Restoring American Supremacy

America may have shed the illusion that it is an omnipotent power, but that is no reason to conclude that its influence cannot be revived.

Dov S. Zakheim

February 26, 2015

PRESIDENT BARACK Obama rounded the bend into his final lap in office with the clear objective of subordinating foreign affairs to his domestic legacy. Given what he can only view as favorable developments—a drop in oil prices, jobs growth and low inflation—Obama will be even less inclined to allow foreign concerns to impinge on his agenda over the next two years. This approach is understandable, convenient—and unfortunate.

Obama’s approach is rooted in a defensive crouch that sees Afghanistan and Iraq as the new lodestars of American foreign policy. Things certainly went badly wrong in both countries. But what went awry does not carry the implication that America should casually emasculate itself, substituting passivity for overreach. Put bluntly, the lessons that Obama drew from Afghanistan and Iraq were scarcely the product of agonized meditations; rather, they were complacent ones that ratified his conviction that America habitually does more damage when it intervenes abroad than when it remains aloof.

Obama clearly prefers to maintain his long-standing policy of sidestepping military commitments—other than to fight the Ebola virus—while seeking to negotiate agreements with Iran and between Israel and the Palestinians. He would maintain, but not intensify, sanctions imposed on Russia; cut a deal with Iran or punt the nuclear matter to the next administration; go slow on arming the Syrian opposition while avoiding any commitment of land forces to the ongoing Middle Eastern wars; complete the withdrawal of all American combat troops from Afghanistan; make much of his “pivot” to Asia; and trumpet his latest initiative, the agreement to normalize relations with Cuba. Unfortunately, the international security environment will continue to demand both his attention and his active participation, whether he likes it or not. What America therefore requires is something much more ambitious—a program of renewal that ensures military, political and diplomatic dominance.

 

AMERICA’S REORIENTATION must start with its Russia policy. Not since the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia had one European nation invaded another until Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. By then Georgia had already effectively lost some 17 percent of its territory to Russia in the form of the puppet states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which had declared their independence in the early 1990s and had since depended on Russian military and economic support. Vladimir Putin formally recognized both states in the aftermath of the war. Putin also supported two other rebel regions, Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, and Transnistria, which declared its independence from Moldova in 1990. Yet no action Putin had taken was as blatant as his annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and his not-so-secret invasion of eastern Ukraine one month later. There are now two puppet “people’s republics” beholden to Russia, Lugansk and Donetsk, both of which have held out against the Ukrainian armed forces thanks to arms and aid furnished by the Kremlin.