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Jewish World Review Oct. 24, 2008 / 25 Tishrei 5769 Testing Obama's mettle By Caroline B. Glick
Democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama now enjoys a significant lead in the
polls against Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain. For
McCain to win, a lot of Obama supporters will need to reassess their choice
for president. This week, Obama's running-mate Senator Joseph Biden gave
Obama supporters a good reason to change their minds.
In much-reported remarks to campaign donors in Seattle on Sunday, Biden
warned that if Obama is elected to the White House, it will take America's
adversaries no time at all to test him. In his words, "It will not be six
months before the world tests Barack Obama ... The world is looking ... Watch,
we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the
mettle of this guy. I can give you at least four or five scenarios from
where it might originate." Biden then continued, "And he's gonna need
help ...We're gonna need you to use your influence ...within the community, to
stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna
be apparent that we're right." Many commentators have minimized the
importance of Biden's remarks by claiming that all new leaders are tested.
But this is not exactly correct. World leaders test their adversaries when
they perceive them as weak. When Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected US
president in 1952, the Soviet Union did not move quickly to test the man who
had led Allied Forces in World War II. When Ronald Reagan was elected
president in 1980, the Iranian regime released the US hostages it had held
for a year and a half. In speaking as he did, Biden essentially acknowledged
three things. First, he recognized that Obama projects an image of weakness
and naivete internationally that invite America's adversaries to challenge
him.
Second, by stating that if Obama is tested a crisis will ensue, Biden
made clear that Obama will fail the tests he is handed as a newly
inaugurated president. After all, when an able leader is tested, he acts
wisely and secures his nation's interests while averting a crisis. Finally,
Biden made clear that Obama's failure will be widely noted, and hence, "it's
not gonna be apparent that we're right."
In light of Biden's dire warning
about his running-mate, the central question that Americans ought to be
asking themselves is whether or not Biden is correct. Is it true that Obama
projects a posture of weakness and incompetence internationally and is it
likely that this posture reflects reality? Unfortunately, it appears that
Biden knows exactly what he is talking about. Take Iran for example. Obama
has stated outright, that if he is elected US president, he will offer to
conduct direct negotiations with his Iranian counterpart President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad without preconditions.
Yet two weeks ago, the Iranians made
clear that their dispute with America is not about who occupies the White
House, but about the nature the US. Speaking to the official Iranian news
service IRNA two weeks ago, Iranian Vice President for Media Affairs Mehdi
Kalhor stipulated that Iran will only agree to meet with a US leader after
America has bowed to Teheran's will. In his words, Iran will refuse to hold
such high-level talks "for as long as US forces have not left the Middle
East region, and [the US] continues its support for the Zionist regime." Kalhor
explained, "It is stupidity to hold talks without any change in US
attitudes."
After naming its price, Iran has since done its best to make its
preconditions palatable for an Obama administration. This it has done by
claiming that it will not attack the US, it will only attack Israel. Just
after Kalhor's interview, Seyed Safavi, a senior advisor to Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a diplomatic audience in London that Iranian
leadership circles are now debating the option of attacking Israel without
attacking US forces in the region. Safavi added that chances for direct
negotiations between the US and Iran will increase if Obama is elected.
Alluding to Kalhor's remarks, Safavi claimed that sanctions against Iran
have failed and that if the US expects Iran to stop enriching uranium, it
will have to take "firm and significant" steps in Iran's direction.
Then on Wednesday, in a visit to US-ally Bahrain, the speaker of the Iranian
parliament Ali Larijani gave Obama the regime's official endorsement.
Larijani said, "We are leaning more in favor of Barack Obama because he is
more flexible and rational."
Iran's pre-US election behavior indicates that Iran will waste no time
testing Obama's mettle. Iran is behaving as if it fully expects Obama to do
what his supporter Rev. Jesse Jackson expects him to do. That is, like
Jackson, Iran expects Obama to end "Zionist control" of US foreign policy.
And to aid the process, the Iranians are willing to leave US forces in Iraq
and Afghanistan alone as they attack Israel with their nascent nuclear
arsenal shortly after Obama is inaugurated.
In his remarks on Sunday Biden made clear that he does not believe that
Obama will agree to use the US military to confront Iran or any other enemy.
His rejection of the use of force is not due to a sense that force is not
necessary. Rather it is due to his dim assessment of America's military
capabilities. In his words, "We do not have the military capacity, nor have
we ever, quite frankly, in the last 20 years, to dictate outcomes. ... It's so
much more complicated than that. And Barack gets it."
