I see that Steve Walt couldn't resist critiquing Obama's Nobel Peace Prize speech. At the end of his post, he argues that Obama should be judged by his actions and not his words:
I still think we should pay less attention to what he said and focus on what he and his advisors do. In his first year in office, President Obama has made two critical decisions involving matters of war, peace and justice. The first is his decision to abandon the admirable principles he set forth in his Cairo speech in June, to tacitly accept the continued expansion of Israel's West Bank settlements, and to collude in a well-orchestrated assault on the Goldstone Report on war crimes in Gaza. The result will be to perpetuate precisely the sort of injustice that gives rise to very violence he deplored in his speech. The second is his decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan -- sending 17,000 troops last spring and 30,000 more last month -- despite the continued absence of a compelling rationale or coherent strategy for success.
From Day One, Obama has shown that he is a thoughtful and intelligent leader who takes his responsibilities seriously and weighs decisions carefully. But in the end, what matters is not how long or hard he thinks or how well he talks. What matters is whether he makes the right decisions. And by that criterion, he's 0 for 2.
No doubt, these are important policy actions. The most important, however? No, I don't think so -- not if you really buy the precepts of realism (Indeed, one of the things I love about purebred realists is how they emphasize the importance of power beyond all else, and then obsess about every aspect of American foreign policy except great power interactions).
No, what should matter most for realists is how the United States engages the other great powers of the world -- China, Russia, and maybe India and the European Union. By this metric, the four most important actions the Obama administration has taken to date are:
- Revamping the missile shield that was ostensibly suppposed to cover Eastern Europe in the event of an Iranian missile attack in a way that mollified Russia.
- Nearly completing negotiations with Russia on a follow-up to the Start II treaty
- Refraining from branding China as a currency manipulator in Treasury's report to Congress
- Elevating the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue with China to the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue
On the whole, in great power politics, I'd say Obama is doing reasonably well. Relations with Russia are unquestionably better than they were a year ago. Sino-American relations are fraught with more tension, as recent events in Copenhagen suggest. However, I'm with James Fallows in noting that Obama's China trip was more successful than most commentators noted in November.
There might come a time in the future when the United States must balance against these countries, but that day is a long way off. For now, however, one could argue the Obama administration's emphasis on developing a more robust economic foundation for American power necessitates relatively peaceful relations with the other great powers.
What do you think?
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