europe with a good word to say about working with the Obama White House; that there is a narrative afoot that began with the Obama apologia tour last year and will not go away: America is in decline.
Too many of these problems can be sourced back to the arrogance of the president and his top advisers. Many of Obama’s foreign policy soldiers are serious, keen, and experienced, but even they are afraid to speak to foreigners, to meet with Congress, or to trespass on the policy making politburo in the White House’s West Wing. Our allies are afraid of American retreat and our enemies are encouraged by that fear. George Bush was excoriated for suggesting that the nations of the world are either with us or against us. But there is something worse than that Manichean simplicity. Barack Obama doesn’t care whether they’re with us or against us.