China.org.cn
September 30, 2013
The Obama Doctrine
By Zhao Jinglun
In his lengthy and tedious remarks delivered at the UN General Assembly, President Obama, bold as brass, tried to portray Washington as peace-loving and war-hating. But its record clearly shows the contrary: it is a hegemon of war and intervention.
He repeated several times “peace is hard.” Why is peace so hard? Primarily because of the U.S. policy of war and intervention. The country has waged hundreds of wars and intervened in very corner of planet earth since its founding. Is Obama trying to change course?
He said that the U.S. is drawing down in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it is doing so not just “to build our nation at home,” but also to rebalance to the Asia/Pacific region to contain China. And it is still energetically intervening in the Middle East. He brazenly declared: “The United States of America is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests in the region….We will ensure the free flow of energy from the region to the world.” As Jeremy Scahill pointed out: “He basically came out and said the United States is an imperialist nation and we are going to do whatever we need to conquer areas to take resources from the world.”
It is incredible that when he talked about the Arab Spring and said “Ben Ali and Mubarak are no longer in power,” he did not mention the fact that it was the United States who propped those dictators up for so many years. And Washington is still supporting the Egyptian military junta.
When he talked about free and fair elections, he did not explain why Washington supports the Egyptian junta, which staged a military coup that ousted free and fairly elected President Morsi. It is only elections that elevated Washington’s clients that it would recognize.
He insisted that Bashar al-Assad must go. But whether Assad stays or not should be up to the Syrian people to decide. And to his surprise, the so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels commanders on the ground announced that they were joining al-Qaeda, and that they are through with the “National Council” and are organizing their own “Islamist Alliance.”
That group includes Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate, the lead signatory; the Tawheed Brigade, the biggest Free Syrian Army unit in Aleppo and Liwa al-Islam, the largest rebel group in Damascus; and Ahrar al-Sham, a franchise of mostly Syrian Salafist fighters. The group claims to represent seventy-five percent of the rebels fighting to oust Assad.
As we said earlier, Obama has chosen to side with the comrades of those who brought down the World Trade Center towers and rammed the Pentagon on 9-11.
Fortunately, the UNSC resolution on Syrian chemical weapons paved the way for a negotiated settlement of the Syrian civil war.
So what is the Obama Doctrine? It is not yet an established term. According to The New York Times’ David Sanger, it is Obama’s “deep reluctance to use American power in long, drawn-out conflicts where national interests were remote and allies were missing.” So he opts for an expanded drone war and cyber attacks on Iran’s nuclear program.
In this, he took the life line thrown him by Putin, and heeded the warning by his former defense chief Bob Gates, who asked: “Haven’t Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya taught us something about the unintended consequences of military action?”
In the three years and two months left of his presidency, he will take two high-risk diplomatic initiatives: finding a negotiated end to the Iran confrontation (see my previous column) and creating a Palestinian state side by side with Israel with the latter’s security guaranteed.
Successive American administrations failed in settling the Israel-Palestine dispute because of Washington’s lopsided support of Israel. Can Obama overcome that bias? That remains to be seen.
The author is a columnist with China.org.cn.
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