Absolutely nothing in the news

It seems fashionable to argue that the wheels are coming off Barack Obama's foreign policy. It's a position which the distinguished American scholar Philip Bobbitt stakes out in the most recent edition of Prospect. But, in truth, nothing much is happening in foreign affairs—and even if he himself had not earned his peace price, President Obama reflects the new era of tranquility over which he presides.

Let's look at the ledger. Iraq has all but disappeared from the front page. Afghanistan and Pakistan remain, but even here investors are still steadily upping their investments in Pakistan, presumably judging that the conflict is being over-hyped. The argument with Iran over whether it is building nuclear weapons drags on, despite the forgotten report of the CIA two years ago, which found that Iran was probably not. Iran now says it might ship some of its used uranium to Russia to be converted into fuel (to provide medical isotopes) or else import from Europe, instead of manufacturing its own. The argument should now be relatively easy to wrap up.



What else? Georgia is out of the picture, and long ago was Chechnya. The Russians and the US sweet talk each other. Now that Washington has decided to abandon its ill-judged anti-missile system in eastern Europe, the Russians have switched off their angst and are happily agreeing to the first major nuclear arms’ cuts for nearly a decade. China is part of the “system.” The priorities are economic growth, dealing with financial imbalances and, unfortunately, keeping the lid on dissent at home. It has made peaceful settlements of its border disputes with Laos, Russia, Vietnam, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and is working on its age-old dispute of border demarcation with India. Its bitter clash with Taiwan, which once commentators said was potentially the most explosive issue on the map, is now quiescent. Japan and China are finally getting on fine.

Elsewhere India’s reflex anti-Americanism is dead and buried (thanks to President George W Bush’s decision to lift the embargo on nuclear materials) and North Korea is isolated, even from its old mentor China. Over the past five years Africa, too, has seen many of its perennial conflicts wind down. There are still serious skirmishes in the Congo, Sudan and Somalia, but military observers no longer label these as wars. Africa has taken a hit from the economic crisis, but hasn’t gone under and should soon return to its pre-crisis growth of over five per cent—over eight per cent in a number of cases, including the once badly run Nigeria. (This week Nigeria announced it is taking another big step to solving the insurgency in its Niger delta oil producing region, giving 10 per cent of oil revenues to the people of the delta.)

The Israel-Palestine conflict remains the most potent. But even there hopes have been raised by Obama’s clever speech in Cairo. Only a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist would doubt that when Obama puts his shoulder to the wheel, once he has secured the passing of the health reform bill at home, that the standoff will not rapidly move forward to an interim settlement at least.

For the first time in history a not insignificant number of states have been free from war for a century or more. In Europe, there is Sweden and Switzerland. In Latin America: Venezuela, Colombia, Costa Rica and Brazil. Indeed entire regions have escaped internal war for over a century—North America most importantly. And there have been the momentous changes in Europe, where unquestionably, the present peace is built more securely than the balance of power that kept the peace for most of the 19th and the early 20th centuries.

No one person, country or movement can claim credit for this. But certainly Barack Obama has pushed peace forward another good step. After the insouciance of Bill Clinton and the aggressiveness of George W Bush, he has introduced a new serious tone into the job of worldwide peacemaking. There was everything right in awarding him the Nobel peace prize. He has a good chance of delivering on his promise.