Worldmaking (92 page)

British prime minister David Cameron was determined to lend the United States his full support in any attack against Syria. On August 29, he recalled Parliament to vote to authorize British military action against Assad's regime if evidence became conclusive that it had used chemical weapons. The government was defeated by a vote of 285 to 272, ruling out any British involvement in U.S.-led strikes and leading some Cassandras to declare the special relationship dead. Obama's response to this setback was equally surprising. On October 31, he stated his desire to launch swift reprisal attacks against Assad but requested formal congressional approval before any action was taken. Pundits wondered about Obama's motives. Congressional support was not certain, given that both parties were deeply divided on the merits or otherwise of launching air strikes against Syria. “The moral thing to do is not to stand by and do nothing,” Obama said, before posing the question: “I do have to ask people, well, if in fact you're outraged by the slaughter of innocent people, what are you doing about it?”
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But Obama's congressional gambit showed that the response to an atrocity could not simply be refracted through categories such as “right” and “wrong.” The president had deployed a humanitarian casus belli for military action against Muammar Gaddafi's Libya in 2011, but he had not sought congressional approval in doing so. Syria was different; the strategic stakes and impediments to military action were higher, as was the potential for disaster if a radical Islamist group assumed power in the vacuum that would accompany Assad's fall. Paul Wolfowitz strongly supported a military assault against Assad's regime, noting, “It's not Iraq 2003. It's Iraq in 1991 … In 1991 we had an opportunity without putting any American lives at risk to enable the Shia uprisings against Saddam to succeed. Instead we sat on our hands and watched him kill tens of thousands. We did nothing and we could have very easily enabled those rebellions to succeed. I think if we had done so we could have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and there would not have been a second war.”
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But Wolfowitz's historical analogy was dubious. Air strikes alone would not have ousted Assad; that would have required a much larger intervention, with all the uncertainty that entailed.

Events took a bizarre turn a week or so after the vote in the House of Commons. During a press conference in London on September 9, a reporter asked Secretary of State John Kerry whether Assad could do anything to prevent a U.S.-led military strike against his regime. “Sure,” replied Kerry with more than a hint of sarcasm, “he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week—turn it over, all of it without delay and allow the full and total accounting [of it],… but he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done.”
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Ignoring the tone, Russia immediately seized on Kerry's words, proposing that Assad should eradicate his chemical weapons under UN supervision. Obama's interest was immediately piqued. On September 14, John Kerry and Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, agreed to put a plan into action that would charge the United Nations with the removal of Assad's chemical weapons.

A pragmatist to his core, Barack Obama handed the initiative to Russia in resolving the crisis and unemotionally pulled back from the brink of military action. On
This Week
, George Stephanopoulos quoted the critical assessment of Richard Haas, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations: “Words like ‘ad-hoc,' ‘improvised,' ‘unsteady' come to mind. This is probably the most undisciplined stretch of foreign policy in your presidency.” What do you make of that?” asked Stephanopoulos. “Well, you know, I think that folks here in Washington like to grade on style,” Obama replied, “and so had we rolled out something that was very smooth and disciplined and linear, they would have graded it well, even if it was a disastrous policy. We know that, because that's exactly how they graded the Iraq war … [But] I'm less concerned about style points. I'm much more concerned about getting the policy right.”
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A survey commissioned by the Pew Research Center found that two-thirds of Americans approved of Obama's decision to support the Russian proposal, even though only a quarter believed that Assad would ultimately comply.
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In August 2014, Rand Paul wrote an op-ed for
The Wall Street Journal
that staked out a significant difference of opinion with Hillary Clinton, who had expressed her frustration at Obama's unwillingness to take stronger action against Assad. “We are lucky Mrs. Clinton didn't get her way and the Obama administration did not bring about regime change in Syria. That new regime might well be ISIS.” Moving well beyond Clinton, Paul noted acerbically, “Our so-called foreign policy experts are failing us miserably.”
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*   *   *

Barack Obama confronts an increasingly risk-averse public and a series of crises that defy easy categorization, let alone solutions. At the outset, at least, the United States can weigh in decisively in certain theaters (Libya), but with far less certainty—and with unknowable repercussions in both cases—in others (Syria, Iraq). After the Second Iraq War, the public's appetite for supporting a policing function for the United States in the Middle East is vastly diminished. The debacle in Iraq demonstrated that fine-sounding plans and actual outcomes don't always match—that worldmaking in the Middle East is well nigh impossible. In twenty years' time, U.S. policymakers may well look back on the Mubarak era as halcyon. Obama's critics assail his weak strategic handle on the situation—his reactiveness and reluctance to announce a doctrine—but how does one devise a “grand strategy” toward the Middle East in such a tumultuous era? Is the Arab Spring merely a process whereby radical Islamism replaces secular despotism? Or will it lead to a cycle of sectarian violence and the withering of the rule of law? Will this wave of democratization lead to pluralism, economic modernization, and the dispersal of wealth and opportunity across the Middle East? Will active U.S. engagement assist or discourage one or the other? No one can possibly know, and expert predictions are confounded by events almost weekly. One can understand why Obama is reluctant to walk purposefully in a straight line across this minefield.

But the news has not all been bad in the region. A major breakthrough in U.S.-Iranian relations was achieved on September 26, 2013, when Barack Obama spoke on the telephone with Hassan Rouhani, a moderate who had been elected Iran's president on August 3, succeeding the hard-line Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It was the first conversation between the presidents of Iran and the United States since 1979. The conversation followed from an announcement made the day previously that in-depth negotiations with Iran over its nuclear activities and capabilities would commence in Geneva on October 15. “We've got a responsibility to pursue diplomacy,” Obama said, “and … we have a unique opportunity to make progress with the new leadership in Tehran.”
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The Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu was less enthusiastic about this diplomatic breakthrough, the speed of which had largely blindsided him.

