Obama's foreign policy headache

The Israeli government’s slap in the face of visiting US Vice-President Joseph Biden—announcing 1,600 new homes in the contested territory of East Jerusalem during his stay—has heightened the perception that the foreign policy of the Obama administration is not going well.

The problem, some argue, is that there are too many chiefs and not enough Indians. Besides Biden, there are the powerful secretaries of defence and state, Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton. There are the special troubleshooters for the middle east and Afghanistan, George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke. There is the president’s own intimate staff. On top of that, the national security adviser is supposed to keep all these lions in harness. That is the job Henry Kissinger did for Nixon and Ford, that Zbigniew Brzezinski, who I interviewed for Prospect, did during the Carter presidency, and Brent Scowcroft did under George Bush Senior. This is not to say the present incumbent, General James Jones, is a weakling. He is not. It is just that the coterie he has to deal with is more experienced and better politically connected than he is.

But now Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of an influential think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, has thrown a firecracker into the ring by suggesting that Brzezinski be brought back in to take over as foreign policy adviser. Brzezinski, who is 81, was one of Obama’s early heavyweight supporters and a professor at Columbia University while the future president was an undergraduate there. Later, Obama sidelined him after he made remarks considered to be anti-Israeli.



As if on cue, Brzezinski wrote the cover story of the February issue of Foreign Affairs, the Council’s bi-monthly magazine, praising Obama for having upturned the world’s perception of America through improved relations with the Islamic world, reducing of nuclear weapons, and sharpening the focus on the environment.

But there are three urgent issues, he says, that the president has not got a proper hold on: the Israel-Palestine conflict, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and Afghanistan-Pakistan.

Obama has not taken on board the internationally-favoured blueprint for peace in Israel and Palestine, involving the sharing of Jerusalem, the resettling of refugees (duly compensated) in Palestine, and land swaps to make up for the Jewish settlements. If only he had embraced the consensus, writes Brzezinski, “he would have exerted enormous influence on both the Palestinians and the Israelis... So far the Obama team has shown neither the tactical skill nor the strategic firmness needed to move the peace process forward.”

On Iran, he compliments Obama for having downgraded the threat of an American military attack even as others are proposing one. Moreover, he has not fallen into the trap of imposing a tight deadline. Brzezinski believes it is impossible to persuade the Iranians to turn back the clock on what they have already done but that it should be possible to persuade them not to go to the next stage, which is weaponisation. (One might add that this is the longstanding US policy towards South Africa, Japan and Brazil, all of whom hold large stocks of enriched uranium.) At present, Iranian policy is complicated by the appointment of senior officials who favour policies designed to force an early confrontation with Iran, and even advocate joint military consultations with Israel on the use of force. They should be sidelined or told to resign.

Finally there is the Afghanistan-Pakistan predicament. Brzezinski writes: “Obama has moved toward abandoning some of the more ambitious, even ideological, objectives that defined the US’s initial engagement in Afghanistan—the creation of a modern democracy, for example.” Top generals have said that that the US army is not winning. There has to be an alternative strategy, and that could be talking with receptive elements of the Taliban. “The Taliban are not a global revolutionary or terrorist movement, and although they are a broad alliance with a rather medieval vision of what Afghanistan ought to be, they do not directly threaten the west,” adds Brzezinski.

Finally, the US also needs to assuage Pakistan’s security concerns. “Given that many Pakistanis may prefer a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan than a secular Afghanistan that leans towards Pakistan’s arch-rival, India, the US needs to assuage Pakistan’s security concerns in order to gain its full cooperation in the campaign against the irreconcilable elements of the Taliban.” To this, I would add that India—where I am currently based—needs to be cajoled into agreeing to the Kashmir peace plan of the former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf.  That will do much to cure the Pakistani obsession with Indian influence.

Despite the wisdom of his words, it seems unlikely that Brzezinski will be appointed national security adviser. Obama's foreign policy team is already crammed with heavyweights. Nevertheless, Obama should listen carefully to what this long-serving veteran has to say.

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