What America has lost under Obama - MICHAEL YOUNG- THE DAILY STAR

 even years into President Barack Obama’s presidency, we now understand what his “political realism” was all about. Recall that Obama came into office positioning himself as a foreign policy realist, against the neoconservatives who had pursued a wild notion that they might be able to transform the Middle East and make it more democratic.

In fact the neocons were less naïve than that, but as democracy in the Arab world became an aim of President George W. Bush, they had to go along with it. Obama portrayed himself as opposed to such idealism. For him foreign policy was not about moral aims, but political power and interests. In the words of the late realist political scientist Hans Morgenthau, “international politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power.” So, realism was the vaguely understood term Obama used to set himself off from the neocons.

But has Obama lived up to his self-description? In his zeal to withdraw from the Middle East, the U.S. president has allowed wide spaces for his adversaries to expand their own power in the region, at America’s expense. From the dominant actor in the Arab world, the United States has become, today, largely mistrusted, its influence over its regional allies having greatly declined.

In fact the only part of realism to which Obama has adhered is its amorality and unresponsiveness to human suffering. The administration’s performance in Syria is a good example. For the past five years the carnage in the country has been indescribable. Nearly half the Syrian population has been displaced, whether inside Syria or to neighboring countries. Yet the U.S. has remained unmoved, deploying none of the moral outrage it did, for instance, during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.

On the contrary, the Syrian victims have been widely regarded in the West as threats. The Obama administration not only has failed to help alleviate their misery, it has sided with the forces compounding it – even if it would hypocritically deny this. Obama has condemned the Republican front-runners, but was a prime model for their self-centeredness and “America First” attitudes.

In fact, as much as Obama may be viewed as a failure by people around the world, Americans have a very different reading. There are almost no internationalist impulses left in the U.S. these days. Defending the idea that politics must advance universal values – a cornerstone of foreign affairs during the 1990s – will invite abuse and protests that the country cannot resolve all global problems.

This knee-jerk minimalism appears to be a consequence of the financial crisis of 2008. When people become economically vulnerable, their default approach is to focus on their own affairs. The same holds true for European societies. In that sense we are paying the price for Bush’s interventionism. Many Americans associate his interventionism with their present economic distress, explaining their revulsion toward being proactive overseas.

However, through this attitude the U.S. has lost a part of itself. If the platforms of the presidential candidates are anything to go by, the country is becoming increasingly intolerant, and in the most disagreeable of ways. Intolerance coupled with widespread ignorance makes for a very ugly picture, and from a distance the America we are seeing today is a remarkably ugly place.

The debate over the decline of the American empire is inconclusive, so complex are the factors determining decline. Yet an essential feature of any empire is the popular sense of confidence and purposefulness it generates, a feeling that one can achieve what others cannot. America is still strong, but it is without self-assurance, its mood often being expressed best by a president who, from the day he took office, tended far more to explain what America could not do than emphasize what it could.

This mindset was toxic, so that the Obama administration effectively neutralized itself in many situations. Compare this to Russia, at best a second-rate power facing major economic challenges. Vladimir Putin has projected a very different image, exploiting American indecisiveness and angst at every turn. There is little to admire in the man, but in his relentless efforts to accumulate power and deny it to his adversaries, the Russian president has been far more of a realist than Obama.

If this is the America that Americans want, fine. If the future of the country is to be determined by a vulgar circus performer with his own reality show, or a handful of bigoted evangelists, why not? Obama has deadened America, dividing it and frequently persuading his countrymen that the world outside is a boundless headache. The president has so convinced himself and his people that the country is justified in being unambitious that, in its foreign affairs, it has become uninspiring, passive and uncaring.

There is a price to pay for such mediocrity. And it is being felt in the one place that Obama had claimed as his own, namely the defense of American power. That is, after all, what being a realist is about. Yet given his shoddy performance until now perhaps the president is not a realist after all, just someone out to differentiate himself from his predecessor. Neither here nor there, that is the reality of Barack Obama, America’s cipher.