Given the Democratic ticket's belief that the US military is too weak to
protect American interests, it could be expected that Obama and Biden would
support strengthening the US military. But the opposite is the case. Obama
has called for slashing the US military budget, cutting back the US's
anti-missile programs and scaling back drastically the US nuclear arsenal.
That is, although Obama has claimed that he will never take the option of
the use of force off the table, by refusing to strengthen the US military
which he perceives as weak, he is making certain that the US military option
is ineffectual.
In certain respects, if Americans elect Obama to lead them on November 4,
they will be repeating the decision of Israeli voters who elected Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert to lead them in March 2006. Like Obama, Olmert ran on a
platform of appeasing Israel's enemies.
In addition to his plan to curtail US military options by decreasing US
military budgets, Obama's appeasement platform includes his pledge to
abandon the Bush administration's sole foreign policy success in its second
term by pulling US forces out of Iraq. He has also promised to exacerbate
Bush's second term policy failures by expanding the outgoing
administration's penchant for courting US adversaries.
In 2006 Olmert's electoral platform included a naïve and defeatist pledge to
unilaterally withdraw Israeli civilians and military forces from Judea and
Samaria. As for Iran, Olmert's policy was to abdicate Israel's
responsibility to prevent its own destruction by relying on the Americans
and the Europeans to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Biden's warning that Obama will be tested and found wanting by America's
adversaries almost immediately after entering office echoes warnings by
politicians and commentators in the lead-up to Olmert's electoral victory in
2006. As subsequent events showed, Olmert's critics were correct.
Olmert was tested and found wanting when in July 2006 Iran's Hizbullah proxy
went to war against Israel. Just as Olmert's political opponents warned, and
Israel's enemies expected, Olmert's naive perception of international
affairs, his strategic incompetence and his exaggerated view of his own
importance caused him to fail abjectly when his country needed him.
Largely due to Olmert's weakness and poor judgment, Israel was defeated by
Hizbullah. And Israel's defeat fomented a radical reordering of the regional
balance of power in Iran's favor. Hizbullah took over Lebanon. Hamas took
over Gaza. Syria is being feted by the Europeans. Iran stands in the doorway
of the nuclear club.
Olmert's failure not only strengthened Israel's enemies, it caused its own
allies to reassess its value. After the war, the Bush administration
embraced Europe's failed strategy of appeasing Iran and the Palestinians.
Washington eschewed confrontation with Teheran and has renewed its push to
compel Israel to withdraw from Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem despite the
certainty that any territory Israel vacates will fall under the control of
Hamas and Iran.
Iran will likely be the first US adversary to test a president Obama. And
Obama will have no idea what to do. While Obama has stated repeatedly that a
nuclear-armed Iran is a "game-changer" Obama's own rulebook for
international relations has no relevance for dealing with Iran's game.
Obama views international relations as a creature of American will. If
America is nice to others, they will be nice to America. But the fact of the
matter is that regimes like Iran hate the US regardless of how it behaves.
The only question with strategic relevance for Washington is whether the
Iranians also fear the US. And Obama has given them no reason to fear him.
To the contrary, he has given them reason to believe that under his
leadership, the mullahs can defeat America.
America stands to elect its new president in times of nearly unprecedented
dangers. Iran is on the threshold of nuclear weapons. Thanks to the Bush
administration, North Korea now feels free to vastly expand its nuclear
proliferation activities. Oil rich states like Venezuela, Russia and Iran
recognize that with global oil prices decreasing, now is the time to strike
before they are impoverished. And the international economic turmoil will
cause Western nations to recoil from international confrontations and so
embolden rogue states to attack their interests.
For Israel, this state of affairs could not be more dire. As these threats
mount, we find ourselves bereft of political leadership. Although Olmert has
finally resigned, he remains in office as the caretaker prime minister until
someone forms a new government. In the best case scenario, elections will be
called and Olmert will remain in office for the next four to six months. In
the worst case scenario, he will be replaced by Foreign Minister Tzipi
Livni.
Like Obama and Olmert, Livni is perceived as weak and incompetent by
Israel's enemies. Unlike Obama, Livni is judged not only by her words, but
by her deeds. As foreign minister, Livni was an architect of the ceasefire
with Hizbullah under which Hizbullah has taken control of Lebanon and
rearmed. She is an architect of Israel's current policy of expanding the
Hamas terror state to Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. She is an architect of
Israel's policy of doing nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear
weapons.
The prospect of an Obama-Livni partnership in policy failure is enough to
keep men and women of good faith up at night. Certainly it should suffice to
convince some Obama supporters to reconsider their options.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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