What Exactly Can We Do?

Once we got over the aftermath of World War II, our foreign policy vectors have swung back and forth; depending on which party were in power, with a stunning lack of consistency, a heavy reliance on political appointees, Congressional showboating and a deep under-reliance on State Department veteran career Foreign Service officers. With an over-linked global communications network, it’s easy for Washington to override decisions in the field, impose political dictates from afar and take away the underlying power of the relevant American diplomatic experts on the ground. And let’s face facts: Americans do not value foreign policy expertise among their elected representatives. Aside from allies Canada and Mexico, oceans and seas separate us from the rest of the world. We lack the historical accumulation of political finesse that has defined Europe for centuries. But then again, Europeans have been living together, check and jowl, for a very long time.

Parallel with this ease of overriding the experts comes the unwillingness of politicos to recognize that the shape of American power is not remotely what it was before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since that date, notwithstanding the recent escalation of aggression from Russia, the world has slid away from reliance on America’s nuclear umbrella, and the new staggering world powers are increasingly being measured based on economic success. Yet the relatively uniform Congressional response to diplomatic initiatives is to build a mega-military force that we are reluctant to use and that has a pretty nasty track record since WWII.

As China’s political model has lifted over a billion people from poverty, growing faster economically than any other large nation, many in the world are quick to point out that the 2008 crash and following mega-recession emanated from countries that followed a more democratic capitalistic model of the United States. With China growing the largest middle class in the world, the United States is presenting a very different face to the world: a contracting middle class, extremely higher concentrations of wealth at the narrow pinnacle of society, and lower classes with very small economic stakes in the country.

It’s the economy stupid! The mantra is simply that people care more about their standard of living – at least until they have achieved what they think is fair – than they do about political freedom. Money seems to trump democracy unless the two can be clearly linked. So when things go wrong with the world, they don’t mind if the US picks up the tab, but the cost is that US intervention often becomes the movement of an insensitive cultural bully that generates more resentment than respect.

So when Russia supports rogue killers in Syria or decides to ignore the treaty it signed guaranteeing Ukrainian sovereignty, what can the United States really do about it? The United Nations is completely useless against Russia’s own roguish acts… a veto from Russia kills the value of that international body. Given the overreliance on Russian oil and gas which defines most of Western Europe, it took the Obama administration to pull sanctions against Russia from a kicking and screaming EU.

Republican foes are challenging Obama’s foreign policy as “feckless,” but do Americans really want to support a military conflict against Russia, a rise in tensions that could easily escalate wildly out of control? Reality check: Russians don’t care about sanctions and are cheering their leader (who has been desperately looking for a distraction from his failed domestic economic policies). Truth is that, short of possibly provoking WWIII, there’s not much we can do to undo the Crimean takeover. We’re going to muddle through strained relations with Russia for some time, and there is little in the way of likely relief. I haven’t heard a single suggestion from anyone on either side of the aisle that would effect sending Crimea back to Ukraine. Lambasting Obama and blaming him for events not remotely within his control is simply meaningless rhetoric that doesn’t really deserve serious response.

But the United States gets equally slammed by her own purported allies. “U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on [March 19^th] to protest remarks by Israel's defence minister that portrayed the United States as weak in its handling of nuclear talks with Iran and other world affairs, a State Department spokeswoman said.

“Speaking during a lecture at Tel Aviv University on Monday, Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said Israel could not rely on its main ally to take the lead in confronting Iran over its nuclear program. He also pointed to Ukraine's crisis as an example of Washington "showing weakness…It is the second time this year that Washington has taken issue with tough public criticism from Yaalon, a former armed forces chief and a hawkish member of Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party… In January, he described Kerry's quest for Israeli-Palestinian peace as messianic and obsessive.” Reuters, March 19^th.

What exactly would happen if we mounted a preemptive strike on Iran? Would Iran mine the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices through the roof? Release its terrorist cells in the West to wreak havoc with bombs and sabotage against all targets? And would that really stop Iran’s program or entrench them further? Maybe will get there, but what is the answer we give to Iran as to why the US and Israel are justified in having nukes but they are not? No easy answers, as Russian President Putin points to our policies in Kosovo that resulted in the carving out a state from one nation and allowing that land to move elsewhere based on local popular sentiments (touting the will of the Crimean people based on the recent referendum there).

It is awkward and seemingly un-American to believe that our unilateral actions no longer dictate the actions of others. It’s not simply the USA vs. the USSR anymore, and there are factions growing rapidly, from stateless Muslim extremists, to rogue nations and dictatorial incumbents, to world leaders ready to raise their local political capital by taking on the United States of America. We are learning how to operate in this not-so-brave new world, where going it alone is beyond challenging, but we are not learning the relevant lessons fast enough… and we have yet to learn how to get our way when we actually could get our way.

I’m Peter Dekom, and learning to operate in a world of deeply changing pockets of power is one of the most difficult challenges we face.