http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-16/how-obama-divides-and-conquers/full/How Obama Divides—and Conquers
by Michael Fullilove
The same diplomatic velvet glove that has flummoxed leaders from Cuba to Al Qaeda, reports Michael Fullilove, has also sown confusion among his conservative critics.
Barack Obama has gotten off to a remarkably sure-footed start on foreign policy. There is the pragmatism of his policies on Iraq and Afghanistan, in which he has managed, so far, to square his campaign promises with the advice of his military commanders; the liberalism of his early moves on detainee treatment and nuclear disarmament; and the ambition of his efforts on public diplomacy and Middle East peace.
The real measure of his success, however, is the confusion of his enemies. Thus al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, alarmed by Obama’s adroitness in reaching out to Muslims, has had to resort to casting racial epithets at America’s first black president. Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, on the other hand, has taken a different approach. At the Summit of the Americas last month, a blushing Chávez told Obama “I want to be your friend,” and gave him a book inscribed: “For Obama with affection.”
Even the Castro brothers are bickering over Obama, with Raúl saying that “everything” was on the table for negotiation, including human rights and political prisoners, and Fidel then claiming that the media had “misinterpreted” Raúl’s statement.
A similar schism has appeared among American foreign-policy conservatives. The provisional wing of the conservative movement has criticized Obama for being so different from George W. Bush—for being weak, bloodless, and un-American. Bloggers who did not seem to worry about President Bush holding hands with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia went apoplectic at the sight of President Obama apparently bowing to him. Karl Rove has criticized Obama for going abroad and “confessing our sins.” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer has accused the president of showing “disdain… for his own country while on foreign soil, acting the philosopher king who hovers above the fray mediating between his renegade homeland and an otherwise warm and welcoming world.”
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You can hardly blame American foreign policy-conservatives for feeling a little discombobulated. It was one thing when their policy prescriptions were unpopular abroad, but in recent years they were also rejected by the American people and even, in his final years in office, by President Bush himself.
For some of these conservatives, there must be an End of Days feeling to the present moment. In addition to war, earthquakes, and pestilence, we now have the astonishing sight of Dick Cheney—the most secretive vice president in history—calling for the release of memos detailing the intelligence fruits of the Bush administration’s harsh detainee-interrogation techniques.
When Dick Cheney is arguing in favor of governmental transparency, it’s clear that Barack Obama has really gotten into his opponents’ heads.
Michael Fullilove is director of the global issues program at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, and a nonresident senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
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