After the Syrian slapstick, it's time to sober up U.S. foreign policy.
By Daniel Henniger
After writing in the London Telegraph that Monday was "the worst day
for U.S. and wider Western diplomacy since records began," former
British ambassador Charles Crawford asked simply: "How has this happened?"
On the answer, opinions might differ. Or maybe not. A consensus
assessment of the past week's events could easily form around Oliver
Hardy's famous lament to the compulsive bumbler Stan Laurel: "Here's another nice mess you've gotten us into!"
In the interplay between Barack Obama and John Kerry,
it's not obvious which one is Laurel and which one is Hardy. But
diplomatic slapstick is not funny. No one wants to live in a Laurel and
Hardy presidency. In a Laurel and Hardy presidency, red lines vanish,
shots across the bow are word balloons, and a display of U.S. power with
the whole world watching is going to be "unbelievably small."
The past week was a perfect storm of
American malfunction. Colliding at the center of a serious
foreign-policy crisis was Barack Obama's manifest skills deficit,
conservative animosity toward Mr. Obama, Republican distrust of his
leadership, and the reflexive opportunism of politicians from Washington
to Moscow.
It is Barack Obama's impulse to make
himself and whatever is in his head the center of attention. By now, we
are used to it. But this week he turned himself, the presidency and the
United States into a spectacle. We were alternately shocked and agog at
these events. Now the sobering-up has to begin.
The world has effectively lost its nominal leader, the U.S.
president. Is this going to be the new normal? If so—and it will be so
if serious people don't step up—we are looking at a weakened U.S
president who has a very, very long three years left on his term.
The belief by some that we can ride
this out till a Reagan-like rescue comes in the 2016 election is wrong.
Jimmy Carter's Iranian hostage crisis began on Nov. 4, 1979. One quick
year later, the American people turned to Ronald Reagan. There will be
no such chance next year or the year after that—not till November 2016.
The libertarian lurch on foreign policy
among some Republicans is a dead end. Libertarians understand markets.
But left alone, the global market in aggression won't clear. Like a
malign, untreated tumor, it will grow. You can't program it to kill only
non-Americans. The world's worst impulses run by their own logic.
What's going to stop them now?
A congressional vote against that Syria resolution was never going to
include a sequester for the Middle East. Iran's 16,600
uranium-enrichment centrifuges are spinning. Iran's overflights of Iraq
to resupply Damascus with heavy arms and Quds forces will continue until
Assad wins. Turkey and Saudi Arabia, U.S. allies, will start
condominium talks with Iran, a U.S. enemy. Israel will do what it must,
if it can.
On Wednesday the Russian press reported that the Putin government has
sold state-of-the-art S-300 anti-aircraft missiles and batteries to
Iran, a system with the capability to create a no-fly zone along the
Syrian-Lebanon border. It should be running like clockwork by 2016.
Europe will consider a reset with the new status quo.
There also isn't going to be a continuing resolution that defines
limits for China the next 40 months. Articles now appear routinely
describing how the U.S. "pivot" toward Asia is no longer believed by
Asians. What if, after watching this week's Syrian spectacle, China next
year lands a colony of fishermen on the Diaoyu Islands, known as the
Senkakus to their Japanese claimants?
China on Tuesday warned India about
setting up new military posts along their disputed 4,000-kilometer
border. Is North Korea's Kim Jong Un on hold till 2016? There isn't
going to be a House vote to repeal al Qaeda, which can still threaten
U.S. personnel or assets around the world.
The White House, Congress and Beltway pundits are exhaling after the
president of Russia took America off the hook of that frightful
intervention vote by offering, in the middle of a war, to transfer
Syria's chemical weapons inventory to the U.N.—a fairy tale if ever
there was one. Ask any chemical-weapons disposal specialist.
Syria looks lost. The question now is whether anyone who participated
in the fiasco, from left to right, will adjust to avoid a repeat when
the next crisis comes.
The president himself needs somehow to look beyond his own instinct
on foreign policy. It's just not enough. The administration badly needs a
formal strategic vision. Notwithstanding her piece of Benghazi,
National Security Advisor Susan Rice,
who gave a surprisingly tough speech Monday on the failure of the U.N.
process and America's role now, may be the insider to start shaping a
post-Syria strategy. Somebody has to do it. Conservative critics can
carp for three years, which will dig the hole deeper, or contribute to a
way forward.
Allowing this week to become the status quo is unthinkable. A
40-month run of Laurel and Hardy's America will endanger everyone.
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