Winter is Coming (32 page)

On September 11, 1858, another Illinois politician soon to run for president, Abraham Lincoln, said, “Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere.” Not where it’s convenient. Not in countries lacking large energy reserves and nuclear weapons. Everywhere.

Obama’s biggest applause in Berlin came when he suggested that the unilateralism and military adventurism of the Bush 43 era would come to an end under his presidency. By that point in the campaign no one doubted Obama could deliver a great speech. But the reactions of the Berlin audience, and the US electorate, made it clear it was as much an anti-Bush rally as anything else. In 2008, Americans and the rest of the world were exhausted after two long military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq; campaigns without clear goals or visible finish lines.

To be fair, Obama was representing his constituents. Even the firmest supporters of the Bush 43 freedom agenda understood that their cause was severely damaged by the extraordinary cost and duration of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the never-ending nation building and security operations that followed. America’s human and financial capital had been spent, but even more importantly, so had its political capital.

The deepening catastrophe in Iraq distracted the world’s sole superpower from its wider goals and weakened the United States politically as well as militarily. With US congressional leadership threatening to make the same mistake by failing to see Iraq as only one piece of the puzzle, it was time to return to the basics of strategic planning.

Thirty years as a chess player ingrained in me the importance of never losing sight of the big picture. Paying too much attention to one area of the chessboard can quickly lead to the collapse of your entire position. America and its allies were so focused on Iraq that they were ceding territory all over the map. North Korea got nukes, an arms race erupted in Latin America, and the petro-dictatorships of Russia, Venezuela, and Iran were riding high on the surging price of oil. By 2006, even the vague goals of President Bush’s ambiguous war on terror had been pushed aside by the crisis in Baghdad.

It was time to recognize the failure of America’s post-9/11 foreign policy. Preemptive strikes and deposing dictators may or may not have been a good plan, but at least it was a plan. If you attack Iraq, the potential to go after Iran and Syria must also be on the table. Inconsistency is a strategic deficiency that is nearly always impossible to overcome. The United States found itself supervising a civil war while helplessly making concessions elsewhere. This dire situation was a result of the only thing worse than a failed strategy: the inability to recognize, or to admit to yourself, that a strategy has failed.

Within four years after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, North Korea tested a nuclear weapon. Iran was openly boasting of its uranium enrichment program while pouring money into Hezbollah and Hamas. A resurgent Taliban was on the rise in Afghanistan. Nearly off the radar, Somalia was becoming an al-Qaeda haven. Worst of all, America was failing at its basic mission, the mission at the root of all these engagements: to make its people safer than they were before.

As is often the case, the seeds for this widespread catastrophe were sown in the one real success the West had. The attack on the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan had succeeded so well in its original goal of routing al-Qaeda and its Taliban sponsors that the United States and its allies failed to understand all the reasons why. Almost every player on the world stage benefited from the attack on Afghanistan. The rout of the Sunni Taliban delighted Iran. Russia and China had no love for religious extremism near their borders. India was happy to see the US launch a direct attack on Muslim terrorists.

Only Pakistan was put under uncomfortable pressure, although even there President Musharraf was able to play both sides well enough to appear to be an essential ally to the West while terrorists and arms crossed his borders freely. Musharraf perfected the formula of holding himself up as the last defense against the extremists in order to gain immunity for his dictatorship, a ploy used by many Arab autocrats as well.

Not only was there a confluence of world opinion aided by sympathy for the United States after 9/11, but the proverbial bad guys were undoubtedly bad, and we knew where they were. As subsequent events showed, effectively bombing terrorists is a rare opportunity.

The allies fell victim to what I call the gravity of past success. Learning from our defeats is obvious, but too often we fail to appreciate the reasons for our successes; we take them for granted. The US charged into Iraq without appreciating the far greater difficulty of the postwar task there and how it would be complicated by the increasingly hostile global opinion of America’s military adventures. What would have been relatively easy in 1991-1992 was much harder twelve years later without united global support.

This is the lesson of the initiative. The saying in chess is that if the side that has the initiative—the attacking momentum in the position-fails to use it, then the other side’s counterattack is inevitable and will be very strong. The free world had overwhelming momentum after the fall of the USSR in every conceivable way, especially psychologically. Had the freedom promotion agenda of George W. Bush existed from 1992 to 1999, when the bad guys were already in disarray, it would have had a tremendous positive effect.

By 2008, Obama’s promises to bring the troops home, and keep them home, was only telling the American people (a majority of them, anyway) what they wanted to hear. This of course is a small part of a politician’s job description, but these days it is actually the only relevant part of a candidate’s job description.

There is no doubt the election of Barack Obama as the new president of the United States had a real impact on how many in the rest of the world perceived America. Obama represented a new generation of leadership and he both sounded and looked very different from his predecessors.

In Russia, Obama’s appearance—he became the first black leader of any world power, not just America—got the most attention. His victory marked the end of the view of America still promoted by many in Russia, a line used in the Soviets’ patented what-aboutism to counter accusations of repression. “Ah, but in the US they lynch Negros!” It is practically conventional wisdom, and not just in Russia, that “in America the rich WASPs and Jews exploit the poor Blacks and Latinos.” Suddenly it was as if everyone could see that the world was undeniably round.

The window of opportunity Obama had to take advantage of the world’s curiosity and goodwill was very small. The crises we faced in 2008 were too big to give the new president much of a grace period.

