The Obama administration’s foreign policy essence promises to be little changed from that of its predecessor. This holds for its underlying conceptions of American interests and the country’s place in the world as well as top of the agenda problems. Modes of address toward other governments will be less peremptory, tactics less aggressive. Toward Europe, ‘multilateralism’ will be the leitmotif. The sea changes in modes of address are, of course, to be welcomed. A good measure of caution is in order, however, in regard to both substance and the tangible effect of stylistic changes.. There are strong indications that point to more continuity than change in the fundamental strategic premises that underlie specific policies. This is true for the intersecting, combustible crises in the Greater Middle East from Palestine to Iran to Afghanistan to Pakistan – a region where core European interests are engaged. The implications may register in Russia, Central Asia and the Caucasus, too.. There, the daunting geopolitics of energy overlaps with the fraught relationship between Europe and a newly assertive Kremlin.

There is need for a critical examination of how Europe should deal with the Obama administration. Celebration of the Bush era’s end along with eager expectations that a wiser, more open and prudent America is emerging does not suffice. The challenge of setting a still elusive strategic course for Europe remains, as does the task of figuring out ways to influence a still headstrong Washington. To avoid the sterile choices of ‘followership’ or sullen abstention, the leaders and peoples of Europe should decide what they want and how to convince the Americans to see the virtue in their thinking. Deference to an anticipated White House lead, whether on the world financial crisis or the Middle East, is dangerous. For Europeans may find themselves waiting for Godot, a Godot who finally shows up with instructions that they find unpalatable..

The New Regime

What is the basis for this skeptical assessment? Barack Obama’s senior cabinet appointments are one source of clues. The President-elect’s public statements, dating back to the campaign, provide the other. Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Robert Gates as continuing Secretary of State, and General James Jones as National Security Adviser share one key trait: none has ever questioned the strategic ends and means for the United States’ aggressive interventions. Only Jones has a record of criticizing unqualified backing of Israel’s hard-line policies. The same can be said in regard to Washington’s confrontational approach toward Iran. The last is the key to the region’s future, as I discuss below. Indeed, the designation of Dennis Ross as special envoy for Iran places in the forefront someone who vehemently and consistently rejected diplomatic engagement with the Mullahs in Tehran while depicting Iran as the main source of the region's troubles. Richard Holbrooke, Special Envoy for Pakistan-India takes a similarly unbending line and backs an aggressive military operation in the Northwest Frontier Province and the Tribal Areas. Richard Haase, who will be the special representative on the Israel/Palestine crisis, has a more nuanced view. Yet, he too favored the invasion of Iraq, favors redoubling military efforts in Afghanistan, supports continued sanctions on Iran and follows the orthodox Washington line on Israel/Palestine. The only ray of light is that Haase has made recent remarks indicating that it may be useful to make indirect contact with Hamas at some unspecified point down in the road. President Obama declared a year ago that the precondition for the United States resolving its multiple dilemmas in the Greater Middle East was “to develop a fresh new mindset.” That is not being done.

The implication is that for European governments to avoid remaining hostage to America’s flawed conceptions about the region, it must concentrate its efforts in Washington. More fruitless forays into the Palestinian cauldron, more self-limited negotiations with Tehran, more prayerful hopes about Iraq, more irresolution and hand-wring about Afghanistan, more of the same troubled thoughts about Pakistan – will leave Europe no more able to influence matters than it has been for the past eight years. That means, if Obama does not get it right, several very big stakes will be lost. And, on the face of it, Washington’s new regime seems more likely to get it wrong than right. A more decisive Europe would be a change that Europeans could believe in as really counting.

EUROPE. RUSSIA & THE MIDDLE EAST

Why should European leaders concentrate their immediate attention on the problems of the Greater Middle East rather than Europe per se? There are three reasons for doing so. One, the manifest and looming crises there pose a clear and imminent danger to core European interests. Action is urgent as well as vital. Two, the terms of consultation and collaboration reached over the next few months on the Middle East will set the terms of transatlantic engagement for addressing European issues as well. Finally, the latter are matters where Europeans already have leverage and room for initiative. Modulating a relationship with Moscow on energy security as part of a more sustained diplomacy is already underway.

