Tag Archives: Barack Obama

Politics of Spite

09 Wed May 2018

Posted by in Iran, Middle East

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As predicted, US president Donald Trump has led the United States out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. The agreement, which was supposed to increase international (Western) oversight into Tehran’s nuclear programme and hopefully rein in its nuclear ambitions, was one of the few unambiguously positive legacies of Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, but ran into opposition even during the delicate negotiations. Critics tried to add riders involving their pet projects – usually human rights or missile development – to the deal in an attempt to derail process. Consistent with his pre-election criticism for once, Trump had called the JCPOA a bad deal and promised to repudiate it if elected.

America’s European partners – Britain, France, Germany, and Russia – have parted ways with Washington and declared their intent to continue adherence to the JCPOA; China has so far been mute but already threatened with a trade war with the United States, it is highly likely that it, too, will follow the Europeans in holding on to the Iranian nuclear deal.

It is not yet clear what the fallout of the American departure from the JCPOA will be. Although the rhetoric of the exit has been focused on how the agreement did not go far enough in preventing Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons, the fact that Trump administration officials have stated that sanctions will be “snapped back” indicates that they believe Iran to be in breach of its obligations under the JCPOA – although most technical experts disagree with this evaluation.

Given that the other members of the E3 + 3 – particularly Britain, France, and Germany – will not be following the US example, the interesting question is if Washington intends to sanction their businesses and banks under the recently passed Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) as India fears its defence dealings with Russia might. This would cause an enormous rupture in in the US and world economy as China is the United States’ single largest trading partner and Britain, France, and Germany are together the fourth largest ahead of Japan. Yet if Trump does use his presidential discretion to waive sanctions and exempt these four countries, it would be too blatant an act of political hypocrisy if the same treatment was not extended to others over Russia and North Korea as well as over Iran.

In February 2018, Patrick Pouyanné, the CEO of the French oil & gas giant Total, openly called for the implementation of the 1996 European Union Blocking Regulation, a law that prohibited European firms from cooperating with foreign demands that are in violation of international law or hurt European sovereign interests. Denis Chaibi, a senior diplomat in the European External Action Service, commented that the EU was looking at a variety of options and the blocking regulations would not be difficult to implement.

Ultimately, these are political instruments and businesses would be hurt either by European penalties for obeying US sanctions or the denial of access to American markets due to US sanctions. Obviously, firms would prefer having access to the far larger American markets than pin their hopes on soaring Euro-Iranian trade and the threat of blocking regulations is empty. States are supposed to exercise restrain and caution and a tit-for-tat exchange between the United States and its three primary European allies will hurt everyone. More to the point, the multinational supply chains of most large industrial houses today means that there would be few European firms that are not exposed to the United States and are free to do business with Iran.

Internationally, many countries would be pulled into the US wake for similar reasons; most countries are fairly integrated into the US economy and their national economies are not robust enough to withstand the loss of the American market. Additionally, others may have political reasons to reluctantly support Washington. India, for example, has been trying to purchase high-end American weapons systems and seeks Washington’s cooperation on several crucial issues such as defence technology and the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific. It is most likely that India will have to bear the damage done to its own ambitions in Chabahar and the International North-South Trade Corridor (INSTC). Delhi will have even more to lose if Tehran responds to Delhi’s distancing by handing the responsibility for the Shahid Beheshti port over to Beijing.

If India can persuade the United States for a partial waiver on trade as it had done last time, its importance to Tehran would rise again only to the extent that other countries stop or reduce links with the Islamic republic.

Saudi Arabia, considered to be one of the beneficiaries of the American abnegation of the JCPOA, will enjoy in the short-term the spike in oil prices that is bound to follow Trump’s decision. However, this entire episode will have reiterated to Iran that the only way to be truly safe from American interference, as an Indian general is supposed to have observed after the First Gulf War in 1991, is to acquire nuclear weapons. Tehran seems to have been acutely aware of this note – Iran’s ambitions, as revealed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent document dump, were to posses just five nuclear warheads than an entire arsenal.

Riyadh has only managed to stoke Tehran’s determination and not douse it. The JCPOA was designed to give the international community breathing space to consider how best to dampen Iran’s love of the Bomb – it was never meant to provide a permanent solution as there are none. As non-proliferation experience has illustrated, the determined country will acquire nuclear weapons regardless of the financial and political costs to it and the willingness to pay such a high price will attract unscrupulous suppliers. The classic example of this is Pakistan, whose nuclear journey would have taken far longer had it not been for the generous acts of commission by China and of omission by the United States.

