Early on the morning of Friday 9th October President Barack Obama was woken up with the news that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, the third American President to do so, and the first to win in the award in less than a year of office. The official citation praised ‘his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples’, and affirmed that ‘Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play’.

But there seemed to be some confusion over why exactly he’d received the prize – was it for work already done or merely a gesture of support for the principles that Obama has pledged to uphold? The White House Press Office said through one its spokesmen that Obama saw the award as ‘a call to action’. And the Nobel Committee stated shortly after the announcement that it was a sort of ‘vote of confidence’ in Barack Obama’s international policy. But in answer to criticism over the choice of Obama, committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland argued to the Associated Press that ‘he got the prize for what he has done’.

Obama’s diplomacy

As the Economist noted in its article 'Saying all the Right Things’, Barack Obama ‘excels at public diplomacy’. From the start of his election campaign the sound-bites came relentlessly: a push for ‘dignity promotion’ over ‘democracy promotion’; the choice he weighed of being ‘strong and wrong’ vs. ‘weak and right’ and the extension of diplomatic hands to unclenched fists have all been broadcast worldwide. And whether it’s soft power or smart power as he likes to call it, it sure is popular power: he has been received by teeming crowds in Cairo, Berlin and Prague.

But what is the Obama Doctrine? As American Prospect wrote in its feature article on the subject in March 2008, it promised to be sweeping, and revolutionary. But other than his much-debated change of focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, the official line on foreign affairs appears little more than a policy of engagement in international relations and the desire to include other countries in tackling global issues like climate change and nuclear proliferation.

Such language – for the contrast it offered with the Bush Era – was of course wonderful electoral rhetoric. But how far has it carried through in practice? Charles Krauthammer is leading a vanguard of Republican critics who are increasingly bold in speaking out against Obama’s ‘enthusiasms’; but more moderate voices are raising concerns too. To make a brief and sweeping review:

Problem states

Iran’s recent revelations regarding its nuclear facility at Qom have given rise to further worry that it is nearing a nuclear capability; or at least that a warren of other such sites are already in existence. And although the US was quick to criticise Iran for concealing its developments from the IAEA, Iran’s political fortunes – or specifically those of the irrepressible Ahmadinejad – seem to have changed miraculously since the international condemnation that surrounded the rigged election in June and severe repression since. Only a few days after the revelations, following multilateral talks on – guess what – nuclear technology, Iran gave only mild concessions in exchange for the boost to Ahmadinejad’s legitimacy that the talks represented, and was promptly invited to more talks to take place later in October. These talks concluded last week with the US getting Russia and France onside for plans for low-level enrichment of Iran’s uranium (to take place in Russia, then France), though this important step forward, however, has not yet been confirmed by Iran itself.

In addition, there has been small success in halting or reversing North Korea’s nuclear programme. The ‘grave threat’ that Obama set down in the spring when it emerged that Pyongyang had tested nuclear weapons for the second time has not so far been followed up with a comprehensive strategy.

Estranged international relations

Though the possibility for future bilateral agreements with China still looks hopeful, Hilary Clinton’s decision to take human rights off the table in such talks prompted criticism and shows just how careful – and, occasionally, how illiberal – the much-vaunted policy of ‘engagement’ can really be. Ex-Czech President Vaclav Havel, referring to Obama as ‘the fresh holder of the Nobel Peace Prize’, was quick to cast doubt on this and Obama’s earlier decision to delay his meeting with the Dalai Lama until after a summit with China. And the Six Party Talks that Obama has set such store by in Asia have so far yielded little.

Furthermore, relations with Russia has been cold, despite the apparent rapprochement recently brokered over Iranian uranium. The US’ climbdown over missile bases in Poland saw little reaction and an avowal from Medvedev that the transferral of missiles to Kaliningrad, on its western-most reaches and bordering Poland, would continue as before. The Administration’s attempts to secure something in return provoked a harsh response from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who lambasted not only ‘threats’ and ‘sanctions’ on America’s part but also ‘threats of pressure’ as ‘counter-productive’.

