Random Variable

This is mainly a summary of yesterday’s round table at the LSE featuring Lord Wallace, Justin Webb, Rob Singh, Mick Cox and Robin Niblett.

There was a palpable sense of disappointment amongst the speakers with regards to foreign policy. All agreed that although Obama is many places outside of the USA, he’s failed to connect with Americans themselves, and the Middle East continues to be disappointed at his failure to transform the Cairo speech into positive action. Oh, and he should never have accepted the Nobel Prize.

There was agreement that Obama’s Pakistan programme has been disastrous. For Niblett, there’s been a failure to separate nationalist terrorism (Taliban) that doesn’t form an immediate threat to the US from international terrorism (Al-Qaeda). Rob Singh pointed out how the US has failed to form policy that can properly engage Pakistan to deal with the ISI’s excesses-in particular the ISI is quite willing to keep the Afghan Taliban going as it hampers Indian influence in the region. Webb added that the Pakistani fear of India isn’t really taken seriously by policymakers. But this really highlights the main problem with Obama’s foreign policy.

As Mick Cox suggested, riffing off a recent piece by Barry Buzan, the main challenges that Obama faces are structural. International society is far less willing to tolerate a unipolar power, regardless of its inherent values, and American influence is declining with the rise of strong regional powers, none of whom constitute a superpower. Admittedly, most of the speakers are fearful of the drift into multipolarity, none so much as Rob Singh, who suggested that the paring back of the military is perhaps a deliberate strategy by Obama to reduce US military power. If true, then he’s taking a leaf out of Stephen Walt’s playbook. The only problem is that no one’s particularly willing to step up to take a joint leadership role.

The key problem ongoing for the United States is to transition smoothly to a multipolar world, making sure those regional powers learn the values and institutional norms of the liberal international order (China) and incentivising current free riders to rely on their own steam and play a more active role in international relations (European Union).

Climate change negotiation should never have been up to the unwieldy unanimous judgement process of COP15. EU+Japan should pursue strong reductions, with the US and China doing their own bilateral deals and joining us later on in the game. Many in the environmental movement will be upset at the lack of international agreement, and neoliberals may get worried about the possibilities of tariffs being imposed. But this sort of compromise will lead to stronger emission reductions than Kyoto that may actually lead the world off the path of calamity.

Image by The Edge of the American West