PRESIDENT OBAMA: THE GRANDMASTER?

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Almost two years ago, when I started this blog, I posted two items tied to international relations that questioned President Bush's competence as a world leader. In a few words I argued that stable global relations require someone who understands movements over time and place, and can play like a chess player. This is especially the case when you're the President of the United States. George Bush, unfortunately, played like a checkers player, and left a legacy abroad that proved it. His actions made the U.S. - and the world - less safe.

Because of the issues surrounding Iran's nuclear program, and President Obama's remarks yesterday, I've re-posted my 2007 comments below.
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On Thursday the United States, the British and France put forward evidence to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran has secretly been building a non-civilian nuclear facility in northern Iran. Standing with President Obama when he presented the news to the world were the leaders of Britain and France. France's President Sarkozy - who is not known for such threatening statements - even went so far as to tell Iran that they need to change their program within two months, or face sanctions. As well, Britain called Iran's program part of a “serial deception of many years” that led to a rare Russian rebuke of Iran, and a milder warning from China.


These developments can not be understated.

After President Bush single-handedly undermined America's credibility abroad with aggressive unilateralism, lies, torture, and his blundering wars project, it was tough for him to get other nations to support the U.S. on important issues, like Iran's evolving nuclear program.

Now, let's keep in mind that few doubted Iran's capabilities and intentions to secure a nuclear weapons program. We even suspected - if not knew - what they were doing. The problem was that no one wanted to follow the U.S. lead on the issue. At least as long as George W. Bush was in the picture.

It appears that this is beginning to change under President Obama.

There are several reasons for this. As MSNBC's Rachel Maddow so cogently points out here, President Obama's decision to change the direction of our missile defense program in Poland - which was directed against Russia - helped convince Russia's President Medvedev to go along with the U.S. position on Iran. This was absolutely necessary, in my view, because of the missteps of the Bush administration when it came to Russia. I wrote about them here over a year ago. They're not pretty.

More importantly, President Obama's actions and decisions abroad helped convince the United Nations Security Council (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia) to follow the U.S. lead in condemning Iran's program. We want to keep in mind here that Russia and France balked at supporting U.S. initiatives after eight years of being strung along, lied to, and lectured by President Bush.

Having the UN Security Council with us on this is big news. I like Rachel Maddow's observation: "If diplomacy got reported like war does, I think what we'd be reporting right now is 'Shock and Awe'." If you read my December 2007 posts below, or take a look at George W. Bush's "Russia" policies, you'll get a better understanding of why Rachel Maddow said this (and why Andrea Mitchell concurred).

- Mark

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Dissecting Bush"s Strategic Failures, Part I

By way of Kevin Drum we have Niall Ferguson explaining why the United States is not the Roman Empire, or even the British Empire ...

Less than a century ago, before World War I, the population of Britain was 46 million, barely 2.5% of humanity. And yet the British were able to govern a vast empire that encompassed an additional 375 million people, more than a fifth of the world's population. Why can't 300 million Americans control fewer than 30 million Iraqis? Three years ago, as the United States swept into Iraq, I wrote a book titled "Colossus," which offered a somber prediction, summed up in its subtitle, "The Rise and Fall of the American Empire." My argument was that the United States was unlikely to be as successful or as enduring an imperial power as its British predecessor for three reasons: its financial deficit, its attention deficit and, perhaps most urprisingly, its manpower deficit. Rather cruelly, I compared the American empire to a "strategic couch-potato ... consuming on credit, reluctant to go to the front line [and] inclined to lose interest in protracted undertakings."

Not content, Kevin Drum introduced another variable: The “Rise of the Colonials” …

[Niall Ferguson’s argument] leaves out by far the most important reason for American failure: today's colonials fight back. Britain occupied India with a tiny force because the Indians mostly let them, and on the rare occasions when they rebelled the British (like all the other European colonial powers) felt free to crush them in the most brutal manner imaginable.None of that is true today. The people of Iraq are flatly unwilling to be ruled by outsiders, they have the weaponry to fight back effectively, and the West is no longer willing to spill rivers of blood simply to show them who's boss. If those things had been true a century ago, Britain never would have had an empire in the first place, let alone been able to keep it.

I have another variable to add. Let’s call it the "Grandmaster" variable.

I've used chess as a metaphor for international relations since reading Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. While it’s almost 10 years old, the book is still a good read and offers an understanding of strategic thinking that George Bush's foreign policy team obviously lacks. What we learn is that you can’t have rank amateurs, who think and act like they're playing checkers (with a club) when global challenges demand we think like chess players. With the power, influence, and global position of the United States the American Grand Chessboard really demands a Grandmaster. Or at least a tournament level player.

We have George W. Bush.

- Mark

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Dissecting Bush"s Strategic Failures, Part II

The chess player metaphor is even more appropriate when we include the discussion Joseph Nye, Jr. offered on U.S. power and the challenges that confront our world.

In The Paradox of American Power Nye argues that global power is distributed in a pattern that resembles a three-dimensional chess game. On the top board level we have military power, where the United States remains supreme. On the mid-level board we have economic power, where the United States is one of several states that can significantly influence global economic developments. On the bottom level we have “transnational” issues where no one country can dominate, or hope to solve problems on its own. Here we see issues like drugs, global warming, aids, criminal activities, environmental pollution, terrorism, etc.

According to Nye the world needs to work together because “the paradox of American power at the end of this millennium is that it is too great to be challenged by any other state, yet not great enough to solve problems such as global terrorism and nuclear proliferation.”

With record budget deficits and OPEC threatening to the dump the dollar as its reserve currency (the 2nd tier), and Bush’s failed policies around the world (the bottom tier), it's hard to disagree with Nye that you can't focus simply on the military, or first tier, level and expect to win. And now, with the U.S. military under strain, we can't be sure about the power and influence the threat of U.S. force used to bring.

Simply put, the idea that the United States can act like past empires – whether it was the British Empire or the Roman Empire – reflects a serious problem of analysis on the part of Team Bush. And it began almost immediately after 9/11, when an unnamed Bush official told reporter Ron Suskind:

We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

This arrogant, insipid, child-like attitude toward the ideas of others tells us that George Bush and his neo-conservative team never believed in understanding issues. Rather, their goal has always been to wield power to shape the world in a way that reflected their stunted vision of reality.

As we have seen in Iraq, that vision was never well thought out. As we are left to “study what [they] do” you can be sure that “history’s actors” will be judged by the “realities” they created. Our problem is that we have to live through their strategic incompetence and the havoc their realities bring us today.

Again, I don't need a Grandmaster to play America's Grand Chessboard. I'd settle for a beginning level tournament player. With Bush, we're not even close.

Iran anyone?

- Mark