Jackson Diehl Pronounces Obama’s Foreign Policy a Failure After Three Months
Jackson Diehl becomes the latest to erect the straw man that Obama’s supporters thought world problems would simply melt away in the face of his charm and willingness to negotiate, and point out that the world still has problems. To this I mostly recommend Ilan Goldenberg’s response but I think one other way of thinking about what Diehl has wrong here is to think about how we should assess George W. Bush’s dealings with China.
I think by Diehl standards you’d have to consider Bush’s China policy to be a catastrophic failure. After all, China’s not a democracy. It hasn’t dropped its claims to Taiwan. Nor has it dropped its territorial claims in the South China Sea. They still treat Tibetans poorly. They didn’t do what we wanted them to do with their currency. They continue to build up military forces. They haven’t totally done what we wanted on Iran or North Korea. They voted against us at the UN on Iraq. And wherever we’ve tried to isolate regimes in the world, China has proven willing to step up and fill the void. A disaster!
But in real life, this evaluation would be hideously unfair. The US-China relationship is an inherently problematic situation—the global hegemon and main architect of the existing international system vs a rapidly rising power whose massive population makes it a plausible contender to overtake us at some point in the future. China is too big too ignore, but also too big to be coerced or easily bribed. It’s a tough situation. And potentially it’s a dangerous one. “Success,” under the circumstances, means a continuation of cordial relations and brisk commerce rather than a downward spiral of recriminations and proxy wars. And the Bush administration did a perfectly admirable job of continuing the success of its predecessors in this score. You can think about it this way—Bush took us through a difficult period and left the relationship in good enough shape that nobody had a fainting spell when Obama shook Hu Jintao’s hand at the G-20 summit. The world’s two most important countries cooperating in a routine and non-dramatic manner is a good thing and preserving that dynamic as China gets richer and more powerful is both difficult and important. This is a real contrast to Bush’s approach to Russia, Europe, Latin America, and the broader Middle East where difficult situations just got more and more difficult thanks in part to terrible policymaking.
Back to Obama. Since late January, he’s succeeded in laying the groundwork for important bilateral cuts in US-Russian nuclear arsenals. He’s set the stage for possible normalization of relations with Cuba down the road and produced at least some positive signals from the government of Iran. He’s apparently ended the pointless and bizarre war of over-the-top rhetoric between the United States and Venezuela. And international cooperation against piracy seems to be intensifying. I’d say it’s a promising start. All the world’s most serious problems are still with us, but things have improved on several fronts. International relations is inherently complicated and there’s no short-time way of achieving a problem-free planet. If things are getting better rather than worse, you’re doing a good job.
18 Responses to “Jackson Diehl Pronounces Obama’s Foreign Policy a Failure After Three Months”
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April 21st, 2009 at 10:48 am
Both Jackson Diehl and his boss Fred Hiatt are completely, utterly worthless in commenting on foreign policy. A couple of hawk twits who will blather anything to support their fetish outlook.
April 21st, 2009 at 10:53 am
it’s not the stupidity of the typical op-ed buffoon (and the wapo is nothing if not a home of typical op-ed buffoons); it’s the smugness.
they not only distort and cherrypick and live by cliche; they are proud of it….
April 21st, 2009 at 10:55 am
You know that the handshake with Chavez was felt by Diehl in his privates. The man is the kookiest of neo-cons. One can devote paragraphs of refutation to his bilge, or just tell him to kiss my ass. I’d recommend the latter. It is more succinct. It is more appropriate. And it just feels better as an argument. He lost last november. Tough friggin’ luck.
April 21st, 2009 at 10:59 am
That’s overly kind to Bush, but I understand your point. Remember that prior to 9/11 they sure looked like they wanted to revive the cold war and very loudly put China back into the “adversary” category versus “competitor” or even partner.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:18 am
Obama has only been in office for 12-13 weeks so it’s unfair for Diehl to judge him so harshly.
And wherever we’ve tried to isolate regimes in the world, China has proven willing to step up and fill the void. A disaster!
I do think the realist position is extremely callous. Darfur, Burma, Zimbabwee, etc. Yes we are avoiding a confrontation with China, but at a huge expense. And maybe it is the right choice, given the state of the global economy. I bet Georgia will soon get a new Russian-puppet as President and their brief experiment with democracy will be over. It’s the “cost” of peace.
I think a war with Iran would be a disaster – Bush did hold of the Israelis – but I’ll admit things are going to get really, really bad as Iran gets nukes. Especially when Israel has a nutjob for a foreign minister. And it looks like things will get worse in Iraq as we pull out, but at least the doves can blame it on Bush. We should have never involved ourselves with dusky foreigners anyway!
