The arrival of new Secretary of State and the start of a new Presidential term would appear to be a risky time to be making predictions about U.S. foreign policy. But the question is important and the main pressures on the administration are already clear.

PARALYSIS AT HOME
It is normal for American Presidents to spend more effort on foreign policy in their second terms than they did in their first. This happens for two reasons. A minor one is that many Presidents had little foreign policy experience before becoming President; this was true of Clinton and Bush, and is true of Obama. More important, Presidents often turn to foreign policy in the second term because that is what is left. In domestic policy a President can do almost nothing without Congress, and although they usually start with a lot of political leverage when first elected, this usually wears off quickly (Obama, of course, never had it). So they turn to foreign policy, where—through their command of the military and control of bureaucracies such as the State Department and intelligence agencies—they still have power that they can use directly.

Obama’s second term will not follow this pattern, not because he can do less domestically than before but because the domestic crisis is so severe. His main problem all along has been the partisan polarization of American politics, which is now more extreme than at any time since the aftermath of the Civil War over 140 years ago. The parties’ inability to co-operate on even basic issues led to a crisis in July 2011 where the U.S. came within a day of defaulting on its debt. That crisis was not resolved but merely re-scheduled—quite literally, scheduled—for December 2012. At the last moment the crisis was postponed again, to this March. If that too is postponed rather than resolved, the crisis will recur every three months. (Part of the problem is an odd law called the ‘debt ceiling’ which basically says that even after Congress authorizes spending the government cannot pay those obligations unless Congress separately authorizes that.)

This rolling, paralyzing crisis consumes almost all of the administration’s energy, and it could well continue for the reminder of Obama’s Presidency. Given the primary system that the parties use to select their candidates, there is no prospect of reduced partisanship. Nor could the impasse be resolved by the Democrats gaining full control of Congress in 2014. The districts that were drawn for the House of Representatives in 2012 essentially guarantee continued Republican control of at least that house until the next time those districts are re-drawn, which will not be until 2022.

A Republican win in the 2016 Presidential election could produce united government, but there is no way that it can happen sooner.

OUT OF ENERGY AND IDEAS ABROAD
Even if Obama had the political opportunity and attention for foreign policy, he has few opportunities, especially not in the Middle East.

The new Secretary of State won’t change this. John Kerry was a decorated Vietnam War hero who later became the main spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War. A U.S. Senator for 28 years, he opposed covert operations to try to overthrow the leftist regime in Nicaragua in the 1980s; opposed the First Gulf War; supported the second (which he came to regret); and was defeated for President in 2004 partly because he was seen as less willing to be aggressive in the ‘war on terror.’ Overall, he can be expected to favor a less militarized U.S. foreign policy and more engagement with new regimes and dissidents in the Arab world.

The fact that Obama will be completely consumed by the domestic crisis may give Kerry more freedom than American diplomats normally have. But it will also he mean that he will have no muscle. Kerry can say what he wants, but no initiative that requires serious use of U.S. power or any economic or political risk is really going to happen.

Obama will hate to go down in history as having followed George W. Bush in anything, but he will be the second U.S. President in a row not to make a serious effort to cope with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He can’t. Ever since Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 led to control by Hamas and a seemingly never-ending barrage of rockets—never mind that few of the rockets ever hit anything and that most of them have been fired by extremists whom Hamas has sought to suppress—support among Israelis for negotiations or for confronting their own settler extremists has drained away. Last week’s election slightly reduced the control of hard-liners in Israeli Knesset, but not enough to the government’s policy toward the Palestinians.

Nor could the U.S. coerce Israelis but threatening to cut back its financial aid, for three reasons. No U.S. President would have the political stomach for it. Presidents don’t control this anyway; Congress does. And as Israel’s economy has grown while the aid has not, it has become simply unimportant, now equal to just over 1% of Israel’s GDP.

Obama can’t do much about Syria either. Most Americans—who pay attention to Syria at all—and most in Congress are more concerned about Islamist extremists than about Assad’s abuses. The humanitarian left in the U.S. wants to help the rebels, but they are few. Actually the humanitarians have more representation in the White House than in the country at large—Hillary Clinton sympathized, and Kerry may—but Obama is not one of them and will not take risks to please them. The recent U.S.-led effort to help secular and ‘moderate’ rebels organize to exclude the Islamists was meant to open the way for at least a little more U.S., European, and Turkish aid, but the consensus in Washington is that this has failed. Since events in Syria are moving, one cannot say what the U.S. might do next year, but nothing much for now.

At no point has the administration had ideas for dealing with the Arab Spring, or with the ‘War on Terror,’ except to continue substituting drones for conventional military power, intelligence, and serious political engagement. And since drone strikes reduce U.S. legitimacy, if the administration ever does get serious about engaging with the new regimes, or with dissidents still trying to reform or replace old ones, it will have less leverage than a year ago or even today.
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On Iran they will stick with current policy, contradictory as it is, because the political costs of moving in either a softer or a harder direction would be too high.

FATIGUE
The American public is sick of Iraq and Afghanistan, as are Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretary Kerry, and the other key people in the administration. Although the Karzai regime has abandoned its former confidence that it could survive without the Americans and, accordingly, has shifted from telling the U.S. to stop bothering it about reform to begging for a more U.S. combat troops to remain after 2014, they will not get them. Things will go bad, and the administration will be blamed for that at home, but they will not put in—or keep in—more troops (or much money). Not only do they not want to, they could not get the political support from their own party.

Iraq, including Kurdistan, can be saved for last, because they do not even exist. Not in current American politics, anyway. And no one, besides a few regional experts, wants to bring them back. If you mention Iraq today to an American voter—or Congressman or Senator—their first thought is: “that reminds me of Afghanistan, and I do not want to think about that.” Iraq avoidance has gone so far by now that is hard to see what could happen in Iraq, short of Iran annexing the country, that could rouse Washington to pay attention.


Sorry, folks. You’re on your own.


Chaim Kaufmann
Associate Professor
International Relations
Lehigh University

January 30, 2013