A couple of neuralgic issues that weigh heavily on EU-Russian relations do involve the United States directly; namely, missile defense and Washington’s promotion of NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. On the former, little reason exists to expect a change in course. Obama has qualified his backing for deployment with the phrase ”when proven technically feasible.” In practice, he is unlikely to incur the institutional and political costs of revising existing policy by anything more than a pause in deployment. The new president is risk-averse and a conflict avoider. He will not pick a fight with the Pentagon and its allies by forcing a retreat from a program in which there is so heavy an investment. Ukraine and Georgia are more ticklish matters. His senior officials are not of one mind as to the preferred course. It is likely, therefore, that Obama will prevaricate. He will drop Bush’s plan for accelerated membership review. But he will not question directly the underlying commitment. His challenge will be finding a way to mollify Moscow about encroachment on Russia’s strategic space without retreating from earlier positions. We should bear in mind that his national security team is composed of persons who have pushed the idea of advancing the ‘democratic domain’ as far as conditions permit. Still, No diplomatic strategy has as yet crystallized for accomplishing this balancing act. This opens an opportunity as well as interest for European leaders to shape Washington’s thinking while ensuring Europe a place as a full and true partner. Europe’s stake is too great, here as in the Middle East, to allow its own policies to be derivative of what Washington thinks and does. Indeed, in the light of Russia’s value as a tacit ally on Iran and Afghanistan, the two spheres intersect.

Continuity, Not Change

What are the strategic premises that bridge the Bush and Obama administrations? They can be summarized as follows:

1. The United States’ gravest threats that endanger vital economic and security interests originate in the Greater Middle East. These threats demand assertive American actions, political or military. The involvement of others is only meaningful when oriented and orchestrated by Washington.
2. The long-term solution is the fostering of prosperous democracies responsive to their citizens needs. The short to middle term answer is an unrelenting readiness to bring power to bear against multiple enemies. The American military engagements in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in the Persian Gulf must be maintained until a satisfactory resolution – as defined by the United States – is achieved.
3. Israel is still a tangible and emblematic asset and obligation of the United States. It is up to the Palestinians to demonstrate their credibility as partners for peace.

All the principals who form the new foreign policy team, including President Obama and Vice-President Biden, ascribe to these postulates. Criticisms of current policies that were voiced during the campaign by Obama, Biden and Clinton focused on execution. Execution referred to excessive unilateralism as well as the botched occupation of Iraq. The record shows that only Obama opposed the decision to go to war in Iraq. There is even a caveat on that point, since the opposition consisted solely of public remarks made while an Illinois state senator in Springfield. As a U.S. Senate candidate running in the fall of 2004, he stated that overall the war was being managed as best as reasonably could be expected. . On Iran, he has backed away from the idea he broached of unconditional talks. We should note that the person most forceful in pushing a revision of Iran policy, as well as redirection of thinking about Palestine, was Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is no longer a confidant of Obama. The like-thinking Robert Mallery was also summarily dropped during the campaign. Robert Gates has been unflinching hawk on dealing with Tehran. In December, he explicitly stated that Iran’s leaders were not credible negotiating partners since their unalleviated hostility toward the United States had been demonstrated by the rejection of several American overtures over the years. This distortion, conveniently omitting the serious Iranian demarche of April 2003 made through the Swiss Ambassador Tehran, and exaggerating American initiatives, suggests that Mr. Gates will not support any major policy reversal.

Other qualified persons were available for the Pentagon post had Obama seen a need for a root-and-branch reassessment of the country’s strategic framework. Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican from the heartland state of Nebraska, is the outstanding individual. He has been a consistent skeptic of the Iraq adventure, a sophisticated analyst of the region’s intersecting problems, and an advocate of diplomacy as the means to deal with Iran. Hagel is known as a thoughtful, intellectually rigorous man whose discourses on American foreign policy receive close, respectful attention. Yet, he was never seriously considered for a senior post in the Obama administration. That speaks volumes about the president-elect’s high level of comfort with the prevailing conventional wisdom and its proponents.

Washington, like other capitols, is something of an intellectual echo chamber where no one dares utter discomforting truths. Witness the near universal failure to recognize the definitive strategic defeat that the United States has suffered in Iraq as embodied in the agreed Status Of Forces Treaty. Washington got nothing in the way of operational autonomy that it had demanded. In effect, the Iraqi leadership is showing the United States the door. Regionally, the big winner is Iran which will have intimate relations with any future Iraqi government. Its greatly strengthened hand makes Tehran less inclined to yield to Western demands or American intimidation. These cardinal facts of strategic life in the Gulf go unremarked in the American media, foreign policy circles or most certainly among Obama’s foreign policy team.

