Obama Outlines Goals Tempered by 8 Years of Foreign Policy Lessons
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Version 0 of 1. HANOVER, Germany — The speech that Barack Obama delivered to a sea of Germans in Berlin eight years ago underscored his impatience to change the world. “This is the moment!” Mr. Obama, then a presidential candidate, declared as he pledged to seek “a new dawn” in the Middle East, bring about a planet without nuclear weapons, forge new trade deals, move past a “Cold War mind-set” with Russia and rout terrorist networks. And in a speech in Cairo shortly after he took office, he expressed hope for a new era in the Middle East that would “choose progress over a self-defeating focus on the past.” On Monday, at the conclusion of his trip to the Middle East and Europe, Mr. Obama delivered another address in Germany. This visit, however, was punctuated by little of the soaring eloquence that expressed Mr. Obama’s ambitious foreign policy aspirations. Instead, the president, recognizing the limitations in realizing those aspirations, spoke in more measured tones as he gently urged allies to do more to defend themselves and solve their own problems. Mr. Obama can certainly claim some foreign policy achievements. He restored diplomatic relations with Cuba after more than half a century and concluded a nuclear agreement with Iran. He also largely made good on his 2008 promises to get American troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet as the trip demonstrated, there are situations in which he has accepted a more incremental approach. In Europe, the president pressed for small victories where they could be found. He lent his credibility to Prime Minister David Cameron’s effort to keep Britain in the European Union, and he campaigned for reaching an American-European trade deal, even as he conceded that possible ratification would take more time than he had left in his presidency. In Saudi Arabia, the president sought to reassure an ally that was angered over the nuclear accord and feared an American tilt toward Iran. But he also said that the Gulf countries should rely less on the United States for their security. He suggested to King Salman that Saudi Arabia should consider engaging diplomatically with Iran. And in the speech on Monday, Mr. Obama announced the latest move in his step-by-step approach in Syria, saying he would increase the number of military personnel, including Special Forces, to fight the Islamic State in that country. The president said he would add 250 military personnel in the hopes of cementing what he said was progress in pushing back the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, from territory that it had held. “They’re not going to be leading the fight on the ground,” Mr. Obama said before meeting with the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and Italy to discuss the situation in Syria. “But they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces.” Mr. Obama and his top aides concede that his incremental approach in Syria is unlikely to rapidly “destroy” the Islamic State — certainly not in the nine months that he has left in office. They say it will take many years of steady, concerted action by a coalition of nations to rid the world of the terror groups in Syria and Iraq. “The point that the president made in the Berlin speech is that when the world stands together in collective, multilateral action, we will be able to deal with the challenges that confront us,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, the president’s deputy national security adviser and an architect of his approach. Mr. Rhodes argued that the president’s reluctance to act alone had served him — and the world — well. Actions by coalitions of nations, led by the United States, have helped beat back Ebola, turn the global economy away from the brink of collapse, and reach deals on climate change and Iran’s nuclear program, he said. After Mr. Obama’s nearly eight years in the Oval Office, the 2008 speech in Berlin can be seen as a kind of road map to the foreign policy he sought to put into practice. As he marched toward claiming the White House, he spoke of securing nuclear material, bolstering European defenses, reasserting diplomacy as a centerpiece of American power, closing down unpopular wars and “extending our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world.” Just months after he took office in 2009, that vision of a new kind of foreign policy led the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award Mr. Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. In its citation, the committee said it had sought for 108 years to “stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world’s leading spokesman.” In his acceptance speech, Mr. Obama acknowledged being surprised by the honor because “I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage.” Yet even in the 2008 speech, Mr. Obama recognized that “the road ahead will be long.” And since then, he has increasingly borrowed from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who said the arc of history bent toward justice, to describe the kind of slow progress he wants to make abroad. In the speech on Monday, Mr. Obama said Europe was weakening because the international institutions in which he had expressed so much faith almost a decade ago were under siege — by migrants fleeing regional wars, Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, a slow economic recovery and mistrust among allies. “Dangerous forces do threaten to pull the world backwards, and our progress is not inevitable,” Mr. Obama conceded on Monday. “We are not immune from the forces of change around the world.” Mr. Obama spent much of the European part of his trip urging the British people to vote to remain in the European Union when a referendum is held on June 23. He said repeatedly over the past week that a withdrawal would undercut Britain’s influence and weaken the democratic alliance binding Europe together. In the speech on Monday, Mr. Obama went further, telling the Germans in the audience that they, too, must resist the temptation to go it alone in the fight against the Islamic State, the push for economic security and the need to confront huge new flows of migration. “If we do not solve these problems, you start seeing those who would try to exploit those fears and frustrations and channel them in a destructive way,” Mr. Obama said. “If a unified, peaceful, liberal, pluralistic free-market Europe begins to doubt itself, begins to question the progress that’s been made over the last several decades,” Mr. Obama said, “then we can’t expect the progress that is just now taking hold in many places around the world will continue.” |