President Obama would lay a gift at the feet of European liberal internationalists: the opportunity to liberate the social-democratic ‘doctrine of the international community’ from its long entombment within the ‘Bush doctrine’.
Obama’s 2007 speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, subsequently written up in Foreign Affairs, reveals a hard-headed internationalist. His victory in November would transform the terms of debate about ‘progressive foreign policy’.
When Obama calls for more troops and more development in Afghanistan who will say we should ‘mind our own business’ and end our ‘imperialist’ adventure?
When Obama says we must ‘stay on the offensive from Djibouti to Kandahar’, and points out ‘the ability to put boots on the ground will be critical in eliminating the shadowy terrorist networks we face’ who will breezily dismiss this as ‘the politics of fear’?
When Obama tells us America is ‘the leader of the free world’ and as such must ‘lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good’ who will just roll their eyes?
Wrapped in the audacity of hope, a great many inconvenient truths will become palatable. Here are a few: America really is the indispensable nation, NATO should be strengthened as a ‘dynamic partnership for peace’, we will support those under the boot of the tyrant because ‘we were Berliners too’, and there must be ‘no safe havens for Al-Qaeda’. And even though George W. Bush says it, (and truths do not come more inconvenient) Iran really is a revolutionary theocratic regime that cannot be allowed a nuclear bomb.
But these truths will be easier to accept because President Obama will also stand for UN reform, multilateral alliances, enforceable commitments to reduce carbon emissions, and will pledge humanitarian intervention in Darfur, a $2 billon Global Education Fund, and a doubling of annual investments in global anti-poverty programmes to $50 billion by 2012.
President Obama will ‘empower the forces of moderation’ by ‘exporting opportunity’. Echoing Blair’s 1999 Chicago speech, and Brown’s 2006 speech about combating political extremism, he says ‘in today’s globalised world, the security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people. The threats we face can no longer be contained by borders and boundaries’. So he promises to rise to ‘the challenge issued by Blair and Brown at Gleneagles’ in 2005.
And Obama will be a democracy-promoter. ‘We have heard much in the last six years about how America’s larger purpose is to promote the spread of freedom’, says Obama. If you are waiting for a punch-line, forget it; he simply says, ‘I agree’. But Obama will bring an insight Bush lacked – democracy requires more than ‘deposing a dictator and setting up a ballot box’. It also means ‘a strong legislature, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, a vibrant civil society, a free press, and an honest police force’. Obama shares David Miliband’s great insight – governments must empower the global civilian surge by providing ‘the kind of steady support for political reformers and civil society that enabled our victory in the Cold War’.
And when crimes against humanity threaten and prudent intervention can do good, Obama believes passionately that we have a responsibility to protect.
But Obama has an Iraq problem.
His policy for 2009 is based on the situation in 2006 when things were at their worst and the primary season was getting underway. His proposal to withdraw one brigade per month from Iraq from his first day in office until all troops are withdrawn in sixteen months – no matter what is happening in Iraq – ‘strategically, makes little sense’, says Michael O’Hanlon, Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution Why? Two words. The surge.
The new counter-insurgency strategy carried out under the leadership of General David Petraeus transformed Iraq in 2007. Violence is down two-thirds, Al Qaeda is being defeated, Sunni tribes are working with the coalition, and refugees are starting to return – 67,000 since September. The Kurdish renaissance continues and possibilities for local bottom-up reconciliation can be glimpsed. Yes, it’s still desperate for Iraqis. Yes, nothing is guaranteed. But those who declared the war ‘lost’ and tried to defund it have been proved wrong.
A precipitate withdrawal from Iraq, before the political opportunities opened up by the surge have been consolidated, would be primary politics not presidential policy.
But if Obama does move on, and wins in November, then 2009 could be the year of opportunity for a transatlantic hard-headed internationalism.
PS. Ditto for Hillary.