Israel-Palestine

Operation Cast Lead has cast a significant shadow over Obama’s first 9 months, though it has been met by no forceful condemnation from the White House. The criticism outlined by the Goldstone Report – that recommends Israelis and Palestinians both conduct further investigations or face referral to a war-crimes tribunal – is unlikely to be acted on, despite the fact that it has now been endorsed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. And although the Goldstone report was carelessly partisan in some of its conclusions, the American pressure that caused Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority to delay endorsement of the report until March 2010 has done much to undermine Abbas’ own fragile support in Palestine.

Meanwhile relations with Israel have been unsteady. A high-level meeting of Middle East experts at the White House this summer was expected to see a tougher stance being adopted vis-à-vis Israel, with advisers still apparently scratching their heads over how tough they want to get on the ‘natural growth’ settlements that Netanyahu has thus far defended in the West Bank. Conversely, the Obama administration’s decision to delay welcoming Israeli ministers and the head of state himself caused the Israeli Right to react caustically and has seen a serious cooling of relations.

Global challenges

The Nobel citation recognised Obama’s ‘vision of…a world without nuclear weapons’ and for ‘meeting the great climactic challenges the world is confronting’, and accordingly we might turn last to Obama’s record on such global issues.

i. Nuclear proliferation

As North Korea and Iran have seemingly progressed ever closer to a continentally-ranged nuclear strike capacity, China showed no sign of listening to US overtures at the UN General Assembly meeting and offered no criticism of Iran’s nuclear programme.

Nuclear treaties – foremost among them the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 – are in dire need of reform, or at least shoring up with intermediate steps. The ‘grand global bargain’ that Gordon Brown suggested, that would see nuclear powers offering civil nuclear power to non-nuclear countries and the creation of an international uranium bank, has been about the most definite statement we’ve heard on the subject, and as yet White House policy remains vague on how to move towards Obama’s ideal world without nuclear weapons.

ii. Climate change

Here we see a major global policy forum in the forthcoming Copenhagen Climate Conference, that Obama will have to interrupt as it happens in order go to Oslo and receive his Peace Prize. But it is perhaps most indicative of another problem that global Obama-philes are apt to forget: the serious domestic opposition that Obama faces to many of his proposals in a skeptical Congress, such as the establishment of a European cap-and-trade system for carbon across a global market.

iii. And of course, last but not least, a coordinated international response to the financial crisis and the creation of a new multilateral forum, the G-20, which has already seen 3 meetings in its first year alone.

Economics and regionalism

It would seem that we are some way from the ideal of working multilateral diplomacy yet. And it is ironically in taking this last point – Obama’s response to the global recession – arguably the most successful and certainly the best coordinated of the various facets to the White House’s stance on foreign relations, that further problems unravel.

For the various attempts to repair the economic damage that has stemmed from the economic collapse faced by Lehman Brothers in September 2008 have seen widely divergent approaches even as heads-of-state discussed coordinated interest rate reductions: in Europe, to take the subject in our own particular microcosm, the paltry size of the EU budget compared to its GDP has seen fissures open between the Anglo-Saxon and the continental models. And on a larger scale, it has heated tensions between America and China over the latter's supposed manipulation of the yuan to keep it undervalued and thereby artificially boost Chinese exports to America, feeding on the burgeoning American trade deficit.

Protectionism, the bete noire of any economic multilateralist, has reared its head in certain sectors too – whether over Chinese tyres sold in the States or in the German encouragement to ‘Buy European’ in choosing green energy products. Additionally, the financial stimulation that Treasuries have dealt out to their banks has largely been with an eye to stimulating domestic demand.

The financial climate is, in many ways, if not a force for economic nationalism, at least a strain on the multilateral dreams of a Western world; and certainly a natural push towards what one might call ‘regionalism’: the consolidation of economic relations around regional trading blocs. These in turn are likely to form the foundation for the ‘regional and subregional security organisations’ that Lord Hannay identified in his address to Trinity College last week as one of the most important features in the future development of international relations.

China’s relationship with America in particular deserves more attention. China’s role as the foil to America’s excessive consumption is well known, with the country now sitting on $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves, most of it in US dollars. And with all the media attention fixed on the collapse of Lehman Brothers many observers may have overlooked another highly significant event that happened in September 2008 – China becoming America’s biggest creditor, having finally overtaken Japan.

