JOIN USWhat tactics US adopts to deal with Iran and America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan are of concern to India
The morning after his victory, President Barack Obama, speaking to supporters, with a tear rolling down his cheek, was more a picture of relief than triumphalism. He had learnt that it is easier to promise change than deliver it. A second lesson was his underestimation of Bill Clinton’s presidency and political skills. He now introduced him as “master”, acknowledging that his campaigning perhaps tilted the balance in a tight race. Finally he could not be unaware that most US presidents post-1945 have done worse in their second terms than their first. Richard Nixon was impeached; Ronald Reagan faced the Iran-Contra fiasco and were it not for his popularity would have met identical fate; and Bill Clinton barely wriggled out of attempted impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky affair.
The issue arises as to what will be the foreign policy priorities of Obama. All foreign policy is first a matter of style. Who will replace Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of State, a position that she held with great distinction, providing a vital counter-point to the advice a US president receives from his National Security Adviser, the Pentagon( as two wars were being fought) and his hand-picked ambassador to the United Nations. Historically US policy success or paralysis depends as much on the synergy between those holding these positions as their equations with the president. Henry Kissinger, during the Nixon presidency, first dominated policy making as NSA and then as Secretary of State. Does Obama bring in Susan Rice, his UN Ambassador, to State department and a Republican heavyweight to Defence, or even Kerry to State Department? Personnel changes can make or blight the next four years.
As the global hegemon US has a vast agenda awaiting immediate attention. This includes the unfinished consequences of the Arab Spring uprisings in a number of Arab countries. The one in Syria has repercussions for the entire West Asia and can have a spill-over effect in the Gulf, due the involvement of Iran in the support of the ruling Assad family, who belong to a Shia variant Alawite faith, and extending to Iranian links to the Hezbullah in Lebanon. Thus Iranian influence, following the toppling of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, now extends seamlessly from the Mediterranean to the Gulf, where the friction point is Bahrain and its Sunni ruling family lording it over the Shia minority. Complicating this expansion of the Iranian transnational Shia solidarity is the Iranian nuclear programme and the unsettled Palestinian nationhood and fragmentation of Palestinian unity, which the current Israeli government has exploited. Israel itself goes to elections in January.
The immediate issues confronting Obama out of this Islamic quagmire are: orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan, saving US government a large part of the US $100 billion spent annually; a negotiated settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue; cessation of hostilities in Syria and exit of President Assad followed by democratic transition to a new, united and democratic Syria; the containment of the spread of Al Qaeda to West Africa, including the capture by them of North Mali; and finally ensuring that Arab Spring does not degenerate into radicalised chaos.
President Obama’s encounter with the new Chinese leadership will be instantaneous as he will meet President Xi Jinping at the East Asia summit later this month. China needs to reel back its aggressive posturing in the seas to its East and South. A stand-off with Japan over the Senkakus is a daily occurrence. New Chinese leadership has to signal if the burst of nationalism was only due to the ten-yearly change of leadership or is now a permanent policy component. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would also be attending that conference, but is likely to be eclipsed by the drama inherent in Sino-US parleys.
Indian concern
While India-US relations are on a strong footing and areas of concern are continuously discussed at different levels, what tactics US adopts to deal with Iran and US withdrawal from Afghanistan are of immediate concern to India. President Karzai will be in India this week. India has, at least on paper, a strategic agreement with that country, leaving the possibility of closer cooperation in the security and defence fields. Reportedly the preference in Pakistan was for a Romney win. Both Pakistan and the Taliban have awaited the US election before finalising heir Afghanistan tactics. Four more years of Obama may convince enough amongst the Taliban leadership that it is no longer viable to boycott negotiating at least with the Americans. That would be a positive development. Yet that may not happen. Pakistan is likely to come under more pressure to act against groups like the Haqqanis, although they may buy time due to the onset of winter and impending elections.
Obama may well revive some of his unfinished agenda from his first term that he had to perforce shelve due to the banking and then Eurozone crisis. This would be his nuclear disarmament dream that he spelt out in his much acclaimed Prague speech, which earned him a Nobel Prize, perhaps for the first time merely for the vision rather than concrete achievement. His ability to carry it through the Senate would depend on how he handles the fiscal crisis, by resolving it in a bipartisan spirit or allowing ideological fissures to persist.
In 2007, campaigning for presidency he said, “I don’t want to spend the next year or the next four years refighting the same fights we had in the 1990s.” As it turns out the fight sought him, and still awaits him in a Congress dominated by a sulking Republican majority. Can he break the evil spell a second term brings and be a historical figure who healed at home, revived US industry and created a post-oil economy based on plentiful domestic gas? Likewise abroad can he tame a rising China, push the Iranian nuclear genie back in the bottle, stabilise Afghanistan before pull-out and have Arab Spring end happily? The answer to these questions will determine his place in the pantheon of US presidents.
(The writer is a former mbassador and former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs.)
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