Abstract
Under President Obama, American foreign policy towards the conflict in the Middle East, and in particular, its position on Israel, has shifted. In contrast to Bush's pursuit of ‘legitimacy’, Obama is seeking to implement a foreign policy of multilateralist ‘engagement’, regardless of the dubious reputation of some of the states involved. When applying this policy to Israel, the approach of the US has become ‘Europeanised’ and less adamant about the fact that by supporting Israel, the interests of the West are also supported. However, taking this approach will only result in the legitimisation of Europe's worst instincts on this matter and thus further exasperate the situation in the Middle East.
If an American President had ever wanted to demonstrate the moral superiority of US foreign policy over that of its transatlantic allies in Europe, there was always one issue he could point to that would prove his point beyond doubt. In a Middle East conflict pitting more than a billion Muslims against five million Jews, pitting oil-rich autocracies against a largely resourceless democracy, pitting almost five dozen votes in the United Nations General Assembly against just one, America would tell ‘realist’ Europe to go hang. Principle mattered more than short-term expediency. Democratic Israel was America's friend, and behind democratic Israel America would forever stand.
How distant that vision now looks. For the first time in living memory, an American President stands accused (in Israel and in the United States) of selling American principles on Israel in order to purchase the goodwill of Israel's manifold enemies. The first ‘post-American’ President has shown himself to have ‘post-American’ (or pre-American?) values. Ironically, given President Obama's apparent indifference to the Europeans, it is precisely this alleged ‘Europeanisation’ of his approach to the Middle East that has raised alarm bells. Appeasement is now in vogue. And if sacrificing the safety and security of one small ally in a tiny corner of the Middle East is the price of regaining American popularity in a hostile Muslim world, that, Obama believes, is a price worth paying.
But is this characterisation fair? Has there really been a fundamental shift in US Middle East policy under Obama along European lines? Is the White House nowadays occupied by a man who really would sell Israel out if he thought it would help his broader aims? And what are those broader aims anyway? How does the conflict between Israel, the Palestinians and the broader Muslim world fit into Barack Obama's world view? Let us look at those questions in reverse order.
Rights and wrongs: Obama and the world
If one wanted an illustration of how Barack Obama views the world, and especially the weight he attaches to human rights and democracy over other considerations, one might usefully start with his approach to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Consider first the approach of his predecessor. The Bush administration, it will be recalled, had boycotted the Council (called the United Nations Commission on Human Rights until 2006) entirely. Opposing the Obama administration's decision to rejoin in May 2009, President Bush's ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, expressed the previous administration's feelings about the UNHRC in characteristically flamboyant and unambiguous terms: ‘This is like getting on board the Titanic after it's hit the iceberg,’ he said. ‘It legitimises something that doesn't deserve legitimacy.’ [2] Contrast that world view with the one expressed by Obama's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who heralded the move as being part of ‘a new era of engagement’ in American foreign policy: ‘With others, we will engage in the work of improving the U.N. human rights system to advance the vision of the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights,’ she said proudly [2].
The contrasting lexicon says it all. For the Bush team, it was all about ‘legitimacy'—a human rights body presided over by the likes of China and Saudi Arabia had none. For the Obama administration it is all about ‘engagement'— ‘legitimacy’ or principle comes second (if anywhere); this is a party and we want to be invited no matter how objectionable the hosts might be.
Out of that one early instance of the Obama administration's policymaking, one can draw a broader picture of the way Obama sees the world and of how a country such as Israel fits into it. If ‘engagement’ rather than ‘legitimacy’ is the order of the day, then why not press the ‘reset button’ with Russia, while casting aside loyal allies in Eastern Europe? [5] If it is more important to engage with people, however grotesque they may be, than not to engage with them, then why not bow at a 90-degree angle to a Saudi leader whose underlings oppress women, imprison gays and publicly behead apostates from Islam? [7] If building bridges is more important than building democracy, why not go to Strasbourg, as Obama did in April 2009, and demean his own country by calling its approach to Europe ‘arrogant’, even though the majority of EU states actually supported President Bush's supposedly ‘arrogant’ decision to invade Iraq? [1] And if one really wants to engage with the rest of the world, why not foment conflict with Israel, as the administration did amid Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Jerusalem in March 2009 over a bureaucratic faux pas on a settlement announcement while remaining silent over the Palestinian Authority's simultaneous decision to honour the worst terrorist atrocity ever perpetrated inside Israel (the 1978 bus massacres which left 38 dead including 13 children) by naming a central square in Ramallah after its perpetrator, Dalal Mughrabi?
