Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Barack Obama

  • Bob Woodward’s Bombshell

    Robert Woodward may be one of the most astounding journalists that the United States has to offer. The man uncovered the biggest instance of presidential corruption in American history (the Watergate scandal), has authored numerous articles that have stoked debate in the public discourse, and has written books galore about the hot political topics of the day. His latest three books about the war in Iraq were particularly satisfying to the gossip hungry reader (In a span of three volumes, Woodward digs into the lower bowels of the Bush Administration in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. He engages in a great deal of political psychology, using President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell as his case studies.)

    His most recent project however has generated far more buzz. Obama’s Wars, a detailed account of President Barack Obama’s numerous battles both inside Afghanistan and inside his own administration, is due to be released next week. And while the piece is narrative in tone and easy for the average reader to follow (which is typical of Woodward), this account is anything but unsubstantiated. According to The Washington Post, Woodward bases all of his assertions on thousands of documents, interviews with key White House officials, internal conversations, as well as notes from confidential staff meetings that took place in the Oval Office. In other words, the book is both sourced to the brink and interesting to read.

    Similar to Woodward’s series about President Bush, this project is likely to hit Obama’s staff hard. Some of the revelations that are uncovered are none too flattering, and the work paints the Obama Administration as a bunch of egotistical personalities who cannot stand one another’s company. Take a look at these juicy pieces, courtesy of Blake Hounshell of Foreign Policy.

    1) The administration’s civilian point man in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, doesn’t think the current strategy makes much sense. Vice President Joe Biden evidently hates Holbrooke’s guts. According to Biden, Holbrooke is “the most egotistical bastard [he’s] ever met.” Not much of an endorsement by any stretch of the imagination.

    2) Throughout the administration’s three month-long Afghan strategy review, the president was deeply annoyed with his military commanders for recommending an increase in the ; a proposal that ran contrary to his own personal beliefs about the war.

    3) Afghan President Hamid Karzai is a manic depressive who is sporadic in taking his medication. It will be interesting to see whether this description ends up damaging the American counterinsurgency mission in Afghanistan. It may not, but a revelation of this kind won’t help bring Karzai closer into the American orbit — an essential ingredient for a successful counterinsurgency approach.

    4) President Obama tells Woodward that the United States will be able to “absorb a terrorist attack.” From a political standpoint, this is a remarkably stupid thing to say to a reporter. But from a strategic standpoint, the president is probably right. The threat of terrorism has been ingrained in the minds of Americans for close to a decade, so another hit on American soil will be less shocking than the 9/11 attacks were.

    5) General David Petraeus, the man now running American and NATO operations in Afghanistan, wants the White House to stay out of his way so he can run the war free of distraction.

    6) The CIA is bankrolling and training an elite Afghan paramilitary force with the purpose of capturing or killing senior Taliban and Al Qaeda members. There are around 3,000 members in this top secret team, and the intelligence agency has given them discretion to pursue militants into Pakistan if necessary. This, however, is not really an ulcer in the belly of Obama when comparing it to the rest of the list. The CIA is tasked to gather intelligence and protect American interests around the world. While human rights lawyers won’t like it, killing or arresting terrorists is an integral part of that job description.

    These are just a few of the bullets in Woodward’s book but readers will undoubtedly find more when they preorder it online. And in addition to being an entertaining read, the book may also strengthen the historical record and perhaps contribute to the Obama legacy. Much like life, politics is a frustrating game where arguments of policy can quickly turn personal.

    (I commend Obama’s advisors for not going into a self-defense mode. Rahm Emanuel in particular has played it smart so far. “Despite difficult circumstances, the president brings a consistently tough, determined and clear eyed strategic focus to these crises,” he said.)

  • Obama’s Grand Strategy of Sanction Regimes

    When President Barack Obama signed into law the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act last June, he envisaged the path of sanctions being integrated into a grand strategy aimed at making hostile countries fall in line. Iran is the first subject of this strategy.

    The sanctions regime imposed upon Iran largely targets its petroleum industry; the mainstay of Iran’s economy. The aim is to squeeze the Islamic Republic’s fuel imports and enhance its international isolation.

    Obama decided to take a tougher stand on Iran’s nuclear program after the country failed to reciprocate his attempt at détente early in his presidency. As a candidate, Obama promised to hold unconditional talks with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and when riots erupted in Tehran and other Iranian cities in the wake of Ahmadinejad’s disputed reelection last year, Washington did not interfere. The administration hardly intended to engineer a regime change in Iran as it did in 1953 when then Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in favor of the shah with the support of the CIA. (more…)

  • Obama Nuking His Own Nuke Policy

    For all of the foreign policy challenges that the Obama Administration is attempting to manage and resolve, none seems as important to the president personally than the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Nuclear nonproliferation continues to be the backbone of Barack Obama’s security policy, and an issue that the president himself has worked extensively hard on over his first eighteen months in office.

    Two months ago, the United States hosted the very first “Nuclear Security Summit” which was designed to find and lock up loose nuclear material around the world before international terrorists could get a hold of these dangerous components. The summit was a great illustration of the president’s appeal across the world at that point in time. Forty-seven national leaders chose to make the journey to Washington DC to participate in the discussions. And when all was said and done, all 47 produced a collective communiqué outlining the urgent need to find and secure nuclear material for the sake of global security. Nuclear nonproliferation was once again an issue on the world stage.

