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Editorial
Obama's first foreign front
With President Barack Obama's first one hundred days well underway it is tempting to imagine the world will be turned on its head by the United States' first African-American head of state. But in order that expectations do not completely override reality and lead to short-term disappointment it is important to bear in mind some key aspects. These centre on what his background will likely mean in practical terms rather than perception and the degree to which his policies will be governed by political debts and directions dictated by the sources of his support during the election campaign. At the top of his foreign affairs agenda are two of the world's most intractable problems: India and Pakistan and Israel and the Palestinians. Both are encompassed by a series of parameters which make progress extremely difficult but both need at least to be contained for fear of their developing into something worse.
On Pakistan the president starts with a negative development in the dismissal of its pro-American national security adviser Mahmood Durrani. Ostensibly this was because he had revealed that one of the suspects in the Mumbai attacks was a Pakistani national. That revelation may have been a factor but it seems that it was also part of a pushback by the military against increasing attempts to bring them under greater central control to emphasise that there must not be a repetition of such a semi state-sanctioned attack. Either explanation of Durrani's removal does not bode particularly well for the relationship with the United States in particular, and the West in general. The most positive aspect of Indo-Pakistan affairs remains the fact that the two sides have not come to blows but Pakistan remains reluctant to enter into a forthright exchange of information on the November 26-29 attacks, which would be a solid way of putting it to bed. If Obama does not know already that it would take very little to push Pakistan over the precipice into the failed state category then he will surely soon find out. And that realisation will no doubt govern his handling of relations with Islamabad just as it has with the outgoing administration. The calculation that will continue to need to be made is how far America can prosecute its war against Al Qaeda in the border regions without destabilising Pakistan and transforming it into a replica of Afghanistan. India can be assured that its restraint has earned it important kudos with the incoming administration. But it will take all of Obama's imagination to find his way through this particular maze.
With the conflict in Gaza the president will bring with him the Democrat legacy of peacemaking in the Middle East or at least attempts to pacify this torrid corner of the earth. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will certainly want to continue the record of her husband in this regard but Obama's path to the presidency was made possible by significant support from Christian and Jewish groups who will not want to see America's traditional support for Israel watered down. But his few public words on the subject have all erred on the side of Tel Aviv up to this point. Clinton, by contrast, has already made it abundantly clear that Israel's interests remain her priority.
The incoming president knows what happens in Gaza cannot be separated from what happens in the rest of the Middle East and, indeed, reads across to Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. Iran's backing of the Hamas movement in Gaza with weaponry and political support ensures that it is a major player, taken in concert with its influence in Lebanon, and Iraq itself where Tehran's reining in of its proxies has enabled the United States to claim the measure of 'success' that it now does. It serves the Iranians' purpose to see American influence there reduced and, according to some analysts, that improvement in the situation on the ground in Iraq has resulted in Washington playing down the issue of Iran's nuclear programme as a pro quid pro.
The role the Iranians are now playing in Afghanistan is less clear but what happens there and in Pakistan will be a major preoccupation of the incoming administration. Obama must know that just throwing larger numbers of troops at the problem through a surge will not work in Afghanistan. It was successful in Iraq largely because other political factors were also being manipulated to bring down the levels of violence and because the Sunnis changed their priorities. Manipulation of the political situation, beyond trying to talk to the Taliban, is not an available option here except at a local level in dealing with regional warlords. The new president has already indicated that one of his first overseas trips will be to a Muslim country. It would have been a leap of imagination worthy of the expectations being placed on Obama had he made that first trip to Pakistan in a groundbreaking bid to end the cycle of Islamic violence and terrorism now being generated from that benighted land. But that dream occurred to asianaffairs before the latest U.S. raids onto Pakistani territory showed that the new policy vis-à-vis Islamabad will look very much like the old one. Much more likely that the visit will be made to a much safer bet such as Indonesia where Obama spent part of his youth. Symbolically, it will be important in the Muslim world but in the real world his time would be much better spent persuading the Israelis of the need to lance the poisonous boil of the Palestinian problem by tackling the question of settlements and speeding the antagonists towards a workable two-state solution. Were the Obama presidency to achieve that alone, his term of office would be doubly historic.
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