The Foreign Policy Association has asked the blog team to write a special post in which we review the year in light of the specific focus of our blog. I’ve reviewed my past blog posts and the Twitter posts to try to get a sense of the year, to see what made an impression on me and what stands out. For the U.S. Role in the World I can think of no better topic for the review than to call this The Year of Great Expectations. This was the year in which the inauguration of Barack Obama promised to bring change to the way the U.S. related to the world. The foreign policy of the U.S. was to be transformed, our alliances strengthened, relations restored and bridges built. As the year ends we can note that the U.S. attempted to reset relations with Russia (with sometimes comical results), strengthened the relationship with India while working on a very complex relationship with neighbor Pakistan, and called on Europe and NATO to share a greater burden in the war in Afghanistan.
Person of the Year: Barack Obama
Who made the biggest impact on your topic in 2009? From a U.S. Role perspective I can think of no other person than President Obama. His election catalyzed all the hopes and aspirations that people all over the world have for the U.S. and our foreign policy. He became the embodiment of their expectations for an idealized version of the U.S. role. How else to explain the decision by the Nobel committee to bestow the Peace Prize on a president so early in the newly won term? They clearly see Obama as a peace advocate and invested their hopes for peace in him. Their hopes were not unfounded, of course, Obama’s call for nuclear disarmament, his dramatic steps toward reaching out toward the Muslim world, and his first foray into the muddle of Mideast peace all gave rise to hopes that his peace initiatives would soon yield results.
Most Unexpected Event: Our Realist President?
As the year ends, the expectations built up by President Obama have been, if not dashed, greatly diminished. If winning the Nobel Peace Prize represents a symbol of the great expectations that the world has for Obama’s transformation of the U.S. role in the world, his acceptance speech represents a conscious repudiation of unrealistically high expectations. The most unexpected event of the year was the slow transformation of Obama from the idealist who called for global nuclear disarmament to the realist who told the Nobel committee that sometimes force in necessary to confront evil. Obama revealed himself to be a pragmatist who stubbornly insisted on attainable goals to the dismay and disappointment of environmental activists in Copenhagen, anti-war activists hoping for a withdrawal rather than an escalation in Afghanistan, and Mideast peace activists hoping for a U.S. imposed peace.
What to Watch for in 2010: The Return of Foreign Policy
How will the U.S. role change in the new year? Now that it appears that President Obama’s domestic legislative agenda is nearing an important victory with the passage of a health care bill, I’m looking forward to foreign policy taking center stage in 2010. President Obama’s foreign policy team has been hard a work on several initiatives and it’s likely that 2010 will see important milestones in U.S. – Russian relations as a new arms control treaty is signed, as well as some kind of official statement or memorandum of Obama’s goal for Mideast peace, perhaps his own version or revision of Bush’s “road map” to peace. 2010 will also be the year in which the U.S. will lead U.N. Security Council members in testing the limits of the diplomatic dance with Iran. Finally, 2010 will be the year in which “the surge” begins in Afghanistan and we are likely to see clear indications by year’s end of whether the troop surge has reversed the recent Taliban gains.
