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Jewish World Review Feb. 10, 2009 / 16 Shevat 5769 Obama's New World Order and Israel By Caroline B. Glick
Bluntly stated, the world that will challenge the next government will be
one characterized by the end of US global predominance. In just a few short
weeks, the new administration of President Barack Obama has managed to
weaken the perception of American power and embolden US adversaries
throughout the world.
In the late stages of the presidential race, now Vice President Joseph Biden
warned us that this would happen. In a speech before supporters he said, "It
will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama... [We're] gonna
have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this
guy... They may emanate from the Middle East. They may emanate from the
subcontinent. They may emanate from Russia's newly emboldened position."
As it happens, Biden's warning had two inaccuracies. Rather than six months,
America's adversaries began testing Obama's mettle within weeks. And instead
of one crisis from Russia, the Middle East or the Indian subcontinent, Obama
has faced and failed to meet "generated crises" from all three.
TAKE RUSSIA for example. Since coming into office, Obama has repeatedly
tried to build an alliance with the "newly emboldened" Russian bear. A week
after entering office, he announced that he hoped to negotiate a nuclear
disarmament agreement with Russia that would reduce the US's nuclear
stockpiles by 80 percent. At a security conference in Munich last weekend,
Biden stated that the administration wishes to push the "reset button" on
its relationship with Russia and be friends.
Responding to these American signals, the Russians proceeded to humiliate
Washington. Last week President Dmitry Medvedev hosted Kyrgyzstan's
President Kurmanbak Bakiyev in Moscow. After their meeting the two announced
that Russia will give the former Soviet republic $2 billion in loans and
assistance and that Kyrgyzstan will close the US Air Force base at Manas
which serves American forces in Afghanistan.
After cutting off one of the US's major supply routes for its forces in
Afghanistan, Russia agreed to permit the US to resume its shipment of
nonlethal military supplies for Afghanistan through Russian territory. Those
shipments were suspended last summer by NATO in retaliation for Russia's
invasion of Georgia. And now they are being resumed - on Moscow's terms. The
US, for its part, couldn't be more grateful to Moscow for lending a helping
hand.
THE US ITSELF WOULDN'T have found itself needing Russian supply lines had
the situation in nuclear-armed Pakistan not deteriorated as it has in recent
months. Much of the situation in Pakistan today is due to the Bush
administration's incompetent bungling of US relations with the failed state.
For years the US gave tens of billions of dollars to the military government
of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf in turn used the money to build up
Pakistan's military presence along the border with India, while allowing
al-Qaida and the Taliban to relocate their headquarters in Pakistan after
being ousted from Afghanistan by US forces.
Vigilant in maintaining his power, for years Musharraf repressed all voices
calling for democratic transformation. For their part democrats in places
like Pakistan's Supreme Court were not friends of the West. They did not
oppose the Taliban and al-Qaida. Rather their enemies were Musharraf and the
US which kept him in power.
Responding to a sudden urge to encourage the forces of democracy in
Pakistan, while advocating their abandonment throughout the Arab world,
secretary of state Condoleezza Rice compelled Musharraf first to resign as
head of the Pakistani military - thus ending his control over the country's
jihadist ISI intelligence services and over the pro-jihadist military. Then
she forced him to accept open elections, which unsurprisingly, he lost.
The democrats who replaced him had absolutely no influence over either the
ISI or the military and realized that their power and their very lives were
in the Taliban's hands. Consequently, since Pakistan's elections last year,
the new government has surrendered larger and larger areas of the country to
the Taliban. Indeed, today the Taliban either directly control or are
fighting for control over the majority of Pakistani territory. Moreover, the
Taliban and al-Qaida have intensified their war in Afghanistan and are
making significant gains in that country as well.
This would have been a difficult situation for the US to contend with no
matter who replaced George W. Bush in the Oval Office. Unfortunately, due to
Obama's stridently anti-Pakistani rhetoric throughout the campaign -
rhetoric untethered to any coherent strategy for dealing with Pakistan - the
Pakistanis no doubt felt the need to test his mettle as quickly as possible.
For his part, Obama gave them good reason to believe he could be
intimidated. By letting it be known that he intended for his special envoy
to the region Richard Holbrook's job to include responsibility for
pressuring US ally India to reach a peace agreement with Pakistan over the
disputed Jammu and Kashmir province in spite of clear proof that Pakistani
intelligence was the mastermind of the December terror attacks in Mumbai,
Obama showed that he was willing to defend Pakistan's "honor" and so accept
its continued bad behavior.
LAST FRIDAY, the Pakistanis tested Obama. The Supreme Court freed Pakistan's
Dr. Strangelove - A.Q. Khan - from the house arrest he had been under since
his nuclear proliferation racket was exposed by the Libyans in 2004. Through
his nuclear proliferation activities, Khan is not only the father of
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal - but of North Korea's and Iran's as well.