Obama’s other advantage was simply not being George W. Bush who, rightly in some cases and wrongly in others, had come to symbolize every problem anyone had ever had with America, Americans, and American power in the world. The clichés about Bush personally were a bouquet of American stereotypes, the ones much of the world loved to hate: rich, inarticulate, uninterested in the world, stridently religious, and hasty to act. Obama exploded these stereotypes, but as I wrote the day after his victory over McCain, “The world’s multitude of grievances with Bush will quickly be laid on Obama’s doorstep if he fails to back up his inspiring rhetoric with decisive action.”

Even with front-page issues like the financial crisis, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan facing the incoming president, he still had to find the time and the courage to deal with a certain nuclear-armed autocracy that controlled much of the world’s oil and gas. In my article I asked the new president to “make it clear he does not consider the people of Russia to be the enemy of the United States.” As in most authoritarian states, the Putin regime does not represent the interests of a majority of its citizens. (If it did, it wouldn’t have to be authoritarian to stay in power.) Kremlin propaganda works hard to present America as Russia’s adversary. With his fresh start, Obama had the opportunity to strike a blow against that image by speaking out against our dictatorial leader in Russia and making common cause with the people Putin was oppressing.

Of course there were complex issues around how Obama dealt with Russia’s official president, Dmitry Medvedev, and Russia’s real leader, Vladimir Putin. But the central choice was a straightforward one. Obama could treat them like fellow democratic leaders or he could be honest. He could take strength from the fact that he had received nearly 70 million votes while Medvedev had needed only one, that of Putin. Had Obama labeled the Putin dictatorship clearly and openly from the start he might have helped bring hope and change to an entirely different constituency: 140 million Russians.

The first international crisis Obama had to respond to actually came a few months before the election, when Russian and Russian-backed forces in the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia finally succeeded in provoking a shooting war with Georgia. Having prepared for this moment for months, Russian ships blockaded Georgian ports and Russian forces sped into Georgia and occupied several cities. It was far beyond the Kremlin’s claim that they were involved only in enforcing the peace and it looked like Russian forces might go all the way to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.

The initial responses to the violence by the 2008 candidates on August 8 could not have demonstrated their differences more clearly. Obama condemned the violence and pleaded, “Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint.” McCain: “Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory.” After media fallout over Obama’s timid remarks and more evidence that Russia was the aggressor, Obama hastily issued another statement to upgrade his language and condemn Russia’s “aggressive action.”

The differences were dramatic and would only get bigger. As it appeared in
Politico
on August 9, “Obama’s statement put him in line with the White House, the European Union, NATO and a series of European powers, while McCain’s initial statement . . . put him more closely in line with the moral clarity and

American exceptionalism projected by President Bush’s first term.”

Just two days later it was clear that McCain’s moral clarity had been accurate while Obama’s position was embarrassing no matter how “in line” it was with others. Putin issued similar statements calling for both sides to show restraint and cease hostilities while his troops raced into Georgia and provided cover for his South Ossetian allies to wipe out ethnic Georgians from the region. On August 11, both candidates issued longer statements. Obama’s was essentially an admission that he had gotten it wrong the first time, although the friendly media didn’t portray it that way. And even while he did pin the blame on Putin for the escalation, his conclusion was not about what America’s role should be, but Russia’s:

“Let me be clear: we seek a future of cooperative engagement with the Russian government, and friendship with the Russian people. We want Russia to play its rightful role as a great nation, but with that role comes the responsibility to act as a force for progress in this new century, not regression to the conflicts of the past. That is why the United States and the international community must speak out strongly against this aggression, and for peace and security.”

Incredible. And remember, this was the
tougher
statement he made after being bashed as soft on Russia for two days. Russia’s “rightful role as a great nation”? Putin was rolling tanks through a European country as Obama spoke in Hawaii about a KGB dictator acting as a force for progress.

John McCain had long been a staunch supporter of Georgia’s shift toward Western-leaning democracy during and after the Rose Revolution in 2003 and the election of US-educated reformer Mikheil Saakashvili to the presidency. The Republican nominee minced no words in his more extensive August 11 statement, embracing the opportunity to flex his foreign policy credentials and to use the conflict to expose Obama’s conciliatory approach toward foreign policy as naiveté. McCain did an excellent job putting Georgia into the big picture of why the United States should care about this tiny country in the Caucasus:

“The implications of Russian actions go beyond their threat to the territorial integrity and independence of a democratic Georgia. Russia is using violence against Georgia in part to intimidate other neighbors such as Ukraine for choosing to associate with the West and adhering to Western political and economic values. As such, the fate of Georgia should be of grave concern to Americans and all people who welcome the end of a divided Europe and the independence of former Soviet Republics.”

McCain also correctly diagnosed the Russian invasion as a consequence of Western hesitancy: “NATO’s decision to withhold a membership action plan for Georgia might have been viewed as a green light by Russia for its attacks on Georgia, and I urge the NATO allies to revisit the decision.” McCain finished his statement powerfully: “We must remind Russia’s leaders that the benefits they enjoy from being part of the civilized world require their respect for the values, stability and peace of the world. World history is often made in remote, obscure countries. It is being made in Georgia today. It is the responsibility of the leading nations of the world to ensure that history continues to be a record of humanity’s progress toward respecting the values and security of free people.”

Can anyone read those statements and not believe that the world would be a safer, more democratic place today had John McCain been elected three months later? Or doubt that Obama’s evident timidity encouraged Putin’s attack on Ukraine? Of course we have no way of knowing, but I would be willing to bet anything that in the universe where McCain is president, Putin does not invade Ukraine. McCain is often painted as a warmonger in the United States, but calls for friendship don’t deter someone like Vladimir Putin, they encourage him. It’s a tragedy that thousands of Ukrainians, as well as many Russians, are suffering today because the Obama administration failed to learn that lesson.