Perhaps the greatest beneficiary of the American walkout is Israel. On the one hand, the reintroduction and expansion of sanctions hurts the Iranian economy and removes funds that might have otherwise gone to fund the Hezbollah and its adventures in Syria but on the other, the European and Iranian decision to continue observing the JCPOA keeps the checks on the Iranian nuclear programme in place for at least the next decade. If the archives reveal 30 years down the line that this was a game of good-cop-bad-cop, this would be a strategic masterstroke by Benjamin Netanyahu.

The one certainty at this moment is that Iran is not as isolated as it was prior to 2015. Even if Europe falls in line with America’s wishes, Russia and China are both unlikely to go along with the West this time. Both countries have been antagonised by Trump’s sanctions and threats of a trade war to be receptive to cooperation. This opens the door for greater Russian and Chinese influence in the Middle East. Russia also gains by the rift that has been created between Europe and the United States over the Iranian nuclear programme.

In some ways, Trump has just given Iran’s hardline clerics a lease of life. There have been several signs that Iranians citizens are frustrated with their government and the poor economy. Some analysts were even hopeful of organic reforms that would gradually move the country from its extreme Islamic views. Trump’s abandonment of the JCPOA underscores everything hardliners warned against – that the United States is not a trustworthy partner and it ultimately seeks the total subjugation of Iran.

If Washington expects Tehran to come back to the negotiating table, it may have a long wait. Rather than re-engage with a party that has shown bad faith, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani may simply choose to wait out his American counterpart in the hopes that Trump’s successor would be more amenable to the Obamian status quo.

It is not clear what the Trump administration sought to achieve by leaving the JCPOA. If anything, it draws attention to the Iranian bogey in American minds and the ghosts of 1979 that such policies would have any support in the houses of legislature or with the citizens. Pace the political acrobatics that are about to ensue over the coming days, the ultimate prize is the withering of the Iranian nuclear weapons programme. It is not clear if anyone in the White House had kept that in mind while thinking about abruptly walking out of an international treaty.

This post appeared on FirstPost on May 10, 2018.

Obama’s Foreign Policy Legacy

20 Fri Jan 2017

Posted by in Opinion and Response, United States

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When Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States in January 2009, I remember one of the people who had worked on his campaign telling me, “We have built [Obama] up to walk on water. If he delivers anything less, he’ll be looking for a job in four years.” That observation may not be too far from the truth, albeit eight years down the road rather than four. As the president readies to remit his office to his successor, evaluations of his legacy have been harsher than necessary. It is not that the Obama presidency failed to deliver, but that it failed to live up to (unreal) expectations. Although it is not clear how much of his work will survive the next president, Obama has had a few important successes nonetheless.

One of Obama’s successes is starting on the path to normalisation with Cuba. The tiff between the world’s largest military-economic complex and a country whose GDP is less than the worth of America’s richest citizen had long lost any strategic significance and turned comical but Washington stayed course to save face against Fidel Castro.  In December 2014, Obama put an end to the absurdity and four months later, removed Cuba from the Department of State’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list. This was followed by a resumption of diplomatic missions, an exchange of prisoners, air and mail links, economic initiatives, and ease of travel restrictions. In March 2016, Obama visited the Caribbean island on a three-day trip, the first by a US president since 1928. Of course, some issues remain outstanding, such as the US presence in Guantanamo Bay, but the days of icy hostility already seem to be a distant memory.

On Iran, the Obama administration has, in conjunction with its European partners and China, delivered a commendable outcome. Not only has Tehran accepted safeguards and stringent conditions regulating its research on centrifuges, machining and casting fissile material, and metallurgy over the next 15 years, it has also agreed not to conduct any research in reprocessing spent fuel; verification of each stage has been negotiated. Short of a complete abnegation of its nuclear programme, the United States and its partners have extracted the most that can be reasonably expected from Iran. The Obama administration’s perseverance and willingness to take a risk in reaching out to Iran must be applauded: such willingness was not present in any of the previous administrations since Jimmy Carter despite several overtures from Tehran.

Obama has been faulted for his policy on Syria, particularly his refusal to bomb Bashar al-Assad after the Syrian Army used chemical weapons on Ghouta, a Damascene suburb, in August 2013. There is some merit to this criticism – credibility is important in international relations, especially in a state that offers a nuclear umbrella to over a dozen other states – but would a clinical missile strike have truly contributed in any meaningful way to the conflict in Syria itself? The administration did not think so, and there is little evidence that it was wrong.

Obama has also been blamed for not supporting the Syrian rebels earlier on. To assume that this would have changed the course of the civil war is to also believe that Iran and Russia would remain passive while their ally was forcefully replaced by a potentially pro-Western regime. Tehran and Moscow did involve themselves in the conflict eventually, but after it was clear that military assistance, however paltry, was flowing to the rebels and putting Assad on the back foot. More importantly, what was the quality of America’s potential allies? As far as the Yezidi, Kurds, or other minorities are concerned, let alone those who are not puritanically Muslim, the rebels were scarcely better than ISIS. The United States has a history of trying to pick a side that is good enough rather than wait for an illusory perfect ally in Afghanistan and it has not boded well for the region. Finally, should Obama have put US boots on the ground in Syria? There was phenomenal opposition to that from the public as well as most quarters of the government.

