Washington, Dec 30 (DPA) President Barack Obama has sharply altered the tone of US diplomacy as his first year in office comes to close, a move that has been broadly welcomed but produced few tangible results.
Obama’s talk of support for a multilateral approach has won him praise abroad after eight years of George W. Bush’s perceived unilateralism. This approach got him the Nobel Peace Prize, but little achievement on foreign policy objectives.
“I don’t think they have very much to show for it,” said John Pike, an analyst at Globalsecurity.org.
The Israelis and Palestinians have yet to sit down to begin negotiations on a settlement, Iran has rebuffed overtures to resolve the stalemate over its nuclear ambitions, and until only recently Obama had not secured even modest contributions from the Europeans to offer more military help in Afghanistan.
Obama has taken some major steps to rebuild America’s image in the world. He announced the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba, and in a major concession to the Russians, he scrapped Bush’s controversial plans to base a long-range missile
defence system in Eastern Europe.
“The Russians just pocketed that and said ‘thank you very much let’s go to the next item’,” Pike said.
The Russians, along with the Chinese, have not budged on their reluctance to get behind tougher UN Security Council sanctions on Iran.
Two days after Obama took office, he acted on a campaign promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison holding suspects in the war on terrorism. The facility was at the centre of the poor US image and the decision to shutter it was warmly received in capitals around the world.
Only a handful of countries have stepped forward to take some of the 215 detainees remaining at the US naval installation in Cuba, increasing the likelihood that Obama will miss his own Jan 22 deadline for closing the detention centre. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said Dec 3 that there are 116 inmates eligible for transfer to another country.
But Obama’s reshaping of the US image in the world and willingness to engage traditional foes like Cuba, Iran and North Korea to introduce a new era in relations was enough for the Nobel Foundation to award him its most coveted prize. Other observers believe Obama’s new tone counts as an accomplishment.
“No, the results do not yet merit his Nobel Peace Prize,” Jacob Weisenberg recently wrote in Newsweek. “But not since Reagan has a new president so swiftly and determinedly remodelled America’s global role.”
On Dec 1, Obama announced his plans to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending an additional 30,000 troops and was able to convince NATO allies to chip in with more assistance. Bush constantly struggled to convince his NATO partners to do more, but Obama was able to persuade them so far to add 7,000 troops to supplement the US build-up.
However, key allies France and Germany said they will wait until a conference on Afghanistan in January to announce whether they will make additional contributions beyond the combined 8,000 soldiers they already have there. Many of the NATO allies restrict their troops from going into combat zones. It is yet to be determined whether the fresh non-American deployment will include those restrictions.
“To the extent that these are a bunch of peacekeepers who are not issued bullets, this is not going to make a difference,” Pike said.