Implications: Style & Substance

What will Obama as President of the United States look like? Certain traits seem highly likely to be on display:

1. Obama is, and will continue to be a deliberate decision-maker and policymaker. That has been a trademark of his campaign. There is nothing impetuous about the man.
2. Improvisation is not in his nature. He prefers to follow a script, however relaxed he is in inter-personal dealings. When presented with an unexpected event, he tends to react with mild irritation. The apropos comment does not spring to mind. That was evident in his reaction to the financial crisis – a bland call for a bipartisan declaration with John McCain
3. Temperamentally, Obama is better suited to formulating policy and orchestrating its execution than he is to crisis management. Relative ignorance about most foreign policy issues reinforces that tendency. In the latter instance, his instinct will be to slow down the clock to whatever extent he can.
4. He will be deliberate in making up his mind, but stubborn in holding to a position once he does. Obama’s numerous reversals of policy statements in the weeks after the primaries, and since his election, is not indicative of indecisiveness. He simply was playing campaign politics by offering views with little conviction behind them. Commitments as President will be of a different order. Unlike the narcissistic Bill Clinton, he does not expect the world to give him endless ‘do-overs.’
5. His acute, superior intelligence coupled to a desire to be in intellectual control will make him a hands-on President – once he overcomes an initial period of disorientation. Obama is stubborn in defending those policies in which he has invested something of himself; witness the belief that ‘winning’ in Afghanistan is a crucial national interest. It follows that the time when others, including other governments, may be able to shape his thinking is before his policy preferences crystallize.

Obama enters the White House with wide popular support and goodwill. His trademark elevated, above the fray rhetoric is one reason. He will have no specific mandate, though, apart from doing something about health care. His popularity will be based mainly on his personality and his being non-Bush. On foreign policy, the dispositions of public opinion are clear: do something to end the Iraq imbroglio but don’t do anything that embarrasses the U.S.; pursue a more multilateral tack but don’t forget American exceptionalism and safeguard the country’s right to take action as we see fit; steer clear of open-ended nation-building projects, except where they create bulwarks against terrorists – e.g. Afghanistan; spent less money abroad, we need it at home; make us popular in the world again. Not much guidance there on how to untangle our multiple, intersecting dilemmas in the Greater Middle East.

Failure to raise the fundamental issues of interest and capability embedded in America’s Middle East engagements in the public discourse means digging a deeper hole. Obama is anything but a heroic figure; he instinctively avoids doing anything contentious. He will be handicapped further by: (1) the absence of an Iraq debate that gets beyond calendars; (2) the utter lack of strategic perspective; (3) the consonant inability of the American public to understand the truly significant choices and trade-offs to be made; and (4) a diplomacy hamstrung by the precipitous loss of American credibility and moral authority.

What Can Other Governments Do?

The short cynical answer is: ‘not much.’ The United States is too big and too insular to be moved by the well-intentioned thoughts and actions of others. Still, there is room for influence at the margins. This is especially so with a foreign affairs neophyte who is inclined to favor change from the Bush stasis, and who is truly interested in working with other countries. What could count is helping to exert influence on Obama to take the steps in the direction he already is inclined to go, e.g. on Iran. That is to say, to move faster and further than cautionary instincts and constraints will incline him to do.

On Osama’s ‘pre-coronation’ European tour in July, leaders did not seek to use the occasion to impress upon their inexperienced visitor that: (1) Europe is itself a force in the world to be taken seriously, one that has its own perspective, interests, and capabilities; and (2) European governments have pronounced views on matters such as Iran (and Palestine?) that were at variance with those of the current American government. The failure to do so owed much to the ever present fear of alienating an American president from whom so much is expected and whose possible displeasure is to be avoided as the highest priority. That reflex to bend the knee before America was on display again a month later when Europeans fell into line behind Washington’s bombastic response to the Russian intervention in the Georgia affair. It ran against the grain of their own interpretation of events and their own prudential instincts. Thus, they flouted the rule that enemies should be made on purpose, not by inadvertence.

To continue on a course that features half-measures, thin consensus, allergy to confrontation with anyone, and instinctive deference to whomever occupies the White House promises perpetuation of the current state of affairs. If one judges that the present course is one that best serves Europe’s interests today, and can do so in the future, then the issue of a difficult break from the past is not cogent. If, on the other hand, continuation along the inertial path is judged unsatisfactory, there is no acceptable alternative than to take one’s destiny in hand – nettles and all.

Michael Brenner, Professor of International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh