Obama's foreign policy

Jackson Diehl has published an article in the Washington Post a few days ago in which he reflects about Obama's foreign policy and titles it " Diplomacy by timetable". He argues that in the President's world, the clock rules all. I will lay out some quotes from this article which merits reflexion.

His conclusion is that the timetables of this administration are disconnected from a strategy. Process is always important to good policy, and yes, the Bush administration sometimes demonstrated what can go wrong when there are no deadlines. Yet in the Obama administration, the timetable is becoming an end in itself. The current Administration's most notable product has been the establishment of deadlines. He argues that the President's biggest achievements so far are not results but the would-be means to deliver them.

He then sets out a number of examples: Iraq was Obama's first timetable. His plan to withdraw troops in 16 months put him into contention in the 2008 Democratic primaries. By the time he took the office as president two years later, Iraq had changed utterly, and Obama's 16 months had come and gone. He then proceeded nevertheless to adopt  a similar, 18-month timetable, for ending US combat operations. He stuck to it despite Iraq's political impasse and it's increasing instability causing some Iraquis to question whether US policy amounts to  anything more than a mere timetable. And next comes the December 2011 date for full withdrawal. If Obama sticks to it, he will put the new US strategic partnership with Iraq at risk, and hand another advantage to Iran.

He then goes on to say that one clock is measuring whether US troops will be ready to begin handing off security to Afghanistan's army by July 2011, when the first withdrawal of American troops is to take place. Another clock faces Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as they try to conclude a framework agreement by next September, when the one year timetable Obama encouraged them to establish will expire. Yet another clock follows Iran's nuclear program. The administration has said that Iran is 2 to 5 years away from producing a nuclear bomb. If serious negotiations with the United States and its Security Council allies do not start soon or if Iran does not take some confidence-building steps away from producing weapons, that time frame will begin to overshadow the sanctions policy.

So, in all the major international issues: Iraq, Iran, the Middle East and Afghanistan, the timetable is becoming an end in itself.

And here comes the damning conclusion: it reflects a president who is fixed on disposing of foreign policy problems and not so much on solving them.