The Obama era is over; one phase ends and another begins, over which projections of different orientations hang. whatever the political stature of the new President of the United States, it will be his name that will monopolize media spaces around the world for the next four years.
For Trump, 45th US President, there will be many knots to be solved in the future but the most complex legacy to manage will certainly be on the level of international relations. The fact is not unknown: for the first time in at least two decades a substantial part of the electoral debate has focused on foreign policy, polarized on antithetical positions.
The theme is back for two reasons: the US returns to question their role after a quarter of a century lived as a superpolitiotto in the world; the geopolitical balances of the planet have substantially changed.
With regard to the first consideration, the problem of global hegemony is at stake, wedged between an ethical and an economic question. Between subjective and objective principles, however, the debate is mostly internal to the States and the world cannot help but take note.
Regarding the changes in geopolitical balances in the world, America is instead dealing with what has materialized during the years of Barack Obama's double mandate. From active subject it becomes passive and the state of things is not comforting.
Squeezed between the imposition method that inevitably is inherent in the imperial logic of a superpower and the ideological necessity of being politically correct, the Obama administration has brought home embarrassing results in terms of foreign policy.
Let's go by order, trying to outline the products of 8 years of management by geographical area.
Let's start from the allied par excellence, Israel. In the March 2015 elections, Obama publicly sided with Isaac Herzog, leader of the Labor Left, which polls gave a secure lead over the Likud of Netanyahu. However, overtaking does not take place and relations between the new Israeli government and the US freeze.
The cold for the truth had begun already before, when the position of the DEM administration on the Palestinian question was now clear was not in line with the right of Tel Aviv. The bad relations between Democrats and Likud they bring the US and Israel to the greatest political distance since the founding of the Jewish state. Netanyahu also swallows the nuclear deal with Iran; closes like a hedgehog and enjoys the end of the Obama mandate.
In the 2010 the diplomatic relations between Turkey and Israel. It is the beginning of the Erdogan era, then Prime Minister in Ankara. The support given to Muslim Brotherhood, very close to Hamas and therefore, the irreconcilable enemies of Tel Aviv, had sensitively shifted Turkey to the front of Palestine (we have discussed the matter on these pages many times). The historic alliance between Tel Aviv and Ankara is broken but Obama succeeds in the incredible enterprise of worsening relations with both.
The process is slow but the definitive turning point is in July 2016, when Erdogan (now President) foils the coup and openly accuses the US of having organized it. Turkey's independent policy continues in Syria, where it embarrasses the US with the operation Shield of the Euphrates aimed at containing the Kurds across the border. Washington supports the Kurds against ISIS to have a foot in Syria, but in front of the Turkish NATO ally, it is preparing to sacrifice precisely the much-advocated Kurds of the Rojava.
In the meantime, Turkey is getting closer to Russia with which it revitalizes the agreement for the buried subject Turkish Stream. Considering that Erdogan has control of the second armed forces of the Atlantic Alliance, there are many questions to ask about the future.
Speaking of Syria, we are facing the biggest political disaster packaged by Obama. Words echo in the 2013
"Assad has days counted ...".
We are at the end of 2016 and we are still counting. After having armed the ranks of anti-Assad rebels (including many Islamist groups), the US is retreating into a corner by rejecting any compromise with Damascus and its ally Moscow. The Russian military intervention freezes the military situation and stems the attempt to direct the last piece of an Arab Spring from the outside, now recognized as heterodirect even in the eyes of public opinion.
The political disaster in Syria unmasks the curious conduct of the war on terrorism in the eyes of world public opinion. Who and what is behind the ISIS? Who continues to help the Islamist gangs that rage in the country? In any case, Assad and his are winning the war. This is enough and progresses.
Libya. The Nobel Peace Prize Barack Obama, pushed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and aided by France, in the 2011 makes war on Gaddafi. The Libyan disaster, seen from the point of view of Washington, at first is a victory: a hostile country first, becomes a land of access for the management of a huge energy treasure. The Libyan question, however, is complicated. At present, the Government of National Unity of Tripoli controls less than a third of the territory and above all does not manage the main oil fields. In the middle there is General Haftar, a friend of Egypt and Russia, downloaded from the CIA a few years earlier.
Speaking Egypt. Cairo, after the turning point of Sadat's Camp David, had passed from the Nasserian socialist tradition to an open collaboration with the West. The US at the time had managed to get hold of the largest piece of the Arab mosaic, making a great gift to Israel and the West. Mubarak had supervised this position for 30 years.
In the Obama years we have the privilege of witnessing the aforementioned Arab Spring. Cade Mubarak and in Cairo for a year rule i Muslim Brotherhood by Morsi. It is a critical moment, but very little is said about it. In spite of the politically correct, this time Obama supports the coup of General Al Sisi, taking Egypt back by the hair and putting it back on track. Al Sisi, despite being of the same extraction as Mubarak, however, has a more nuanced vision of Egyptian foreign policy: he supports Haftar in Libya with serious embarrassment by the West and above all he clings with Putin, even putting on the table the rent of military bases and maneuvers joint. Not only that: Cairo chirps with its historical enemy Iran and shuns its traditional ally Saudi Arabia. Egypt with Russia, Iran and Syria? In spite of the Sunni-Shiite divisions, the scenario is new and the strategic upheaval for the US is total.
With reference to Putin and relations with Russia, we could write hours. We limit ourselves to saying that from the 1991 to today the relations between Washington and Moscow had never been so bad. The bad management of the crisis in Ukraine, economic sanctions and rearmament in Eastern Europe had not happened even at the time of Bush Bush's second term, when the enlargement of NATO in the East was already completed and Putin was already consolidated at the power. Chapeau!
We said about Bush; it goes without saying that every political decision is influenced by those that took place previously. If this in part absolves the policy of Obama, in turn heir to a decade of wars fought by the US around the world, it does not protect him from criticism in the management of the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq. The war in Afghanistan has been going on quietly for 15 years. In 2010, 10 years after the start of the conflict, there were about 4 deaths a day in the anti-Taliban coalition. We are far from the 10 daily deaths in Vietnam, but to be a victory it would have to be said. Obama has reduced the US contingent (to almost 3000 total casualties), but he could not find a way out. The next president will have to end the war and in all likelihood accept a return of the Taliban to power.
Even in Iraq, 13 years later Iraqi Freedom, the situation remained in limbo. The de facto withdrawal was never implemented, on the contrary, the Americans had to return. It is precisely in these hours that we fight in Mosul, with a direct US involvement. Taking for granted the errors between the 2003 and the 2008, one wonders if in the years after it could be done more.
ISIS and international terrorism we have already talked between the lines. Let's just add that the Middle East, endemically unstable, now offers very few safe harbors for Washington. The future President will have to re-establish relations with all the subjects, one by one. Last but not least with the enigmatic Saudi Arabia, with which the US will have to solve the Yemen mange, now adrift.
While new Asian powers are consolidating on the horizon and other certainties vanish (with Obama the United States accepted Chinese expansionism in the Far East and also lost the secular support of the Philippines) we will see what will happen from 2017 onwards. Downsizing or total war? the USA is at an important crossroads. Much of our future life depends on this.
(photo: US gov - US Army)
