It is a little like having a stomachache. The United States is struggling to operationalize its diplomacy in the ever changing landscape.  And its finding it hard to digest the changes without feeling rather sick.

So at the end of his 4-nation Asian trip President Obama pushed back against those who have grown increasingly critical of his foreign policy towards Russia, China and Syria, if not others. In his reaction Obama suggested that his policy was a game of what Americans call ‘small ball’:

You hit single, you hit doubles; every once in a while we may be able to hit a home run.

As NYT reporter Mark Lander suggested in his review of the just completed Asian trip:

… Mr. Obama said his foreign policy was based on a workmanlike tending to American priorities that might lack the high drama of a wartime presidency but also avoided ruinous mistakes.

Obama criticized those who seemed to be suggesting that the Administration should be considering force.  As Benjamin Rhodes, one of Obama’s national security advisers declared:

If we took all the actions that our critics have demanded, we’d lose count of the number of military conflicts that America would be engaged in,

So Obama sticks to the position that American policy does not call for the United States to turn to military action, and in particular not American boots on the ground.

But the uncertainty and nervousness grows with each crisis and there is little question that Russia’s actions in the Crimea, and now in eastern and southern Ukraine have rattled the beltway crowd.  Just weeks earlier as I noted in Rising BRICSAM experts declared that the post cold war era was now over.  Russia’s flouting of the contemporary international relations norms suggested that rules of great powers politics – geopolitics –  including territorial aggrandizement had returned.

The real question, nevertheless, though not always well articulated, is  a question of US leadership.  It all seemed so simple with American hegemony and after the Cold War US unipolarity.  But current challenges have raised anew the question of – if not US leadership – then what?  What will constrain competition and and even rivalry among the great powers

David Brooks of the NYT has taken it a step further in his op-ed entitled “Saving the System” suggesting that the global system is now threatened.

The lesson-category within grand strategic history is that when an established international system enters its phase of deterioration, many leaders nonetheless respond with insouciance, obliviousness, and self-congratulation. When the wolves of the world sense this, they, of course , will begin to make their moves to probe the ambiguities of the aging system and pick off choice pieces to devour at their leisure.

According to Brooks this is exactly what is happening.  “Today the system is under assault not by a single empire but by a hundred big and little foes.”  Thus geopolitics is back.  And the ‘system’ – goes back several hundred years – is now under pressure.  What we have is an attack on liberal pluralism.  As he says, “The US faces a death by a thousand cuts dilemma.”

Well let’s start with the return of geopolitics.  I don’t think it ever went away – muted possibly, but regional rivalry certainly has continued.  What is different here is that it is back in Europe and it is a ‘great power’ – Russia.  As to liberal pluralism the great power system that has grown up in the last several decades, and particularly after the emergence of the G20 is certainly plural.  But if one is suggesting that ‘democracy’ is a common trait, well that surely has not been the case.  Though we are shocked by Putin’s territorial grab, and his growing authoritarianism, for some time now we have known that the great powers are not uniformly liberal democratic.  While this might well pose challenges to the kind of liberal internationalism that is described by our good friend John Ikenberry, as the current concert mechanism, I would argue it is not a requirement.

What then is to be done?  Well David Brooks appeals to his Yale teaching partner and well known grand strategist, John Gaddis, who in turn appeals to the great cold warrior, George Kennan.  What Kennan calls for is the United States to “contain the menaces until they collapse internally.” So does Gaddis and I presume Brooks.  All the great powers can do is restrain others who challenge and to restrain their own behavior.

If this is what is necessary,  then the need for such behavior seems to throw Obama into a pretty good light.  Or am I missing something?

Addendum April 3o, 2014

Not surprisingly the debate on a US grand strategy of “Small Ball” has raised numerous reactions from the commentariat.  Notable, and mostly thoughtful, is the piece by David Rothkopf (see his “The Audacity of Small Ball“) at FP where he is the CEO and the editor of the FP Group.  If as the President suggests, and pointed at by Rothkopf, he was elected to address “America’s standing in the world” well then there is room to suggest that this is “mission not accomplished”:

As he remarked in Manila, one of the core issues he was elected to address was that of America’s standing in the world. He said, “If you look at the results of what we’ve done over the last five years, it is fair to say that our alliances are stronger, our partnerships are stronger.”

Rothkopf carefully goes through the list and there are many gaps.  We are thus led back to examining US leadership, and not the survival of the system as David Brooks suggests. There is no question, and here I agree with Rothkopf, that  global governance has been seriously wounded.  But it is not so much fading away, at least with respect to the G20, but the limitations of a rogue great power in our midst in the steering committee:

International institutions are weaker than ever. The G-20, which was to be the new vehicle for international economic coordination, has faded in importance over time, giving way again to the G-7 (the G-8 blew up).

The final word from Rothkopf is rather downbeat:

This game is not over. But unless the president is more honest with himself about where he stands and makes the right adjustments, he and those of us who have been hoping for him to succeed seem likely to be disappointed with the final results.

Is the conclusion too downbeat – possibly, I think.  But we need to keep our “eye on the ball”. The examination and evaluation is about describing and implementing a US policy in an age, not of decline, but of multilateralism – and I would argue, using my own argot,  in an age of concert diplomacy.  US leadership is very different in this new great power mix and it is not clear that this US Administration has figured it out.

Image Credit:  usatoday.com