The list could go on and on. But the picture is surely clear. A thoroughgoing commitment to multilateralist ‘engagement’ at the expense of upholding democratic values and the allies who embody them is a centrepiece of the Obama world view, which in these respects is indeed quintessentially ‘European’. The fact that relations with Israel—perhaps the single most unpopular country in the world—have suffered as a consequence should surprise nobody.
The limits of the Presidency limit ‘Europeanisation’
And yet the President of the United States is not quite the government of the United States. He is not alone in wielding power in Washington, and he does not operate in a vacuum. However ‘European’, so to speak, Obama's instincts on foreign policy are in general and on Israel in particular, the practical expression of those instincts still exhibits marked contrasts with European realities. Return for a moment to the United Nations Human Rights Council. Obama may have been ‘European’ enough to join such a sordid institution. But as a member, his administration's voting record has had ‘made in America’ stamped all over it. The differing approach to the Goldstone Report—which castigated Israel over Operation Cast Lead in Gaza—tells us much. When the Goldstone Report came to the UNHRC for approval on 16 October 2009 the voting was as follows: 25 in favour, 6 against, 11 abstaining and the rest not voting [4]. Leading the opponents of the resolution was none other than Barack Obama's United States, which in this instance was joined by Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine. In other words, only 4 out of 27 European Union countries could summon up the will to oppose the likes of Saudi Arabia, China and Cuba, who were among the supporters of the resolution.
It got worse as the report progressed through the General Assembly. In the first vote, Britain and France absented themselves [3]. In the second they abstained. By the time of the third vote they were enthusiastically joining forces with some of the world's cruellest dictatorships to vote in favour of extending the timeline for Israel to cooperate with the UN in investigating the Report's conclusions. All the while the United States remained defiant in voting against it. Why? Because Obama is less dismissive of human rights and of a decent and reasonable approach to Israel than has been suggested? Believe that if you want to. Here is another explanation. The day before the second UN vote, the US Congress passed a resolution deriding the Goldstone Report as ‘biased and unworthy of further consideration’. It was passed by 344 votes to 36. That's not far off 10 to 1, and it includes the vast majority of Congressional Democrats [3].
The point should be clear. Obama's instincts are one thing, but US foreign policy is sometimes another. Whatever Obama would like to do, there are clear limits on what he can do, and those limits are set by a broader governmental establishment and an even broader political culture in which support for Israel remains robust. Barack Obama's approach may well be ‘European’, but he is the President of the US, not Europe.
Obama's rhetoric is harsher than his policy
What this means in practice is that there would be a high price to pay for inaugurating a change in the American approach to Israel that went beyond rhetoric. In the long run-up to the next presidential elections Obama can ill afford to alienate large sections of his Democrat voter base or Democrats in Congress—something he would clearly risk should he adopt a radically hostile stance against Israel.
Now, this is not to say that rhetoric is unimportant. Indeed, it is eminently arguable that by creating the impression that the US stands further away from Israel than at any time in recent history Obama has made hardliners in the Palestinian camp and beyond less rather than more likely to compromise. If Palestinian hardliners believe that Obama will lean on the Israelis whenever peace talks run into trouble, they are that much more likely to make bolder demands so as to maximise their gains in any putative peace deal. Similarly, if groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas feel that even the US is turning away from Israel, they are hardly likely to see this as the time to lay down their weapons or moderate their agendas. On the contrary, the risk is that they will interpret Obama's rhetoric on Israel and the Middle East as a sign of their opponent's vulnerability. Why give up the struggle, just as it is yielding results?
In a world where perceptions influence actions it is always important not to lose sight of rhetoric's significance or of the consequences that can ensue from it. In this respect, Obama's foreign policy towards the Middle East is undoubtedly ‘Europeanised’, and is just as irresponsible for that. Nonetheless, rhetoric is not quite policy, and in considering the manner in which contemporary Europe and the contemporary US actually act towards Israel one can see that stark differences remain.
Sharply differing voting patterns at the United Nations have already been touched upon. But there are many other indicators to take account of. Compare and contrast, by way of illustration, British realities concerning Israel and American realities. Consider that Britain in 2009 imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel in protest at Operation Cast Lead. Following last year's spat with the Israeli government, Secretary of State Clinton, by contrast, pledged America's enduring commitment to giving the Israeli military a permanent ‘technological edge’ over its rivals and enemies. Neither Britain nor any other European country would ever entertain such a notion.
