President Obama will inherit an in-tray that Richard Holbrooke has described as the most daunting to face the US since the 1940s. Drawing down Iraq; ramping up Afghanistan; fixing the global economy; negotiating a new climate change agreement; preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons; dealing with an increasingly authoritarian Russia—the list goes on.
The Bush years taught America a hard lesson—wage wars of necessity before wars of choice. A new phase is now beginning: the diplomacy of necessity. Obama's administration has little choice but to organise its foreign policy around these challenges.
These problems can't be solved alone; they require a new engagement with America's European allies and multilateral institutions. But a new transatlantic alliance can only make itself relevant by tackling problems no longer rooted in its neighbourhood. Delivering such an alliance will be hard for both partners.
Europe is no longer at the centre of gravity for many of the biggest difficulties facing the US. Pakistan is indispensable in the fight against al Qaeda. The middle east peace process can't move without Israel and Saudi Arabia. Success or failure on climate change will turn on America's relations with China and India. Even on relations with Russia, the EU is sometimes viewed as peripheral. Today, Europe often matters in international affairs in the way that the US mattered in the first half of the 20th century: a wealthy power with tremendous potential that could choose to engage or, instead, hang back and focus on the home front.
Europe will find Obama's priorities and methods much more to its liking than what has gone before. Under Bush, the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz—the so called "Vulcans"—failed to come to terms with a changed international landscape. This group cut their teeth fighting the Soviets, and spent the Clinton years dreaming of missile defence, keeping the US free from multilateral entanglements, and toppling cold war dictators. They spent little time thinking about economic interconnectedness, nation building, or transnational threats like al Qaeda, climate change or loose nukes.
Obama's team will be different. Democratic foreign policy experts have spent the past eight years grappling with these global challenges in newly created think tanks like John Podesta's Center for American Progress, Anne-Marie Slaughter's Princeton Project on National Security, and Kurt Campbell and Michele Flournoy's Center for a New American Security. This community sees US leadership as vital but also understands the limits of military power, and believes that far from affirming America's leadership role, Bush's unilateralism undermined it and weakened it. The path forward requires investing in international cooperation and using all the tools at America's disposal.
America is likely to adopt a "show don't tell" strategy, proving its good intentions by closing Guantánamo, developing domestic energy reform, and re-engaging with institutions like the International Criminal Court, the UN and the nuclear non-proliferation regime. But "show don't tell" needs to work both ways.
Democratic foreign policy experts believe that Europe has been making strides in the right direction, particularly in the financial crisis. They want the partnership to be revived and strengthened. But the tests will come quickly. More troops are required in southern Afghanistan, in support of a US redeployment next year. Thus far, most European governments, including Germany and France, appear reluctant to provide them. Tougher sanctions on Iran will be needed if negotiations fail. A common position towards Russia, with support for Ukraine, must be delivered, even as Moscow tries to play divide and rule. Over the longer term, Europe should even think about providing peacekeepers to underwrite a peace settlement in the middle east.
There is an acute awareness on the American side that real partnership, although very desirable, is quite a leap forward for many Europeans. If Europe does not reciprocate, and is unable to share more of the burden and risks, Americans will begin to question the value of the transatlantic alliance. They may, with a heavy heart, begin to prioritise other options: relationships with individual European countries, like Britain, that are willing to share burdens; building ties across the Pacific; engaging more in bilateral diplomacy with America's adversaries, and making the best of what they have got. We have spent the past eight years worrying about the floor in the transatlantic alliance; we'll spend the next four looking for the ceiling. Let's hope we don't hit it too soon.
Read more....
Michael Lind's post-electioncover storyon what Obama means for American liberalism, plus a Prospectsymposiumon the future of America with contributions from Martin Walker, Jonathan Derbyshire and James Crabtree.
Also, exclusively online, ABC's foreign correspondentJim Sciuttoargues that Obama will struggle to make friends in the middle east,Erik Tarloffdissects the Republican's Palin problem, andStephen Boyleexplains why the Democrats might turn out to be Obama's worst enemy.
