By Li Hong People's Daily Online
As U.S. President Barrack Obama makes the suppression of Al Qaeda, and repudiation of nuclear weapons proliferation threat top on his foreign policy priority list, he is facing a critical political test: the choice of military or diplomatic means to attain American goals.
Putting his predecessor George W. Bush's overwhelmingly"big stick" hardcore military approach into review -- not necessarily to rest, Obama is seen tilting towards soft-power diplomacy to play the primary role in this increasingly complicated while delicate world. More in the U.S. have come to recognize that"militarization" of U.S. foreign policy in the Bush administration had led it nowhere, as it was bogged down in two bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the meantime, alienated by many of its traditional allies.
The pick of Joseph Biden as Vice President and Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State points to Obama's preference in seeking solutions through persuasion and exerting nuanced pressure below the surface. Biden promised in a major security policy speech earlier in Germany that U.S. will"need to listen to its partners", rather than the old Bush approach that"everything is pre-decided, and should be done the way the White House thinks (likes)".
Hillary Clinton has pledged to restore the State Department's centrality in the making of American foreign policy. She has ever since made three"Super Sub-Secretaries" to handle key concerns – Richard Holbrooke to manage Afghanistan-Pakistan affairs, George Mitchell to administer Arab-Israel negotiations, and Dennis Ross to coordinate Iran policy. All three are relentless, experienced and charismatic mediators and thus foreign policy trouble-shooters.
To prevent Taliban and Al Qaeda from reorganizing and forming a renewed security risk to the United States, Obama is now playing two hands. He has ordered up to 30,000 U.S. reinforcements to Afghanistan -- the NO 1 battle field of his choice to fight terror-- to augment 40,000 American troops already stationed there.
To persuade Pakistan, which, according to mainstream American press, is lurching toward security disorder as rising Taliban fighters have infiltrated across the border, to agree to American demands, Obama has promised an annual $1.5 billion economic aid for the next five years, in addition to huge military assistances. The money for Pakistan is meant in part to help take the heat off of Afghanistan, as Taliban insurgency has been reportedly spreading eastwards from the border, said U.S. diplomats. The White House has admitted that only through long and sometimes expensive diplomatic efforts, could the tensions there be effectively defused.
With regard to Tehran and Pyongyang's nascent nuclear programs, Obama will have to rely more on diplomacy to achieve his goals of non-proliferation and a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. Most diplomats believe, that, only by amassing global leverage on Tehran and Pyongyang, and giving them"meaningful incentives" in return for terminating their nuclear maneuvers, will prove to be the only viable way to resolve the two tricky knots.
In addition, laying out a new approach to U.S. nuclear disarmament policy – such as the latest joint initiative by President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia and Obama to kick off negotiations on further reducing their nuclear warheads and stockpiles – will be more likely to persuade other governments around the world to converge and mete out legally binding global nuclear treaties, and enforce crushing sanctions against those who dare to breach them. The move by the White House and the Kremlin in their pursuit for a new nuclear warheads reduction pact by the end of 2009 has been well received worldwide, including here in Beijing.
As regions of volatility or chaos will be certain to rise on the world geopolitical stage, and as the world's economic downturn is to cascade and metastasize, more diplomacy is needed to assuage global security crises. The former American gunboat policy will prove to be elusive in seeking answers in an increasingly delicate while virulent world.
It is a sad truth that in the eight years since the"9/11" terror attack, the foreign policy of the United States had radiated from the Pentagon, and went overwhelmingly towards military procedures, leaving out the traditional role played by men without guns -- the diplomats – who, for the most part during those years watched from afar. The then famous Bush slogan of"either friend or foe" line-marking estranged many of US allies, and distanced it from potential partners.
As a result, America's engagement with dangerous parts of the world in that time became largely"militarized" – good at projecting American super military force, but, for the most of the time, missing opportunities that might have been better exploited by diplomacy. Not just in Iraq, Afghanistan, but with Tehran and Pyongyang as well.
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