Barack Obama: Not smart at home or abroad

Barack Obama: Not smart at home or abroad

http://m.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Thomas-Friedman-Not-smart-at-home-or-abroad-5450949.php

There has been a festival of commentary of late bemoaning the pusillanimous foreign policy of President Barack Obama. If only we had a president who rode horses shirtless, wrestled a tiger or took a bite out of a neighboring country, we'd all feel much safer. Your Honor, I rise in — partial — defense of Mr. Obama.

By Thomas Friedman

Let me start by asking a question I've asked about other countries: Is U.S. foreign policy today the way it is because Obama is the way he is (cerebral, cautious, dispassionate) or is Obama the way Obama is on foreign policy because America is the way America is today (burned by two failed wars and weakened by a great recession) and because the world is the way the world is (increasingly full of failed states and enfeebled U.S. allies)?

The answer is some of both, but I'd put a lot more emphasis on the latter. Foreign policy, our ability and willingness to act in the world, is about three things: interests, values and leverage. Do we have an interest in getting involved in Syria or Crimea, are our values engaged, and — if either is true — do we have the leverage to sustainably tilt things our way at a price we can afford? Leverage is a function of two things: the amount of economic and military resources we can bring to bear and the unity of purpose of our partners on the ground and our allies elsewhere.

I'd argue that a lot of what makes America less active in the world today is a product first of all of our own diminished leverage because of actions taken by previous administrations. The decisions by the Bush I and Clinton teams to expand NATO laid the seeds of resentment that helped to create Putin and Putinism. The Bush II team not only presided over two unsuccessful wars, but totally broke with American tradition and cut taxes instead of raising them to pay for those wars, weakening our balance sheet. The planning of all three was abysmal, their execution worse and too many of our "allies" proved to be corrupt or used our presence to prosecute old feuds.

But where our allies are too few or too divided — Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq — it requires a much deeper and longer U.S. involvement on the ground to midwife a new order than most Americans will tolerate.

Most presidents make their name in foreign policy by taking on strong enemies, but most of what threatens global stability today is crumbling states. Exactly how many can we rescue at one time? I'd love to help Ukrainian reformers build a functioning democracy, but the reason that is so daunting a task is because their own politicians wasted two decades looting their own country, so the leverage required to foster change — $30 billion in bailout funds — is now massive.

We need to counterbalance China in the Asia-Pacific region, but that is not easy when we owe Beijing nearly $1.3 trillion because of our credit-fueled profligacy. I am all for resisting Putin's intervention in Ukraine, but it is hard to weaken this petro-dictator without a national energy policy of our own that will bring down the price of oil and create alternatives. It is true that Obama could do more to "lead" the Europeans on Ukraine, but it is also true that Gerhard Schroder, the former chancellor of Germany, today sits on the board of a giant Russian oil company.

Our biggest problem, though, is not Europe or Obama. Our biggest problem is us and our own political paralysis. The world takes America seriously when it sees us doing big hard things together — when we lead by example. If we want to do more nation-building abroad, then we have to come together on a plan to do more nation-building at home first — including infrastructure investment, replacing income and corporate taxes with a carbon tax, a major new push for both energy efficiency and properly extracted natural gas, skill-building and immigration reform and gradual long-term fiscal rebalancing.

What is most scary to me about the world today is the fact that we are doing neither smart nation-building abroad to make the world more stable nor smart nation-building at home to make America more resilient and strong. We need both to be safe. We need more leverage from nation-building at home to have the staying power to lift others, but we also need those foreigners to provide a solid, unified foundation so our leverage can work. It's hard to replace a flat tire, when your jack is broken or is sitting on quicksand.

This is not just about Obama.

Friedman writes for The New York Times.