Also, while Obama had even made a trip to Israel before he became President (and plans another one next year) the British head of state, the Queen, has been banned from visiting Israel since the day she came to the throne. And this is part and parcel of a Royal boycott imposed by the Foreign Office against Israel since the Jewish state's re-establishment in 1948.
Consider too the enduring reality that Britain has allowed its courts to accept pleas by Palestinians and their supporters made under universal jurisdiction laws that have prevented dozens of Israeli generals and politicians from travelling to Britain for fear of being arrested on ‘war crimes’ charges. Former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is the most celebrated example. There is indeed talk of changing the laws in Britain to end this state of affairs. Nonetheless, the very fact that it could have arisen in the first place speaks to a degree of political and societal hostility to the Jewish state that is still largely absent across the Atlantic. To underline the point, the contrast here is not merely between the US and Europe, it is between Barack Obama's US and Europe.
In sum, then, Obama may embody appeasement-minded Europe by conviction, but the realities of American political culture will most likely forestall any American aping of European policies in practice, just as they have hitherto done with reference to behaviour in the United Nations and as illustrated in the contrasting political realities noted above between Great Britain (and by extension Europe) and the US.
The ‘Obamification’ of Europe?
This is all very well, one might retort, yet the President of the United States retains a leadership role in the Free World. He and his administration's pronouncement on Israel and the Middle East set the tone for a broader Western discourse which may ultimately affect policy elsewhere. While Obama may be constrained in his own policy choices, Europeans may take his cue to adopt ever-harsher policies of their own against Israel. A Europe which has long adopted a hostile posture towards Israel due to energy security considerations, due to diplomatic calculations—the numbers game where it is simply easier get things done on the international stage by ingratiating oneself with the anti-Israeli bloc of nations—due to fears over a growing domestic Muslim population which is deeply hostile to Israel and due to historic sympathies with Palestinians and other Arabs as against historic prejudices against the Jews and their right to self-determination: such a Europe may now feel emboldened to go further.
It is impossible to prove the point with any certainty. But enlightened speculation based on a plausible reading of what is now going on in Europe may take us some way towards it. One only need look at the way influential commentators in Europe now talk about the conflict and Obama's influence on it. For example, as early as February 2009, Britain's Guardian newspaper—Europe's leading leftist media outlet and the house journal of the BBC, the world's most powerful media outlet— gleefully opined thus in an editorial about Obama and Israel:
The United States may … be approaching the point where it begins to see Israel as a strategic liability, or at least a problem, rather than an asset. This is not to say that the commitment to Israel's right to exist will waver, nor that some crude transfer of allegiance is about to take place, or that, if it did, it would have a magical effect on relations with America's Middle East antagonists. But American opinion has been slowly shifting for some time towards the view that the alliance with Israel must not be allowed to get in the way of the pursuit of America's larger interests in the Middle East. [6]
The assumption that support for Israel gets ‘in the way’ of Western interests in the Middle East is quintessentially European. It contrasts sharply with the counter-argument emanating from Washington over the decades that it is precisely because it is in the interests of the West that support for Israel should be forthcoming. Israel, on this traditional American reading of the issue, stands on the front line of a wider and deeper struggle for democracy against tyranny. It represents and is in important respects constitutive of the Judaeo-Christian edifice upon which all of Western civilisation stands. Long-term strategic imperatives are thus fused with deeply felt spiritual and value-based assumptions to produce a resolute policy platform in defence of the Jewish state.
It is, of course, barely conceivable that this particular American President would ever talk in such terms (I discount here the kind of pro-forma references to ‘unbreakable bonds’ between Israel and the US which I assume fool nobody). And by effectively withdrawing from the moral and strategic agenda over the Jewish state which defined the approach of his predecessors, it is surely plausible to assume that Europeans who never subscribed to that agenda in the first place will take the message from Obama that America has finally woken up to a set of realities that they have understood all along. The logical conclusion is that they will indeed harden their position against Israel, taking every stumbling block in peace negotiations, every confrontation with terrorists and their supporters and every announcement over settlements, however trivial, as a new opportunity to condemn the Jewish state with ever-greater vigour and to harden policy accordingly.
Ultimately then, the problem here cannot simply be formulated in terms of the ‘Europeanisation’ of American policy in the Middle East. As has been suggested, President Obama is and will remain constrained by domestic factors in the US that are more enduring than any single presidency and, in important respects, more powerful than the world view of any particular president.
The real problem may be that Obama will further ‘Europeanise’ the Europeans, that he will legitimise their worst instincts over the Jewish state and that an already dire situation for Israel and the Jews on the old continent will go from bad to worse.
Footnotes