The New York Times is reporting Spain has deflation. If it spreads and deepens and we get a decades-long Japan style global depression, China will become a clusterfuck. The Chinese Communist Party will no longer be able to buy off the masses.
At least the Chinese enacted a big stimulus for their economy, seeing the potential disaster ahead, while American Conservatives who are dumb as stumps railed against the American stimulus package.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:19 am
Jackson Diehl is also either a cheap liar or someone who lets people make stuff up in order to back controversial charges against foreign leaders he doesn’t like.
Jackson Diehl was the one who wrote in a column that documents found on captured laptop computers had proven that Hugo Chavez had given $250 million dollars to Colombian FARC rebels, whereas if you examined the actual documents all that was discussed was the exchange of “50″ of something, of what unnamed, followed by “250″ later, and there was never any mention of dollars or even what the numbers referred to.
Maybe Chavez did assist them. I assume he probably did in some ways. But Diehl is an employ at a big newspaper, and he had as much access to the documents released by the Colombian publication Semana as anyone, along with being able to hire translators if desired, so there’s really no excuse to make stuff up and say that released documents say things that they don’t.
What’s funniest is that when I first read the story I actually figured it was probably true, and I was slightly surprised that Chavez would have been (a) so stupid about getting so closely involved with the moron narcotrafficker gangster ‘leftist’ guerrillas of Colombia, and (b) that Chavez would have been so stupidly obvious in doing so.
And then I looked at the released documents, and realized that a high ranking editor at a major U.S. newspaper just made shit up or lazily parroted those who did and he didn’t give the slightest damn either way.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:21 am
I think Obama’s biggest impact so far has been the closing of Guantanamo and the CIA black sites and the release of the torture memos. If he hadn’t, the US would be no better than Burma, China, Russia, Saddam’s Iraq, Iran, etc.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:39 am
His picture is unintentionally hilarious. Looks like a Bond villain or something.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:42 am
This reminds me of the silly “Who lost China ” debates in the 1950’s . We have only so much control over other countries, whether we like it or not. I have neighbors who I don’t like ,that doesn’t mean i can, or should change them.
I remember in the primaries when everone thought Obama was too soft and that Hillary was “tough”. Everyone said that Obama was too aloof and too “above the fray”.They said he should go on the “attack” He ignored them and looked at the long view.
Who won the election again, him or hillary?
Chavez and Ortega are buffoons that pose us no threat. If we really want Chavez out of power the answer isn’t sword rattling.We should get off our oil addiction, create alternative fuels , and stop buying oil from him ,and saudi arabia as well. Iran does not sell us oil and i don’t beleive russia does either, but if we stopped buying oil so much in this country the world oil price would fall, and a lot of dictators would be in trouble.We are seeing this allready. The election in Iran next year will be affected by the Iranian economy more than anything we can do.
Let’s wait to see how Obama’s foriegn policy strategy plays out before we critisise or praise.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:58 am
The term ‘frenemy’ is underused in FoPo discussions, but I think it works well in any discussion of US-China relations.
April 21st, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Unlike many commenters here, I respected Mcain on a personal level because of his service to the country.One of the many reasons that I did not vote for him ,was that if he and George Bush were officers , they would be the type to send their platoon on an unneeded , suicidal charge up a hill.
The only difference would be that Bush would stay behind in safety and Mcain would lead his men, and die with them.
I would rather have a commander like Obama who is smart enough to sneak around the back of the hill ,or bypass it to achieve his objective.And to keep as many of his men alive that he could.Courage and “toughness” aren’t worth much if you don’t achieve your objective with them.
I don’t like Chavez ,but let’s face it, he lives off attention and U.S. criticism of him . When Obama was civil to him i will bet that threw Chavez off ,and now he doesn’t know what to do.
April 21st, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I also looked at Eugene Robinson’s column, the point of which was also that Obama should have spit in Chavez’s face.
Somebody needs to have these belligerents tell us exactly how our tough-guy posture has benefitted us to date, and how they plan to pay for all of the low-level conflicts they wish to start or escalate (since tut-tutting about the deficit and goverment spending is also a chief concern of the Establishment).
Truly strong individuals (and, by extension, countries) don’t fly off the handle at every perceived slight, and don’t go around looking for insults to avenge themselves upon. This isn’t the sixth grade, dipshits. And you clearly don’t know dick about true strength.
April 21st, 2009 at 12:33 pm
If these insecure neoclowns want machismo, why don’t they just rent a bunch of Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns and spare us the belliocosity, the pointlessness and their impotent fantasies. The world would be a lot better off if guys like Kristol and Hiatt just shut it.
