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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nearly five years into his presidency,
Barack Obama confronts a world far different from what he envisioned
when he first took office. U.S. influence is declining in the Middle
East as violence and instability rock Arab countries. An ambitious
attempt to reset U.S. relations with Russia faltered and failed. Even in
Obama-friendly Europe, there's deep skepticism about Washington's
government surveillance programs.
In some
cases, the current climate has been driven by factors outside the White
House's control. But missteps by the president also are to blame, say
foreign policy analysts, including some who worked for the Obama
administration.
Among them: miscalculating the
fallout from the Arab Spring uprisings, publicly setting unrealistic
expectations for improved ties with Russia and a reactive
decision-making process that can leave the White House appearing to veer
from crisis to crisis without a broader strategy.
Rosa
Brooks, a former Defense Department official who left the
administration in 2011, said that while the shrinking U.S. leverage
overseas predates the current president, "Obama has sometimes equated
`we have no leverage' with `there's no point to really doing anything'."
Obama,
faced most urgently with escalating crises in Egypt and Syria, has
defended his measured approach, saying America's ability to solve the
world's problems on its own has been "overstated."
"Sometimes
what we've seen is that folks will call for immediate action, jumping
into stuff, that does not turn out well, gets us mired in very difficult
situations," he said. "We have to think through strategically what's
going to be in our long-term national interests."
The
strongest challenge to Obama's philosophy on intervention has come from
the deepening tumult in the Middle East and North Africa. The president
saw great promise in the region when he first took office and pledged
"a new beginning" with the Arab world when he traveled to Cairo in 2009.
But
the democracy protests that spread across the region quickly scrambled
Obama's efforts. While the U.S. has consistently backed the rights of
people seeking democracy, the violence that followed has often left the
Obama administration unsure of its next move or taking tentative steps
that do little to change the situation on the ground.
In
Egypt, where the country's first democratically elected president was
ousted last month, the U.S. has refused to call Mohammed Morsi's removal
a coup. The ruling military, which the U.S. has financially backed for
decades, has largely ignored Obama's calls to end assaults on Morsi
supporters. And U.S. officials are internally at odds over whether to
cut off aid to the military.
In Syria, where
more than 100,000 people have been killed during the two-and-a-half year
civil war, Obama's pledges that President Bashar Assad will be held
accountable have failed to push the Syrian leader from office. And
despite warning that Assad's use of chemical weapons would cross a "red
line" in Syria, there was scant American retaliation when he did use the
toxic gases. On Sunday senior administration official said there is
"very little doubt" that a chemical weapon was used by the Syrian regime
against civilians in an incident that killed at least a hundred people
last week. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the
official was not authorized to speak publicly.
Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel said Monday that the Obama administration will
"get the facts" before acting and that any U.S. move would be done in
concert with the international community. But there is pressure in
Congress for Obama to act swiftly, possibly along the lines of a U.S.
air strike against Syria.
Few foreign policy
experts predicted the Arab uprisings, and it's unlikely the U.S. could
have - or should have - done anything to prevent the protests. But
analysts say Obama misjudged the movements' next stages, including
Assad's ability to cling to power and the strength of Islamist political
parties in Egypt.
"The president has not had a
long-term strategic vision," said Vali Nasr, who advised the Obama
administration on foreign policy in the first term and now serves as
dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
"They're moving issue to issue and reacting as situations come up."
Obama
advisers say the president is frustrated by what is seen as a lack of
good options for dealing with Arab unrest. But the president himself has
pushed back at the notion that the U.S. has lost credibility on the
world stage because he hasn't acted more forcefully.
"We
remain the one indispensable nation," Obama said in a CNN interview
aired Friday. "There's a reason why, when you listen to what's happened
around Egypt and Syria, that everybody asks what the U.S. is doing.
It's because the United States continues to be the one country that
people expect can do more than just simply protect their borders."
But
the perception of a president lacking in international influence
extends beyond the Arab world, particularly to Russia. Since reassuming
the presidency last year, Vladimir Putin has blocked U.S. efforts to
seek action against Syria at the United Nations and has balked at
Obama's efforts to seek new agreements on arms control.
Putin's
hard-line approach stands in stark contrast to the relationship Obama
cultivated in his first term with Putin's predecessor, Dmitri Medvedev.
The two held friendly meetings in Moscow and Washington (Obama even took
Medvedev out to lunch at a local burger joint) and achieved policy
breakthroughs. They inked a new nuclear reduction agreement, and Moscow
agreed to open up supply lines to help the U.S. pull troops and
equipment out of Afghanistan.
Michael
O'Hanlon, a national security analyst at The Brookings Institution, said
the president miscalculated in assuming that a few signs of improved
ties would be enough to overcome years of distrust with the Russians.
"The
issue here is one of raised expectations, unrealistically high
expectations that Obama himself deliberately stoked," O'Hanlon said. "He
hoped that a more pragmatic, disciplined, less interventionist foreign
policy would appease the Russians."
The White
House's ties with Russia were further damaged this summer when Moscow
granted temporary asylum to Edward Snowden, the former government
contractor accused of leaking documents detailing secret U.S.
surveillance programs. In retaliation, Obama canceled plans to meet with
Putin in Moscow next month, though he will still attend the meeting of
leading rich and developing nations in St. Petersburg, Russia.
But
the international impact from the National Security Agency revelations
has spread beyond Russia. In European capitals, where Obama's 2008
election was greeted with cheers, some leaders have publicly criticized
the surveillance programs. Among them was German Chancellor Angela
Merkel, who questioned the legitimacy of the programs while standing
alongside Obama during his visit to Berlin earlier this year.
Obama
has long enjoyed high approval ratings from the European public, though
those numbers have slipped in his second term. So has European approval
for his administration's international policies.
A
Pew Research Center poll conducted this spring, before the NSA programs
were revealed, showed that support for Obama's international policies
was down in most of the countries surveyed, including a 14 point drop in
Britain and a 12 point drop in France.
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Follow Julie Pace on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
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