What may be considered a failure, perhaps, of the Obama administration is its pivot to Asia. For all the fanfare, the United States did little to augment its position or those of its allies in Asia. This, in the face of an exertive China in the South China Sea, has raised doubts in the minds of several of the Southeast Asian states. However, America’s allies must also realise that their patron has been facing an economic slowdown and finds it difficult to tolerate its allies spending less on defence. Furthermore, Asians do not want to hurt their lucrative economic relations by openly coming out against China and would all prefer that someone else take the tough stand. Even India, the largest and most able of the states in the region, has taken a hesitant posture towards its rival. In this game of ‘Who’ll bell the dragon?’ Beijing has been able to cajole some of its neighbours over to its side. Unless Asian states are willing to step up and do more in a loose partnership with the United States, there is little that Obama or any president can do to actualise a pivot.

A more disappointing foreign policy record is Obama’s inaction over Pakistan. Pace its occasional usefulness such as in the ongoing war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Pakistan has rarely been of use and usually more of a headache to the United States. Washington is keen on repeating that Kashmir is the most dangerous flashpoint in the world, but all roads back from that precipice seem to begin with even more Indian restraint in the face of Islamabad’s terrorism. The Obama administration has even proceeded with the sale of F-16s to Pakistan in an effort to elicit some cooperation from the country. As Delhi would probably advise, Washington has already tried saama and daana; it is time for some bheda and danda. Obama has instead followed in the footsteps of his predecessors, wringing his hands, condemning, and complaining – in fact, everything short of action – and left the region on a simmer for his successor to handle.

The greatest shortcoming of the Obama regime, one that will likely be reversed as soon as he leaves office, though, is the United States’ deteriorating relationship with Russia. Rumpled over Crimea, the Obama White House, urged by his European partners, stumbled into a strong show of force: NATO troops were buttressed and readiness levels improved, sanctions declared against Russia, and diplomatic pressure was brought upon Moscow. Rather than deter Vladimir Putin from pursuing his aims in Europe, these measures have resulted in increased Russian military exercises and missile tests. Worse, it has pushed Moscow into Beijing’s arms. Obama’s misreading of Russia as a greater threat than China at present is at best wishful thinking, and at worst, uncritical muscle memory from the Cold War. Russia is not the Soviet Union and China, with its powerful economic network across the globe, is a far more dangerous opponent despite its minuscule nuclear arsenal.

Obama’s one active error is Russia; the others – Pakistan and Syria – are passive errors of inaction and poor options. However, the president does have Cuba and Iran to boast of, and it is a bonus that Osama bin Laden was killed on his watch. Could he have done things better? Perhaps. Given Donald Trump’s bonhomie with Putin, it does not appear there will be any lasting damage from Obama’s biggest failure. Islamabad may become a problem in the future but Obama is hardly the president who “lost Pakistan.” Syria may haunt him, but on the whole, this is not a bad report card to go away with.

This post appeared on FirstPost on January 20, 2017.

Selling F-16s to Pakistan under India’s Nose

13 Sat Feb 2016

Posted by in India, Opinion and Response, South Asia

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News of the Obama administration’s decision to sell Pakistan eight Block 52 F-16 C/D fighter jets for $700 million was met with dismay in Delhi. Technically, however, the announcement does not mean that the sale has been concluded. By law, the White House is required to inform the Legislature of its intent which then has 30 days to block or modify the decision. The last time a similar proposal was floated, barely five weeks ago, it was stalled in the US Congress when lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats alike, questioned the White House’s policy to sell advanced weaponry to a state known to aid and abet terrorists.

The White House and the Pentagon have argued that the sale will enhance the Islamic Republic’s capability to fight terrorism by allowing its air force to operate in all-weather, non-daylight environments, sustain a greater operational tempo, and provide area suppression potential. Their story has few buyers: several influential leaders from across the political spectrum have written to the president expressing concern that the nuclear-capable F-16 is an obvious weapons platform against India and of much less utility against terrorists.

Pakistani F-16Pakistan already fields 76 F-16s in its air force. In February 2014, it purchased 13 of the fighter jets from Jordan with Washington’s tacit blessings: US military exports policy prevents recipients of US equipment from selling arms to third parties without approved end user certificates. In essence, the United States possessed a veto over Jordan’s sale of F-16s but did not use it. Islamabad has also been upgrading its older versions of the fighter jet with help from Turkey.

