By Clive Crook
Published: November 21 2010 19:36
This weekend’s Nato summit in Lisbon concluded a flurry of top-level international meetings that, from President Barack Obama’s point of view, were frustrating, unproductive, or plain embarrassing. However, his advisers wish you to know that US standing in the world is not the least bit diminished. Really, they say, there is a great deal of misunderstanding about this.
They insist that the global recession, which started as a result of US economic mismanagement, has not lessened American prestige and power. The falling out in the Group of 20 leading nations over macroeconomic co-operation is hardly worth mentioning. Allies’ reluctance to stay engaged in Afghanistan was only to be expected.
Republican efforts on Capitol Hill to block the Start nuclear arms accord with Russia are a temporary setback. As for the Democrats’ drubbing in the midterm elections, which ties the administration’s hands on many issues of international concern, one can make too much of that. Diminished power? Where do people get such ideas?
If ever there were a case of protesting too much, this is it. America’s ability to get its way is in recession. The question is not whether this is true, but how deep and long-lasting the reversal will be. Will US influence bounce back, or has something shifted for good?
The answer is that it will bounce back – but it might be a while, and it will not recover all the way. The recent checks to US power are real, though it is easy to exaggerate them. As in the domestic realm (only more so) Mr Obama’s diplomacy has seemed disappointing partly because too much was expected of it.
Recall his inheritance. The Bush administration laid the US low, say critics, with its misadventure in Iraq and its disdain for soft power. Mr Obama would put this right. His election was greeted rapturously around the world. Finally, a leader other governments could work with. See irresolvable disputes melt in the warmth of his goodwill. Recent disappointments look bad partly because one measures them against absurdly inflated expectations.
In foreign policy, the problem is not that Mr Obama has made big mistakes. More often than not, when he has failed to agree with other governments – for instance, on the need for tougher financial regulation, co-ordinated monetary stimulus, and exchange-rate realignment – he has been in the right. Nonetheless, charm and being right count for little when interests diverge.
That truth is not new, of course, but some of the administration’s other difficulties are. In the midterm elections, many voters hoped to stop what they saw as Mr Obama’s too-ambitious agenda. They may have succeeded too well. In US politics, divided government is not usually fatal to good government; often, just the opposite. But the combination of divided government – a Democrat in the White House, a slender Democratic majority in the Senate, and Republican control of the House – with unprecedented polarisation might mean outright paralysis.
This affects foreign policy directly and indirectly. A brutal instance of the former is the interrupted ratification of the treaty with Russia on nuclear arms. The Republicans’ desire to meddle with, or even abort, the Start accord surprised even some cynics. Officials of previous Republican administrations support the deal. Valuable in itself, it is critical to cementing improved relations with Russia. If Mr Obama cannot rely on Congress to back such agreements, his capacity to negotiate abroad is destroyed.
A broken Congress compromises US diplomacy in subtler ways too. In economic affairs, America’s partners complain that the US demands adjustment everywhere but at home. Rebalancing the global economy requires a plan to curb medium- and long-term US public borrowing. This was already difficult; now, with power in Washington more closely divided and neither side willing to give an inch, it is even harder.
How can a US president call on others to act when his own administration is hobbled? The next round of climate change talks begins in Cancún this Friday. Whatever Mr Obama might promise, his word, until further notice, is worthless. Even on trade policy, where pro-business Republicans might once have backed a Democratic president against his own troops on Capitol Hill, Mr Obama can take nothing for granted. This is a new, more populist Republican party, receptive to protectionist arguments.
Much of this may be temporary. The political and economic cycles will turn. Interests will converge – and when they do, US allies will not merely offer their co-operation, they will ask to be led. But US power is unlikely to recover all the way. Challenging the US presumption of leadership will prove habit-forming, and evolving institutions of global governance, reshaped under the current dispensation of global power, will surely help that process along.
It is harder for the US to bully the G20, for example, and not just because the new group is bigger than its predecessor. Its members’ interests are also less well aligned; and China, Brazil and India are less willing to defer than Japan and the big European powers were in their day. It matters that the character of the G20 is being formed when the US is weakened; rather than later, when more normal conditions prevail.
In recent weeks the US has seen what it means to be merely first among equals. It will take some getting used to.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
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