April 21st, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Why don’t we simply ignore Hugo Chavez and act as though he does not exist? His type deserves to be ignored into oblivion.
April 21st, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Myles,
You just made a very solid point, there may be hope for you yet:-)
April 21st, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Well for those whacky neo-cons among us four out of the five successes outlined add up for them as ‘massive fail’.
1. Less US nukes. Eek.
2. Normalization with Cuba. Ohmigod.
3. Accomodating the reality that Chavez is in fact the elected leader of Venezuela. Surrendering to socialism.
4. Not nuking Iran at the first opportunity. Why we are just muzzling Israel.
Plus the Right wants to make fun of Obama on point 5. Somai Piracy.
Rational people understand that not having wars is by and large a better result than having wars. Then again you have John Bolton publicly advocating we address the Somali Pirate problem by launching a full scale ground war (at which point the old schoolyard taunt ‘Yeah John, you and what army? becomes pretty much on point.)
One reason Dr. Strangelove is so funny is because for those of us who grew up in the 60’s and knew about the Red-Baiting of the 50’s knew full well that people like Curtis LeMay were out there arguing that since full out nuclear war was inevitable why NOT just nuke North Vietnam back to the Stone Age. Just as earlier they thought the answer to Korea was to invade China, or better ‘Unleash Chiang-Kai Shek”.
For the Neo-Cons not going to all-out war with Russia and latter its proxy N. Vietnam and equally not going to war with China over its proxy N. Korea were massive policy fails now being repeated with Iran. After all as General Turgidson explained in the movie ‘Ten-megadeaths, twenty tops!’
You can’t argue with these guys you can only hope to keep them out of power. Luckily Eisenhower and even Nixon knew enough to keep the real monsters marginalized as by the grace of God largely did Reagan (who almost caused them to stroke when he proposed total nuclear disarmament) and Bush senior. It is practically a miracle that we avoided war with Iran under Bush, if Iraq had gone better early on it is likely we would be fighting in Syria, Lebanon and by now. (Not to start a flame war but it is pretty clear that for the Neo-Cons the actual end game was to first crush Hezbollah’s patrons and then Hezbollah itself).
People like Cheney and Bolton regret every day that we are not ’shaping a New American Century’ with the helpful edge of a bayonet. (You just can’t spell Limbaugh without Limb(ic)). What Obama would see as failure, say a war with Iran, are in the minds of the lizard brains a wild success.
April 21st, 2009 at 3:20 pm
I’ve never been able to make it through one of Diehl’s columns without being overcome by extreme drowsiness. While I was blogging at “Everyone Laughs at Broder,” he and Hoagland were the only center-right pundits I ignored, and for that reason.
I’ve never understood why Chavez rates much attention at all from anyone not in the employ of the right-wing noise machine. The guy’s managed to convert a position as the elected head of his country into one as its tinhorn dictator, but there are lots of tinhorn dictators in the world, many of them are far worse than Chavez (e.g. the Burmese junta, Mugabe), but it’s funny how the vast majority of the U.S. commentariat’s dislike for tinhorn dictators is focused the two left-wing examples of the species: Chavez, and of course Castro.
During the Cold War, right-wingers used to defend the idea of “benevolent dictators,” which I would assume would refer to heads of state who were sufficiently ruthless to maintain control regardless of opposition, but aside from that ran their countries in ways that were fairly beneficial to their people. If there are any rulers today that fill that bill better than Chavez and Castro, I’d be curious about who they are. That’s not to say that I think Chavez or Castro are worthy of defense, because I’m not keen on the idea that benevolent dictators are worth defending, but it puts their degree of evil in some perspective, I think.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:23 pm
So this idiot was expecting a complete re-alignment of world powers in three months? I’m sure he was one arguing that we just had to be patient in Iraq. – Sheeesh
But Diehl and his ilk are all about repeating the mistakes of the past hoping for different results.
What they fail to see is the role that our foreign policy in the past has played in creating extremists like Castro, Chavez and Ahmadinejad. We paid lip service to democracy while undermining or overthrowing democratically elected governments in favor of brutal dictators that we liked better because we thought we could control them (The Shah, Pinochet, Saddam, etc.)
I’m not saying it’s all our fault that these nutjobs are in power but we helped set the stage for Chavez and his kind and if we continue the gunboat diplomacy of the past we can look forward to increasing anti-Americanism throughout the world and many more extremist governments that hate us.
It’s time to break with the past and try a different strategy. Continuing to do the same thing over and over again while expecting different results is the definition of insanity.