What do the following have in common: the piling on Israel
after the botched interception of the Hamas relief flotilla, the
Chinese military telling the U.S. secretary of defense that he was
not welcome in Beijing, and the declaration by Nick Clegg—now
deputy prime minister of Great Britain—that his country's
special relationship with America is over?
Answer: The Obama administration has managed to convince most
countries around the world that we are worth little as friends and
even less as enemies.
Last week, Israel walked into a trap set by a flotilla of Hamas
sympathizers and what Lenin used to call useful idiots. Israeli
commandos who were being attacked by burly men trying to throw
them overboard or beat them senseless killed a bunch of people
whom they would rather not have killed. American forces do the
same thing on many occasions when, for example, we use
missile-firing drones to support U.S. policies. According to some
accounts the recent assassination of al Qaeda No. 3 Sheikh Said
al-Masri also killed his wife, three daughters and a
granddaughter.
The Israelis have a right to blockade Gaza, from which they
withdrew only to soak up several thousand rockets in return, and
they did what they could to get the ships to send supplies into
Gaza through their ports. Until Vice President Joe Biden plucked
up the courage to acknowledge on "Charlie Rose" that the
Israelis are at war with Hamas and have the right to prevent arms
from entering Gaza, the Israelis could have been forgiven for
thinking that we would hang them out to dry. When the U.S.
accepted last week, albeit with some tut-tutting, the recent
conclusion of the 189-nation nuclear nonproliferation review
conference that singles out Israel but does not mention Iran, it
was obvious that something is seriously amiss.
The folly here is to think that leaving the Israelis open to
these kinds of diplomatic attacks will buy good will in a Middle
East that gets its opinions from Al Jazeera and a venomous media
that routinely prints outrageous lies and hate literature that
echoes Nazi Germany. That part of the world, as Osama bin Laden
once correctly observed, prefers a strong horse to a weak horse.
The still greater folly is to think that distancing ourselves
from the Israelis will buy us leverage with them. When did the
Israelis withdraw from Gaza? When they had a president in the
White House upon whom they knew they could count. If, as is the
case now, Israel is alone and desperate, is it more or less likely
to conclude it has no choice but to attack Iran's nuclear
facilities?
The Obama administration has been peculiarly inept at handling
allies, to the point that it has jeopardized some of our most
important relationships. That a senior British politician would
dismiss the pillar of British foreign policy since 1940 is
astounding. But Nick Clegg said during the recent British election
that the special relationship is over and that the American
government understands this even if the British government does
not. When asked about relations with the U.S. under President
Barack Obama, 17% of Britons in a recent poll thought they had
improved; 25% thought they had deteriorated.
The administration refuses out of timidity to advance a free
trade agreement with any ally, including Colombia, a success story
if only we would claim it. And its quixotic quest for total
nuclear disarmament unnerves, among others, our French allies, who
want to keep a robust deterrent. These are part of a broader
rejection of a world in which the U.S. has real allies that need
cultivating and reinforcing.
No less dismaying is Mr. Obama's attitude to U.S. rivals. Its
most recent National Security Strategy, issued a month ago, barely
acknowledges that such a category exists. The need for the U.S. to
balance China in Asia is evident to any moderately alert clerk in
the foreign ministry of most Asian countries. Yet such notions are
missing from a document that talks a great deal about education
policy, economic development and the limits on American power, but
very little about geopolitics.
China's snub to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates—its
rejection last week of an American request for a visit as he
travels to a conference in Singapore—is part of a larger
picture. The studied unwillingness of the Chinese even to
acknowledge that the North Koreans launched an unprovoked attack
on a South Korean naval vessel tells us that they do not think
they have to take American anger about anything seriously.
Or take the case of Turkey. The outrageous statements of the
Turkish government denouncing Israel for "inhumane state
terrorism" toward the Gaza flotilla reflect a broader
pattern, going back a number of years, of Turkey's evolution into
a country very different from that of 20 or 30 years ago. A
combination of Islamist rule, resentment at exclusion from Europe,
and a neo-Ottomanist ideology that envisions Turkey as a great
power in the Middle East have made Turkey a state that is often
plainly hostile not only to Israel but to American aims and
interests. The conclusion is sobering—but first one has to
recognize the facts for what they are.
There is no penalty for a foreign government crossing this U.S.
president—unless you are the hapless prime minister of Israel
visiting the White House, in which case, to paraphrase the deli
bully in "Seinfeld," "No dinner for you!" The
most that a leader like President Lula da Silva of Brazil can
expect from doing his best to derail the painfully slow effort to
contain Iran is pursed lips.
As for North Korea and Iran, the National Security Strategy
threatens them with . . . isolation. North Korea is not already
isolated? And Iran is isolated when it has the governments of
Turkey and Brazil cozying up to it? What precisely have we gained
from reaching out to the Syrian government, whose leaders pocketed
our restoration of ambassadorial relations, and in return lessened
their ties to Hezbollah and Iran not a wit?
The administration cannot even bring itself to characterize
accurately the enemies that it must admit we have. The National
Security Strategy declares that we are at war with "Al Qaeda
and its affiliates." Islamist extremists? Jihadis? Perish the
thought.
Senior officials have repeatedly insisted that they know that
radical Islamism runs counter to the authoritative teachings of an
altogether peace-loving religion—when the truth is that all
religions, including Islam, have within them entirely authentic,
deeply rooted, and often sophisticated fanatical streams. This
refusal to acknowledge the creed of our enemies is further
evidence of a lack of strategic seriousness.
The administration is making a dangerous world even more so. It has announced that it will head for the exits in Afghanistan, that it will not stand by our closest ally, as the Brits discovered when we fastidiously refused to take their side on the latest round of the Falklands dispute. The Israelis should not be the only ones who are worried.
Mr. Cohen teaches strategic studies at Johns Hopkins
University and served as counselor of the Department of State
under Condoleezza Rice.
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