Eight new planes would buttress Pakistan’s aerial capabilities but not measurably alter its strategic balance vis-a-vis India. However, were this deal to be successfully concluded, it would have enormous symbolic value for Pakistan. At one stroke, it would negate much of the unfavourable publicity the country has received regarding its ties to international terrorism, illicit nuclear activities, and political volatility, replacing it with the image of a robust state with a modern military and the confidence of the world’s superpower.

F-16 POVsIndia’s response to the whole affair has been predictable. It’s public expression of disappointment is just that, a formality it has performed every time the United States has given Pakistan military aid; a private admonishment delivered to US ambassador to India, Richard Verma, is unlikely to have much more potency either. Time and again, Delhi has exhibited an inability to sufficiently influence US policy towards South Asia enough to stem the flow of weapons to its regional rival. The timing of the sale, however, in the midst of an uptick in Indo-US relations, is certainly intriguing, especially so soon after rumours surfaced – though quickly quashed – that the United States was considering offering the South Asian irritant a civil nuclear cooperation deal similar to the one it had offered India in 2005.

Nonetheless, Delhi’s role in furthering the United States’ myopic policies towards South Asia must also be acknowledged. Whatever may have been the differences between the two countries during the Cold War, the years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and India’s economic liberalisation has undeniably seen a significant convergence of interests. Unfortunately, substantial segments of Indian society – bureaucrats, outdated politicians, ‘intelligentsia’ – still prefer to get their endorphin rush from moral grandstanding than a pragmatic pursuit of national interests. For all the talk of warmer Indo-US relations, the two countries are like awkward teenagers at a Formal.

F-16 general arrangementHistorically, the United States has shown that its foreign policy is amenable to reason given the appropriate incentives. In the late 1950s, the Eisenhower administration grew closer to Pakistan as the South Asian state joined a series of American-led defence pacts and began receiving military assistance from Washington. This was largely influenced by Pakistan’s vital role in US reconnaissance efforts over the Soviet Union and China and its sideshow insurgency in Tibet. In the late 1960s, when Islamabad’s utility had diminished, Lyndon Johnson did not hesitate to impose sanctions on his ally during the Second India-Pakistan War in 1965. Yet within a few years, when Pakistan emerged as the preferred conduit for secret negotiations with Mao Zedong, the United States was willing to overlook one of the gravest genocides of the latter half of the 20th century. This pattern repeats itself twice in Afghanistan, once during the Soviet invasion when Washington looked the other way on Islamabad’s nuclear programme and again after militants attacked the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11.

In contrast, India maintained its “strategic autonomy” from the United States and did not make common purpose with Washington even on issues that most concerned Indian security. As a result, its usefulness to the United States remains only theoretical and therefore a second-class relationship albeit with plenty of pleasing revisionist rhetoric about shared values and a multipolar global order in the 21st century.

Of the many disagreements between India and the United States. three issues involving regional security are Delhi’s role in bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan, the alphabet soup of military agreements that facilitate closer operation of the Indian and American armed forces, and a greater role for India in the regional security commons. On the first issue, India has preferred the sanctimonious high ground even as its advantages in the post-Taliban Afghanistan slip away; an ideological holdover from the Nehruvian era seems to be preventing bureaucrats and politicians from mutually augmenting military capabilities on the second item, and on the third point, India is pretending to go it alone for no discernible reason.

It might be argued that Delhi is trying to avoid over-dependence on the United States, but this cautious approach was nowhere in evidence when over 70 per cent of the Indian armed forces were supplied by the Soviet Union. Notwithstanding, India should not work itself into a situation whereby it finds its options constrained by an American veto but there is no danger of this at present engagement levels.

India’s commitment to regional security, be it in the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, or in Afghanistan, must also be a reflection of its capabilities. While it may be desirable for Delhi to take a more pro-active role in its region, the fact is that the country’s military capabilities simply do not presently support this broader view of security after decades of being assured that only a “kleinindische Lösung” would be pursued.

Were Delhi to jettison its quaint residual anti-Americanism, there is a much greater chance that it would find in the United States a much better partner for a Pax Indica. The country’s political structure, history, and economic interests are not seen as a threat in Southeast Asia and some states would no doubt welcome the development of Indian power in the region. With a greater role in regional security and a larger economy will come greater engagement and more influence with the United States; finally, Delhi may be able to have its concerns heard in Foggy Bottom. Until then, as long as India remains an undecided bystander in regional geopolitics (even at the cost of its own national interests), the United States will be forced to seek willing if imperfect partners that further its goals in the region and there will be further sales of F-16s and other equipment over India’s objections.

This post appeared on FirstPost on February 15, 2016.