This is, unfortunate as we may find it, very much the ‘special relationship’ of the 21st century, with Obama warning of ‘trillion dollar deficits for years to come’ shortly before taking office. Niall Ferguson writes: ‘the big question today is whether Chimerica stays together or comes apart because of this crisis. If it stays together, you can see a path out of the woods. If it splits up, say goodbye to globalisation’.

China’s economic influence – and the political leverage that it exerts – should not be underestimated, for we have only seen the beginning. In March 2009 in an unprecedented (and unmatchable) move it demanded that the US ‘guarantee the safety’ of $1 trillion in US bonds. And lurking behind such a demand is the threat that the Chinese Treasury could choose to stop buying US bonds, or worse, sell swathes of them in bulk, pushing the cost of American lending up and triggering the inflation bubble that everyone in Washington is hoping will stay away. In any case, the financial crisis has more readily attuned Americans to what goes on beyond their own borders in creating the conditions for their own financial strength.

The G-20 is just one belated indication of the greater participation of other prominent economies on the world stage, although one is tempted to ask whether this new grouping will be effective as a political-economic taskforce or whether it is merely a de facto recognition of a few more loose cannons on deck.

Certainly, the global economic growth will not be looking to Obama’s leadership alone: the IMF in its 2009 annual forecast predicted that 100 percent of global growth this year would come from emerging markets. And whilst this has been revised as the US has performed better than expected, it is unsurprisingly China at the head of a colourful pack: it is set to expand by 9 percent, whilst India is anticipated to grow by 6.4 percent, a rising Brazil to reach well over 2 percent in 2 years, and Japan to grow by 1.7 percent, all substantially greater than the US’ 1.5 percent growth.

Just numbers perhaps? One statistic to make you sit up is Goldman Sachs’ prediction of last year that the combined GDP of the BRIC countries – Brazil, India, Russia and China – would be greater than the combined GDP of the original G7 economies by 2035; more recently that figure has been revised down to 2027. And as Fareed Zakaria notes in his book, The Post-American World, ‘the current global recession makes them more, not less, confident’.

The question then, is how to capture that confidence as a multilateral diplomatic force, something recent economic developments seem to have made still harder, and Obama’s foreign policy has built its credibility on doing?

The United Nations

Here one cannot but turn to the keystone of multilateral diplomacy – the United Nations, in particular in the light of the recent General Assembly meeting this September. Almost as a farce in the Commedia dell’Arte vein, the media seemed to exult in portraying the pantomime hero Obama ranged against such caricatured villains as Gaddafi and Ahmadinejad.

Small consolation, perhaps, might be drawn in the fact that after Gaddafi’s hour and a half long oration Gordon Brown changed his speech in order to stand up and give a firm defence of the UN’s principles. Very small consolation indeed, in fact – for almost no-one reported it. The delegations at the UN General Assembly passed by like characters in Longhi masks, apparently defined by an unobserved body of bureaucrats adorned by hyperbolic heads of state, reported for their denunciations or high-flown idealism in turn.

But as a serious multilateralist, I would argue that Obama has to prioritise UN reform, and that in doing so we might see some answers emerge. In brief:

The Security Council needs to be refashioned: Its permanent members derive their status from the settlement that concluded the Second World War, a thoroughly anachronistic representation of international power relations today. It does not include the world’s second and fourth largest economies by GDP – Japan and Germany – nor the world’s largest democracy, India, nor are South America or Africa even represented.

As Luiz Inacio de Silva remarked of the Security Council just over a year ago, ‘Its distorted form of representation stands between us and the multilateral world to which we aspire’. This in turn persuades many countries that the UN is the ‘Western’ organisation that anti-American radicals have long accused it of being. It sees China far more prone to engaging in bilateral relations with countries on its own ground than it is to going through the UN, just as Deng Xiaoping’s famous maxim that China would ‘hide its light under a bushel’ was in deference to a ‘Western’ foreign policy of intervention and engagement. With the US now increasingly feeling the limits to its strength in relative terms it will become vitally necessary to co-opt China and other countries into the UN as a working supranational mechanism. To this end we need to see a larger permanent or semi-permanent membership, certainly comprising Germany, Japan, India and Brazil.

Secondly, if more countries are brought in as permanent members of the Security Council, it is essential that the veto is not a part of that status (hence a possible distinction as ‘semi-permanent members’). The veto, after all, has in many ways been the greatest hindrance to consensus within the Security Council, allowing trenchant opposition to remain firm and acting as a constant break to progress.