Khan's release casts a dark shadow on Obama's plan to dismantle much of
America's nuclear arsenal, because with him free, the prospect that Pakistan
is back in the proliferation business becomes quite real. Already on Sunday
Khan announced his plan to travel abroad immediately. For its part, the
court in Islamabad specifically stated that Khan is free to resume his
"scientific research."
Pakistan's open contempt for the US and its weakness in the face of the
Taliban's takeover of the country has direct consequences for the US's
mission in Afghanistan - and for its new dependence on Russia. This week the
Taliban bombed a bridge on the Khyber Pass along the Pakistani border with
Afghanistan that served as a supply line to US forces in Afghanistan. As US
Brig.-Gen. James McConville stated in Kabul, the latest attack simply
underlines how important it was for the US to resume its shipments through
Russia.
MANY HAVE POINTED to Pakistan as an example of why Israel and the West have
no reason to be concerned about Iran acquiring nuclear arms. To date, they
claim, Pakistan has not used its nuclear arms, and indeed has been deterred
by both India and the West from doing so.
While it is true that Pakistan has yet to use its nuclear arsenal, it is
also true that since its initial nuclear test in 1998, Pakistan has twice
brought the subcontinent to the brink of nuclear war. In both 1999 and 2002,
Pakistan provoked India into a nuclear standoff.
Moreover, due to its nuclear arsenal, Pakistan successfully deterred the US
from taking action against it after the September 11 attacks showed that
al-Qaida and the Taliban owed their existence to Pakistan's ISI. Although
Pakistan's government is not an Islamic revolutionary one like Iran's, the
fact is that since it became a nuclear power, Pakistan has moved away from
the West, not toward it. Indeed, its nuclear deterrent against India - and
the West - has empowered and strengthened the jihadists and brought them
ever closer to taking over the regime in a seamless power grab.
Far from arguing against preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the
Pakistani precedent argues for taking every possible action to prevent Iran
from acquiring them. After all, unlike the situation in Pakistan, Iran's
regime is already controlled by jihadist revolutionaries. And like their
counterparts in Pakistan, these forces will be strengthened, not weakened in
the event that Iran acquires nuclear weapons.
Indeed, since Obama came into office waving an enormous olive branch in
Teheran's direction, the regime has become more outspoken in its hostility
toward the US. It has humiliated Washington by refusing visas to America's
women's badminton team to play their Iranian counterparts. It has announced
it will only agree to direct talks with Washington if it pulls US forces out
of the Middle East, abandons Israel and does nothing to prevent Iran from
acquiring nuclear weapons. It has rudely blackballed US representatives who
are Jewish, like House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Howard Berman, at
international conclaves. And it has announced that it will refuse to deal
with Obama's suggested envoy to Iran, Dennis Ross, who is also a Jew. In all
of its actions, Iran has gone out of its way to embarrass Obama and
humiliate America. And Obama, for his part, has continued to embrace Teheran
as his most sought-after negotiating partner.
MOVING AHEAD, the question of how our next government should handle
America's apparent decision to turn its back on its traditional role as
freedom's global defender becomes the most pressing concern. It is clear
that we will need to embrace the burden of our own defense and stop
expecting to receive much from our alliance with the US. But it is also
clear that we will need a new strategy for dealing with the US itself.
In formulating that policy, the next government should draw lessons from
fellow US-ally India. Once it became clear to the Indians that the Obama
administration intended to treat them as the strategic and moral equivalent
of Pakistan, they struck back hard. When the administration signaled that it
would agree to Pakistan's assertion that its problems with the Taliban were
linked to India's refusal to cede Jammu and Kashmir to Islamabad, New Delhi
essentially told Washington to get lost.
In an interview on Indian television last week, ahead of Holbrook's first
visit to the area this week, India's National Security Adviser M.K.
Narayanan said that Obama would be "barking up the wrong tree" if he were to
subscribe to such views. He added that India would be unwilling to discuss
the issue of Jammu and Kashmir with Holbrook and so compelled Obama to
remove the issue from Holbrook's portfolio.
At the same time, the Indian government released a dossier substantiating
its claim that the December attacks on Mumbai were planned in jihadist
terror training camps in Pakistan and enjoyed the support of the ISI.
Moreover, in response to Khan's release from house arrest on Friday, India
called for the international community to list Pakistan as a terror state.
In acting as it has, India has made two things clear to the Obama
administration. First, it will not allow Washington to appease Pakistan at
its expense. Second, it will do whatever it believes is necessary to secure
its own interests both diplomatically and militarily.
A sound example for the next government to follow.
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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