Foreign policy remains Obama’s prerogative
Anti-Democrat and pro-Republican elements in the United States and abroad leapt with joy as news broke of the latter’s landslide victory in the mid-term congressional elections. Images of a disappointed Barack Obama, captured in the split second that his head hung low, circulated all over news and social media, announcing the Democrats’ defeat.
Pro-Israel elements, too, were a party to the celebrations. Members and backers of the Jewish lobby in and outside the US hailed the results as the harbinger of a political era conducive to Israeli interests as the Grand Old Party has a heavy mandate among orthodox American Jews, and is known for having a sympathetic corner toward the Jewish state.
But perhaps it was more because of the prospects that an increasingly isolated Israel saw in these results that caused the sudden surge in optimism. It was not taken into account, it seems, how the ultimate effectivity of the results would be limited to domestic, low-politics issues, for the man at the helm of international affairs is still the same: Barack Obama.
With two years left to the expiration of his second term in office, Obama is unlikely to take risks or back an undertaking even remotely illegitimate. The interests of the chief Middle Eastern ally of the US, then, amount to a paradoxical impediment – one that the president might find testing to overcome, but would overcome nonetheless even if it means pushing it aside. His major, if not sole, concern for now is leaving behind an honourable legacy for the world in general, and the US citizens in particular. And the only thing that could have pleased them both is a service to mankind.
The interests of the chief Middle Eastern ally of the US, then, amount to a paradoxical impediment – one that the president might find testing to overcome, but would overcome nonetheless even if it means pushing it aside
In this, he failed miserably.
Take terrorist organisations, for example. True, their expansion has been checked by waging unparalleled, financially straining wars of attrition in their strongholds. True, also, that they have been forced to retreat. But that the end of each militant group marks the sprouting of a horde of others and that the number of innocent lives lost is disproportionately greater than those saved, are facts one cannot possibly deny.
Success of US-led campaigns need not be sought in theoretical understandings arrived at in lofty supranational institutions, and conveniently undersigned by those who have but a bird’s eye view of the situation. The sole scale to rate it should be the on-ground situation. And for what it’s worth, the fact merits mention that none of the commitments, or even resolutions for that part, has succeeded in improving that. Over the years, it has only got worse – in both expanse and intensity.
As it is, Obama’s track record with respect to humanity is extremely disappointing. He could not shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, or cut down the number of drone strikes – they have only increased. He was branded as indifferent to the plight of the millions brutally suppressed by Bashar al-Assad in Syria. That was non-intervention gone wrong. And he is branded as unwise to have initiated a military offensive to tackle a political problem in Iraq. This is intervention gone wrong.
At a time when people the world over, both inside and outside political offices, are explicitly fuming with anti-Israel and pro-Palestine sentiment, it would be most imprudent to swim upstream
The last thing he would want, then, is to go down in history as the man who legitimised legally and internationally illegitimate Israeli moves to red-indianise Palestinian territories.
At a time when people the world over, both inside and outside political offices, are explicitly fuming with anti-Israel and pro-Palestine sentiment, it would be most imprudent to swim upstream.
The Republican win, then, is not as great a news as the Israelis and pro-Israelis are hailing it to be. The latter two’s sympathisers may bridle Obama’s domestic moves – those of exclusive interest to the US public – but his international decisions and preferences will continue to be guided by his personal concerns. And chief among them now, is to delink himself from the increasingly radical right-wing politics of Israel, so they can no longer tarnish what is left of his humanitarian image.
In a world convinced of Israeli victimisation of millions of Palestinians, manifested especially in the outrageously disproportionate response to the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas, there is, ironically, a positive global corollary of a prospective self-interested move. If Barack Obama puts political wisdom, sagacity, and just a tad bit of humanism to good use by alienating the forces that perpetuate moral and political injustices, then he can turn things around for the oppressor, in favour of the oppressed even if it is for the remaining two years of his second term in office. Even if it is for hope of leaving an honourable legacy behind. And let us hope, that he does.
The political altruism that his avowed concern for peoples around the world implies, hasn’t done the world much service, anyway.