It would also be a concrete move towards a majority voting system in the Security Council, even if the vetos currently held by permanent members are unlikely to be relinquished. But as such it could energise debate and support around the UN Security Council in a climate where it is frequently disregarded by governments and their citizens alike; international condemnation, for example, would mean a lot more as a diplomatic tool if the threat of sanctions or censure could be raised against even some of the permanent members. As Secretary of State Cordell Hull said at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference that began the shaping of the United Nations Charter, "No institution will endure unless there is behind it considered and complete public support". A wider SC membership that was based on a stronger consensus, and not just the lowest common denominator, would be a way to mobilise that support.

A third major innovation that might be more palatable to those at Washington of the John Bolton ilk would be that America is made to contribute less to the running of the United Nations, for at present the contributions are wildly unbalanced: Spain, at almost 3 percent of the UN Budget, currently contributes more than China, whilst Belgium contributes only 0.1 percent less than Russia. The United States is largest contributor to the UN budget at 22 percent with a margin of 2.5 percent before the second largest, Japan, and an immense distance before the third largest, Germany, which contributes 8.66 percent. The average contribution is less than one percent.

This has long been a problem for two main reasons: on the one hand, foot-dragging American officials who enjoy diplomatic freedom in practice whilst espousing the need for international cooperation on the world stage can simultaneously obstruct those resolutions that would commit the States to decisive action (recall the early Bush veto to set up the International Criminal Court, for instance) and complain of a slothful and bloated bureaucracy. Secondly, it has seen other countries, who can’t possibly hope to match the US’ investments, deterred by such a singularly weighted budget, or else barter their payments in return for recognition with the appointment of a national in a prominent position. A payment structure that is more reflective of economic realities, and ideally capped, should be put into place.

Conclusion

So what was it that Obama actually said at the UN? For beside lengthy coverage of his call for national unity set alongside the vociferous demands and accusations of Gaddafi and Ahmadinejad, apparently little scrutiny was given to the real weight of his speech. Obama in fact said: ‘Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone…now is the time for all of us to take our share of the responsibility for a global response to global challenges…if we are honest with ourselves, we need to admit that we are not living up to that responsibility’.

But one cannot but help feel that such an admission is merely the first and most necessary step. Delicate attempts to reconcile Obama as figurehead or Obama as herald of a new era with the challenges he himself has laid down have been too prone to idealise the man as a statesman and have frequently led to uncomfortable corrections for reality. But in part the US administration and the president appear to blame, for despite the warnings he gave Europe at his Berlin speech of ‘constant work and sustained sacrifice,’ few concrete projections have been forthcoming and clear rules of policy are often left to induction – Joe Biden’s own speech, at Munich some six months ago, appeared a confused hash of electoral projection.

The United States holds the torch as far as meaningful multilateral diplomacy is concerned. This is the apparently contradictory situation that lies at the heart of the issue and needs to see a firmer line being taken by the United States in delineating how multilateral diplomacy is going to work effectively in the 21st century. And ironically, such resolution is going to need to see a corresponding cultural shift in diplomacy away from the US. We have had our global policy forums, and the G-20 has achieved impressive coordination in responding to the financial crisis. But if these are to be followed up effectively it is going to require a political energy and a willingness to criticise, and the reform of the pre-eminent multilateral political forum – the United Nations – to ensure that such energy is not dissipated as hot air.

The United States is the only country that can effectively apply such energy. And if Obama is the first to argue that American leadership in international relations must be replaced with a more cooperative system, that does not preclude the United States facilitating the transition. ‘Strong and wrong’ vs. ‘weak and right’ is simply not a realistic emphasis for a country that is going to be the largest economy in the world for decades to come, that spends more than double the European Union and almost ten times as much as China on defence, and that will no doubt continue to be the greatest advocate for effective multilateralism, including intervention in other countries should that become necessary. Obama’s foreign policy needs to recognise that. But it also needs to build such progress on concrete steps that so far have been hard to identify. Whilst this writer would be the first to applaud Obama for his intentions, his acceptance of a Nobel Prize for Peace ‘for work he has already done’ when the real test of his multilateralism is only just beginning seems a questionable way to go about achieving his stated foreign policy objectives.