America’s reality check

Dr Maleeha Lodhi :
The crisis over Ukraine has provided a fresh opportunity to President Barack Obama’s domestic detractors to assail him for ‘failing to lead’ and to deploy American power to force the Russian President to retreat. Much of this criticism shows willful ignorance of the limits of US power in a transformed international environment where no single state is able achieve outcomes or prevail over others, even by using overwhelming hard power.
There are several aspects to the criticism being directed at Obama’s ‘failure to act’ by an odd assortment of conservative and liberal commentators in America. First, there is the tone of moral righteousness of their response to Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea. The same people who unquestioningly supported the US invasion of Iraq are voicing this moral indignation. But that irony is lost on them.
These critics are not alone in adopting a posture of moral righteousness. Many Western leaders struck the same note in their reaction to Putin’s move. US Secretary of State John Kerry, for example, declared (addressing the Russian leadership) “you just don’t behave in 19th century fashion, by invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext”. More than irony, this stance was an example of Western doublespeak, coming from the foreign minister of the country that carried out an illegal military intervention in Iraq on the grounds of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
Some conservative American commentators argued Obama’s “weakness” had earned America scorn from its foes and ostensible friends. In an editorial titled ‘Obama’s uncertain trumpet’ the Wall Street Journal accused Obama of “settling for minor sanctions, rhetorical pleading and diplomatic admonitions”, but did not offer any alternative.
The neoconservative American magazine, Weekly Standard, went further. Its editorial accused him of not believing in “an international system in which the American role is to lead”. It said the message Obama was sending to the world is this: “superpower once lived here. No forwarding address”. And it concluded “America can’t be strong with a president committed to weakness”.
But if this criticism only implied that the US should have threatened military action or engaged in muscle flexing, other commentators were more explicit. Writing in Foreign Policy, Leslie Gelb took issue with Obama on his ruling out force over Ukraine. “Diplomatic and economic slaps are not enough” to deter Putin from further encroachment into Ukraine. Gelb advocated a strong “military” response and proposed deploying Patriot missiles, mobilising more air power, and ‘preparing” Ukrainians for guerilla war against an invading Russian force.
Suggestions to project or employ military power seemed disingenuous after a decade of hyper intervention by the US and two long and disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military overreach not only damaged America’s standing but also made the subsequent use of force much harder as these military engagements were widely seen to have failed to achieve their goals and therefore met with strong public disapproval at home.
Those ascribing the erosion of US global influence simply to Obama’s lack of leadership seemed to miss a fundamental point – that the world has changed in very significant ways with America’s unipolar moment having long passed into history. The redistribution of global power has been one of the most consequential developments of this century. Some have characterised this as a G-Zero world, in which no nation on its own or with others can deploy enough power to secure global outcomes or determine the rules of the game.
The dispersal of power and shift in global power from the West to the Rest has resulted in a more complex international landscape in which no country is able to call the shots or impose its will. Although the US remains the world’s dominant power, it is also constrained by an increasingly decentralised international system and the emergence of multipolarity. As Obama recognises, this means the US has to work with other nations and build coalitions to promote its goals.
To ignore this is to fly from reality. Commentators urging Obama to act in a more muscular fashion seem to be living in denial about the complex dynamics shaping the world today. Critics who have been arguing that President Obama’s “weak” conduct is shaping the world’s view of American power have in fact got it backwards. It is the limits on American power imposed by a transformed world that is shaping Obama’s conduct – as well as urging other Western nations to take a cautious approach, relying on diplomacy to avert a bigger crisis over Ukraine.

(Dr Maleeha Lodhi is a former Pakistani ambassador to the US and the UK)