    But the summit was only the start of the administration’s campaign. Around the same time, the White House shocked the Washington establishment by diminishing the role of nuclear weapons in American foreign policy. The United States would no longer point its nuclear arsenal toward the direction of nonnuclear weapons states, even if American interests were directly threatened (although the actual wording of the National Security Strategy excluded Iran and North Korea from this promise). In an extreme transformation from the Cold War era, the National Security Strategy (NSS) prohibited the offensive use of nuclear weapons in an armed confrontation. Last but not least, the NSS stressed that America’s large and powerful nuclear stockpile was to be used only for defensive purposes. Or as Washingtonians like to say, for deterrence purposes.

    But perhaps more important than the actual directives of the NSS was the way the strategy itself portrayed nuclear weapons: outdated, expensive, dangerous, and useless for the twenty-first century.

    The central aim of both events was to demonstrate to the world the extent of Washington’s sincerity. The NSS and the summit were also political moves which administration officials hoped would convince other states to back America’s stance on the Iranian nuclear program.

    That was then. The world has changed markedly over the past few months, and as a consequence, the United States has changed its stance on the nuclear issue.

    In the latest case of American knee buckling, Washington recently signed a nuclear cooperation deal with Vietnam that would in effect spread nuclear technology to East Asia. To be fair, the deal is not entirely unprecedented. Under President George W. Bush’s administration, the United States enacted a similar agreement with India. President Obama largely followed the Bush blueprint by approving a nuclear sharing pact with the United Arab Emirates in 2009 (which Congress later signed into law). Like previous agreements, the American-Vietnamese deal focuses solely on the peaceful development of nuclear energy, which officials hope will show other states that nuclear transparency is the better option.

    However, there is one vital difference that could damage President Obama’s entire nuclear nonproliferation policy. As the American-Vietnamese nuclear agreement currently stands, the Vietnamese government would still be allowed to enrich its own uranium, rather than importing it from the world market.

    To some in the administration, the clause may not seem to be such a big deal, particularly given Vietnam’s quick transformation as a responsible actor in the international system. But the omission of a “gold standard” in the Vietnam deal is in fact significant in a number of respects.

    First off, the gold standard omission portrays to the world an America that is both unsure of its own nuclear policy and a nation that is all too willing to make exceptions to those labeled pragmatic or strategic. In essence, Washington is saying one thing and doing another. “If your country is in an unstable environment or is a reluctant partner, then don’t expect the United States to support your right to domestic enrichment.” Iran clearly fits in this camp, as do Jordan and Saudi Arabia, albeit at a much smaller scale. “If, however, your leaders comply with American demands, then Washington will drop its objections.”

    Is this the type of message that the United States want to send to the developing world? If the Obama Administration truly wants to improve American credibility in areas that are traditionally hostile to American objectives, then the answer would appear to be no. A “my way or the highway” mentality can hardly be labeled constructive within the broader campaign of international outreach.

    Why the Obama Administration decided against following the India-UAE example with Vietnam is anyone’s guess. Perhaps this was the only way the United States could finalize a very profitable business contract. Perhaps the Vietnamese were unrelenting during negotiations. Or perhaps Washington is not concerned about the Vietnamese getting the Bomb.

    Whatever the reason, the American-Vietnamese agreement is not going to sit well with the Iranians. Tehran has been trying to exert the very same nuclear enrichment rights that the Vietnamese were privileged enough to squeeze out of Washington.

    What is more, the United States may have also established a dangerous precedent in future nuclear negotiations. Countries like Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt may now insist that they be granted the same nuclear enrichment rights. This not only puts the United States in a tough position with members of the developing world, but also ruins Obama’s strategy of an eventual “world without nuclear weapons.”

    No one said the foreign policy business was going to be easy. But it may be a lot easier if the United States exerted some consistency on a major security issue.

  • Obama’s Numbers in the Arab World

    I’m a big fan of Dr Marc Lynch’s work. In addition to being considered a respected professor in a top-tier American university (George Washington University), he is also one of the best versed in Middle Eastern culture and knowledgeable about virtually every issue in the Arab world. So whenever Dr Lynch writes a post about Arab public opinion or has something to say about American-Islamic relations, I tend to read it very quickly.

    Such was the case last Thursday, when Lynch devoted a post to the dwindling appeal of President Barack Obama in the eyes of ordinary Muslims. Technically, the Brookings Institution sponsored the poll and conducted the project, but it’s people like Lynch (not to mention Steve Walt and Tom Ricks) that make sense of the data and try to put it into some perspective.

    For a full look at Brookings’ results, click here (PDF). I highly recommend that you take a look at the raw figures, because it gives us a sense of what issues still ring true in the hearts of Arabs. But if you just want to get to the nuts-and-bolts, the results can be best described as quantification of America’s declining appeal, even in countries that are considered to be American allies. The poll not only reveals an unfortunate American decline in popularity, but also the deep frustrations that many Arabs hold over America’s inability to meet its promises and commitments. (more…)