The October meetings in Geneva closed without a deal, but the mood music was promising. The breakthrough arrived on November 24, when a preliminary six-month nuclear agreement, brokered by the European Union's Catherine Ashton, was reached between Iran and six world powers: Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia, and the United States. Tehran agreed to suspend enriching uranium beyond the levels needed for its power stations. It also halted the installation of new centrifuges designed to enrich uranium and agreed to a cap on the amount of enriched uranium it is allowed to produce from existing devices. In a statement delivered from Washington, Barack Obama said that the measures make it virtually impossible for Iran to build a nuclear weapon without being detected. In return, international sanctions against Iran worth approximately $7 billion would be relaxed.

The deal vindicated Obama's dual policy of attempting to engage Iran while strengthening the sanctions imposed on the nation—which severely devalued Iran's currency and halved its oil exports. Some compared the breakthrough with Tehran to President Nixon's rapprochement with the People's Republic of China. Congressional Republicans were predictably less impressed, with some, such as Senator John Cornyn of Texas, suggesting that the deal was brokered to deflect attention from the Obamacare debacle—a remarkably parochial perspective, although not entirely surprising given the parlous state of contemporary political debate.
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Ranking Republicans in the House and Senate also emphasized that the real threat Iran posed to Israel would not be mitigated by the agreement. To assuage such concerns, Secretary of State Kerry described the deal as a “serious step” toward resolving the crisis with Iran, observing that it “will make our partners in the region safer. It will make our ally Israel safer.”
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Israel's president, Benjamin Netanyahu, was not placated by Kerry's soothing words. “What was achieved last night in Geneva,” he said, “is not a historic agreement; it is a historic mistake … Today the world has become a much more dangerous place because the most dangerous regime in the world has taken a significant step toward attaining the most dangerous weapon in the world.”
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The Israeli minister of the economy, Naftali Bennett, went even further: “If in another five or six years, a nuclear suitcase explodes in New York or Madrid, it will be because of the agreement that was signed this morning.”
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U.S.-Israeli relations have never been warm during the Obama administration, but the agreement the United States made with Iran marked a genuine low point. Whether the interim deal can be translated into something more enduring is unknowable, though it certainly rests on precarious foundations. President Rouhani has come under repeated criticism in Iran for gifting too many concessions to Washington. Crucially, he retains the all-important support of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But the long-term prospects for U.S.-Iranian rapprochement depend largely on Khamenei's continued approval. In this respect, Israel's furious reaction to the deal has only helped Rouhani's cause.

Whether an overwhelmingly pro-Likud GOP—encouraged in this direction by the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—will tolerate Obama's diplomacy is another question entirely. But the signs are not good. On March 9, 2015, forty-seven Republican senators signed an open letter to “the leaders of the Islamic State of Iran,” noting that any treaty signed by President Obama would require a two-thirds majority in the Senate to become law—an unlikely scenario: “We will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”
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It was a rare partisan congressional intrusion into an ongoing diplomatic negotiation.

The irritation and obstructionism displayed by Senate Republicans toward the Obama administration's Iran diplomacy had many sources. Principal among them was the fact that Obama had responded to comprehensive electoral defeat at the November 2014 midterms—the GOP won a 54–46 majority in the Senate and increased its majority in the House—not with chastened humility but with a renewed sense of purpose. On December 17, Barack Obama made one of the most startling announcements of his presidency: “In the most significant changes in our policy in more than fifty years, we will end an outdated approach that, for decades, has failed to advance our interests, and instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries. Through these changes, we intend to create more opportunities for the American and Cuban people, and begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas.” Vowing to “cut loose the shackles of the past,” Obama ordered the restoration of full diplomatic relations with Cuba and the opening of a U.S. embassy in Havana.
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The president's policy shift was the result of eighteen months of intensive negotiations—involving a complex prisoner swap—in which Pope Francis had become involved. It was a remarkably bold move for a president contemplating the looming reality of a Republican-controlled House of Representatives
and
Senate from January 3, 2015.

Most Republicans in Congress announced that they would resist lifting the fifty-four-year-old trade embargo. Some denounced the policy shift with real vehemence. “This entire policy shift announced today is based on an illusion, on a lie, the lie and the illusion that more commerce and access to money and goods will translate to political freedom for the Cuban people,” warned Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida. “All this is going to do is give the Castro regime, which controls every aspect of Cuban life, the opportunity to manipulate these changes to perpetuate itself in power.”
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Yet the polls suggested that this harsh appraisal was not shared by a majority of Americans. A CNN/ORC poll conducted soon after the historic announcement showed that six out of ten Americans supported the restoration of full diplomatic relations and that two-thirds wanted the travel ban overturned.
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In a press briefing on December 19, Obama said, “I share the concerns of dissidents there and human rights activists that this is still a regime that represses its people.” But he also noted that the “whole point of normalizing relations is that it gives us greater opportunity to have influence with that government.”
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The restoration of U.S.-Cuban relations and the ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran will provoke sharp disputes in 2015 and 2016 between President Obama and the Republican-controlled Congress. While his opponents portray the president as a spineless appeaser—the historically illiterate John Bolton described him as “worse than Neville Chamberlain”—Obama believes that his policy of engaging with Tehran and Havana will reap tangible results, making Israel and the region safer, and Cuba more prosperous and politically open.
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