OBAMA: TWO YEARS TO CLEAN THE FOREIGN POLICY STABLES OUT. Part II

                                  4. Settlement of the Middle-Eastern conflict.

Cool-down of American-Israeli relationship was nearly the most dangerous consequence of Barack Obama’s coming to power. No matter how paradoxically it may sound, but Israel is every bit as important to America, as America is important to Israel. Republicans have historically supported Israel with a truly religious zealous fervor and — believe it or not — but neo-con ideology, confessed by the GOP is to a considerable degree based on the literal interpretation of some Biblical excerpts. According to them, second coming of Jesus Christ and the Judgment Day may only come when Judaic Jerusalem Temple (also called the Third Temple) would be completely restored. Place where it should be rebuilt is the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. As the saying goes, that’s where the shoe pinches. Without going deep into historical and religious details, we have all the reasons to state that Temple Mount is an equally sacred place for all three Avraam’s religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). That is why Palestinians demand to give Jerusalem back to them, which is also why Israel has no intention to do so and which is exactly why American neo-cons are supporting the Jewish state.

We may just remember the Barack Obama’s origin, quite extraordinary for the U.S. President — whose father professed Islam — to understand the ticklish situation that Obama fetched himself in, when it comes to the issue of the Middle-Eastern conflict settlement. Political pragmatism — so characteristic of Obama — contradicts the American political tradition here. Active GOP criticism of Obama — who were spreading the gossips about allegedly Muslim confession of Barack Obama during the election race — just adds more fuel to the fire.

Having understood that Obama’s Middle-Eastern policy would much more reasonable than the Bush-Cheney’s one, Israel started to prepare for the future complications with its main ally in advance. Firstly, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu decided to hurry up the construction of new Jewish settlements in the Eastern Jerusalem. He was seemingly guided by the principle of improving his future negotiation points by increasing his activity and thus attempting to keep status quo later on. When Vice-President Joe Biden arrived to Israel in March of 2010 bringing the good news about unabated American support for Israel, he was greeted with this news — quite doleful in terms of Middle-Eastern peace.

Mocking excuses of Netanyahu could have been dubbed an outright clownery — he allegedly was unaware of Israeli Ministry of Interior decree regarding the construction of new settlements. Netanyahu explained distinguished guest that Eliyahu “Eli” Yishai — Israeli Minister of Internal Affairs — is a member of ultra-religious Shas party, while Prime-Minister himself heads the Likud party. So Eli acted willfully. We may only remind you that the disobeyer still occupies his post. 

Obama is perfectly aware that the USA are interested in revival of the peaceful settlement of Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which undermines strategic American positions in the region, promotes anti-American sentiments and embitters Arabic allies of the United States. Bush’s unreserved support of Israel didn’t bring America any political profits. Quite the contrary, having pursued Israeli interests in spite of their own, the USA turned to be unable to keep Israel from actions, which directly damaged American strategic interests. Washington needs peace in the Middle East — it wouldn’t endure the third war against Islam world. Iraq and Afghanistan taught America to be restrained. We may just look at today’s efforts of Obama’s administration, holding Israel from the air strikes against Iranian nuclear objects.

Accusing Obama of anti-Israel sentiments, Israelis are attempting to follow their own line of behavior, expanding the number of countries, involved into the Middle-Eastern peace process. Besides others, they actively involve Russia into dealing with regional problems — which however are the issues of global importance. Only time will show us, how long Obama would be able to resist the Israeli lobby inside of America and will he be able to at least soften its tensions with Iran without losing his face or betraying his principles of control over the Iranian nuclear program. For today we may only state that he steadfastly conducted the policy of pacifying the Middle East. It’s hard to predict whether he would succeed in that or not. It seems, that Palestinian-Israeli-Iranian knot is to be untied by few more generations of politicians, involved in this process.

                                                    5. European policy of Barack Obama.

European Union is, probably, the only natural ally of the United States. Europe share American political and universal human values, history of the 20^th century wars where they’ve been fighting alongside and the need to keep each other’s economic interests in mind. In that direction of American foreign policy, Obama inherited not the best possible legacy, too. We may just recollect the European rebellion against the occupation of Iraq that split Europe into the Old and New ones.

Obama’s coming to power was greeted with joy in the Western Europe and we have to say that this enthusiasm is still alive today. Europeans are apparently glad to overcome the value gap between the EU and the USA, which took shape during the Bush-Cheney era. Difference between post-liberal EU humanism and neo-conservatism of Bush administration was far too big. Now that difference is not that glaring and Europeans are glad to know that. They’re also satisfied with the fact that the USA gave up the idea of “great geopolitical shocks” at the continent, having stopped their attempts to bring Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO, that they’ve reconsidered the concept of European BMD system. However, old allies’ meat, is the new allies’ poison and the New European countries still looks at this reset with a mortification and misunderstanding

Being the artificially created “subject” of big politics, new EU and NATO members are in the completely different geopolitical league than major Western European countries. However during the 2000s America delegated them with the “subjected sovereignty”, having turned them into some sort of Bush-Cheney’s Trojan horse — German and French media have been gloatingly mocking at that all the time.

Eight years is a considerable term for the world politics and during this time new members believed that “sovereignty” to be their integral part themselves. With Obama’s coming to power they had to face tough reality. Here comes the stress, accompanied by neurotic symptoms.

Resentment of “new democracies” that fetched themselves in a frankly speaking, stupid situation, finds response in the camp of Obama’s opponents in America. Rights accuse President of “inability to keenly respond to Eastern-European demands”, “loss of interest for protection of humanitarian values”, which inevitably hurts the “cordial relationship with the Eastern Europe”.

The fact that domestic Obama’s opponents — the Republicans — are continuously praising the Western European leaders also has its impact on their relations. For example, influential Foreign Policy journal — via its columnist David Rothkopf — dubbed British Prime Minister David Cameron to be the “new political mouthpiece” of America, while French President Nicolas Sarkozy was named the new icon of bold political approach and sincerity in the field of corporate interests lobbying. For justice sake we should note though, that Obama actually improved his relationship with Europe by his very appearance in the Oval Cabinet of the White House — Bush, after all, became a terrible pain in the neck for everyone. In the next two years of his presidency we’re to figure out, whether Obama will be able to use his reformatory and liberal image in order to reach some important agreements with Europe.

6. Relationship with Russia.

So far, this has been the most successful (and the best-known in Russia) part of Obama’s foreign policy. START was signed and ratified. There were certain variant readings regarding the BMD system of course, but it’s something at least. Agreement — unconditionally advantageous for both sides — was finally reached and we can’t underestimate Obama’s contribution to that. Whatever the further political destiny of Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama may be, world would remember that despite the long and winding road to this treaty, it were them who managed to walk it until the end. Actually Obama happened to have complicated relations with the foreign leaders. Leading “Washington Post” observer Jackson Diehl questioned the closest President’s aides and figured out that top-3 world leaders whom Obama sympathizes are: 1. Nicolas Sarkozy. 2. Angela Merkel. 3. Dmitry Medvedev.

Numerous analysts forecasted that having inherited economic recession, Obama would be forced to focus on the domestic problems and pay much less attention to the foreign policy. That turned out to be true and certain reduction of U.S. activity on many essentially important directions of global security actually took place. However, that wasn’t quite so with Russia. Having started from an unfortunate misspelling (“overload”) on a red button, presented to Russian leader, reset of the Russo-American relationship is actually coming true. The first and utmost important victory — START — is achieved. The main thing now is not to comfort ourselves with this success, but rather keep purposefully and methodically looking for points where Russian and American interests coincide, bring the already existing projects to life and carefully listen to each other.