As President Obama basks in the glow of his Nobel Peace Prize, many of the usual suspects are complaining that he hasn’t done enough to earn it.
How much has really changed in the world of American foreign policy since President Obama took the oath?
One place to start thinking about this question might be something Steve Clemons pointed out yesterday on The Washington Note: that General Stanley McChrystal has given a live interview to Al-Jazeera, the controversial Arab language television news network whose coverage frequently infuriated the Bush administration.
Steve, a critic of the Afghan policy proposed by General McChrystal and largely adopted by President Obama, is right to point to this interview as a sign not only of confidence but of the administration’s determination to get its message across more effectively than in the past.
This is not as much of a departure as many think. High ranking Bush administration officials also appeared on Al-Jazeera. As early as October 16, 2001, Condoleezza Rice (then National Security Advisor) gave the network an interview. For the transcript of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Al-Jazeera interview that same month. Interestingly, at that time, both Rumsfeld and Rice were explaining an American decision to send troops to Afghanistan — the same subject McChrystal discussed eight years later.
Relations between the Bush administration and Al-Jazeera were already tense; the network quickly became Osama Bin Laden’s favorite channel for distributing videos. In November of 2001, the network’s bureau in Kabul was hit by an American missile. The administration responded that the building destroyed was an Al-Qaeda facility. In April of 2003, another Al-Jazeera facility was destroyed by American missiles, this time in Baghdad. In his 2004 State of the Union address, President Bush referred to the network as a source of “hateful propaganda.” In July of that year the Democrats took down Al-Jazeera’s banner during the convention in which Senators John Kerry and John Edwards received the party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominations. (For a time-line of the relationship through 2006, see this report from the Pew Research Center. )
Both Al-Jazeera and the Democrats have changed since 2004 and we are back to the halcyon days of 2001 as administration officials explain their Afghanistan military policy to skeptical Al-Jazeera interviewers. Given the history, I can’t be quite as excited as Steve about this development, but I agree with him that it is the right thing for the administration to do. Responsible officials should reach out to important audiences, even if the medium through which one can reach them is a hostile one. That is especially true when the program format, like an interview show, allows officials to state their case fully. (For the same reason, I am glad that Obama administration officials continue to appear on Fox News; it makes no sense whatever to write off the Fox audience because the network is hostile.)
In any case, from an American point of view, the rise of Al-Jazeera and other satellite news networks in the Arab world has to be considered a good thing, however unpleasant some of the coverage may be. The Bush administration got many things wrong about the Middle East, but it was right to believe that over the long haul the political awakening of the Arab people and the rise of free political discourse among Arabs is necessary and vital if Arabs are to find their place in the modern world.
Ironically, some of the Obama administration’s greatest successes are coming where, thanks in part to the charisma and sincerity of the President, it has been able to implement strategies that the Bush people only talked about. President Obama is as committed to Israel’s security as Bush was; he is fighting the same two wars in the Middle East that Bush fought. He is as determined to destroy Al-Qaeda as Bush was, and he is increasing the American commitment to a war that Bush was unable to win.
Yet Obama can do all this and still reach out to the Islamic world. Bush gets shoes thrown in his face, Obama gets the Peace Prize while following Bush’s withdrawal plan in Iraq and escalating Bush’s war in Afghanistan.
Some of this is due to changes in the Arab and Islamic worlds. Years of mindless violence have turned public opinion against Al-Qaeda and its offshoots in many countries. Yet even President Obama’s harshest critics should acknowledge that he has transformed the emotional tone of America’s relationship with much of the world. And he has done that while consistently making the policy choices that reflect American interests, rather than sacrificing the national interest in a quest for popularity abroad.
Obama’s success, limited but real, in rebooting the world’s image of the United States does not just serve as an effective critique of the Bush administration’s lousy diplomatic stance. It also refutes those who said that it was the substance of the Bush policies rather than the style that created the rift between the United States and so much of the world. It turns out that the United States can fight two wars in the Middle East while supporting Israel, nagging its NATO allies for more troops, and coordinating a global counterinsurgency and counterterrorism effort — and watch its global popularity ratings rise.
Bush’s critics used to dismiss his efforts to improve the administration’s diplomatic efforts as ‘putting lipstick on a pig.’ The underlying policies were so ugly, the argument ran, that no effort could mitigate the catastrophic consequences for America’s global image.
Obama, it turns out, is a masterly make-up artist. It wasn’t just the lipstick, of course. It was more of a makeover. The pig has been bathed and scrubbed and is taking a steady diet of prescription-strength breath mints. The new administration quickly and correctly identified certain features of American policy that had become so offensive that change was urgently needed. Guantanamo is being closed. The rhetoric has changed. But these represent more nips and tucks than radical surgery — botox for the pig, not a face transplant. The pig has been to charm school.
This all needed to happen and I am very glad that it did. I’m not sure that this achievement alone justifies President Obama’s Peace Prize, but it is a real accomplishment and one that Americans should both be grateful for and take pride in.
Once when the annual list of MacArthur Foundation ‘genius’ awards came out, I remember complaining to a friend that one of the people who got the award was an artist whose work seemed to consist of putting found garbage on a tray and calling it art. “How can they give him a genius award for that?” I asked.
The friend looked at me scornfully. “What are you talking about?” he said. “Anybody who can convince a foundation board to give him half a million dollars for putting trash on a tray is obviously a genius. Could you do it?”
Well, no, I had to admit. So if Obama can get the Nobel Peace Prize for following a foreign policy that is strategically rather close to George Bush’s, maybe we should just call him a genius and shut up.