China is a status quo power. It preaches dialogue, noninterference and the sanctity of national sovereignty because it does not want major global disruptions to its pursuit of the economic growth essential to political stability and full development by midcentury.
Russia is also a status quo power — the status quo of 30 years ago, that is. Under President Vladimir Putin, it wants to turn back the clock and restore the world to a place dominated by two superpowers going mano a mano. It has been prepared to watch thousands of Syrians die in order to demonstrate it still wields a big stick.
Europe is a status-seeking power, undermined by the crisis of the euro and the democratic deficit in its institutions, bereft of the idealism that once drove the pursuit of European unity, and represented by a “president” nobody has heard of. There is only one serious politician left in Europe. Her name is Angela Merkel.
And what of the United States? An election that was supposed to be about domestic policy but has produced little clarity in that regard (perhaps the debates will help) has demonstrated a stark divide on foreign policy.
In the vision of President Barack Obama, America is now in the status-management business: being realistic about its power the better to exercise and preserve it. As for Mitt Romney, he belongs to Putin’s school of foreign policy. The status quo he believes in is that of three decades ago. In this regard he is a closet Russian even as he denounces Moscow.
And so, for Romney, Russia is “without question our number one geopolitical foe,” just like during the Cold War. He is “guided by one overwhelming conviction and passion: this century must be an American century,” like the century that saw the Cold War.
In the name of U.S. domination, America needs to throw its weight around, maintaining or increasing Pentagon budgets, refusing to talk to the Taliban, confronting China, giving Israel a green light to attack Iran, and generally being unabashed about U.S. might.
It seems the devastating cost of America’s post-9/11 wars has not dawned on Romney; nor has what they say about a world where U.S. power is unrivaled but insufficient for the United States to impose its will.
Romney’s vision, like Putin’s, is pure nostalgia. It imagines a world that is gone. Of course the clarion call of American greatness can be a distraction from economic difficulty, but Americans have grown wary of adventure.
Obama has been accused by Republicans of being in the business of “managing decline.” A better way to look at his foreign policy is one of managing the preservation of U.S. power in an interconnected world where the rapid growth is not in the West, where the national debt is a ticking bomb, and where the U.S. edge over other powers is diminishing.
He has extracted the United States from a costly war (Iraq); set a date for departure from Afghanistan; adopted a low-cost means to kill terrorists (drone attacks); rid America of the specter of Osama bin Laden; restrained Israel from attacking Iran and so starting a disastrous third Western war in a Muslim country in a decade; sought ways to work with Russia and China; put European allies in lead roles in Libya; and generally looked not to hard power but the American soft power represented most visibly by Twitter, Facebook, Google and Apple.
Obama has made big mistakes in Afghanistan, refused to spell out the drone doctrine when he owes an explanation, and was behind the curve in Iran during the uprising of 2009. His response to the killing last month of four Americans in Libya, including the U.S. ambassador, was also too muted.
But overall he has adjusted American foreign policy to a changing world. Nowhere is that change more dramatic than in the Middle East where the old U.S. policy — support for dictators in the name of preserving stability, stopping jihadists and maintaining the flow of oil — proved bankrupt, a form of American hypocrisy that only fed Salafist rage.
To his credit, Obama has supported the transitions in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere. In the end it has to be in America’s strategic interest to support societies that are not breeding the frustrations that turn young people into anti-Western killers. It has to be in America’s interest to have Islamic parties like the Muslim Brotherhood dealing with Islamic extremism: The lessons of power will prove sobering.
The bumper sticker of the Arab Spring is: “It’s Egypt, stupid.” If the most populous Arab state by far can develop into a democratic friend of the West, that will amount to a strategic breakthrough.
So Obama is right to be pushing for an immediate $450 million cash infusion for Egypt. And the Republican resistance to that — a leading Republican lawmaker, Representative Kay Granger of Texas, has said she won’t support it while Romney seems to see all Arabs as dangerous or backward — demonstrates their weird adherence to the Putin school: the status quo at any cost, circa 1982.
By ROGER COHEN
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