With every major poll pointing to a Conservative victory at the next election, it is highly likely that David Cameron, and not Gordon Brown, will represent British interests on the world stage in eight months’ time. However, as Cameron prepares for power he would do well to look across the Atlantic for a lesson in how not to lead in international affairs.
The Tory leader, like the mayor of London, is unashamedly an admirer of Barack Obama, whom he has described as “incredibly impressive”. It is natural that the relatively youthful and charismatic Cameron seeks to emulate Obama’s electoral success and winning message of “change”. But he must not let his personal enthusiasm for the US president blind him to his considerable failures as a world leader since taking office in January.
Barack Obama’s central failing in foreign policy has been his striking hesitation to project American global power and leadership, which in the eyes of America’s enemies and competitors translates as weakness and vulnerability. He has sacrificed US strength and influence on the altar of international popularity, as though the world were an extension of the stage of American Idol, and not a hugely dangerous place where the United States remains hated and reviled by those who seek its demise.
President Obama has gone out of his way to apologise for his country’s past at almost every opportunity on foreign soil, from Cairo to Prague to Strasbourg. The result has been the humiliation of the United States, and the growing perception of the president as an extremely naïve commander in chief who appears to be sacrificing the national interest to appease international opinion. Obama’s spectacularly awful address last month to the United Nations was rightly met with widespread derision in the US, and was embarrassingly followed by Libyan tyrant Muammar Gaddafi’s admiring call for Obama “to stay forever as the president.”
Barack Obama has also shown a marked willingness to undermine US national sovereignty, with clear signs that he supports an array of supranational UN treaties and conventions, ranging from Law of the Sea to the Treaty of Rome, the statute that established the International Criminal Court. His administration cares little for British sovereignty either, enthusiastically backing further political, military and economic integration in Europe.
In every area, the Obama strategy is undermining American power. The White House’s hugely controversial strategy of engagement with rogue regimes has backfired spectacularly, with Iran and North Korea responding with even greater threats and aggression. Even the French now think Obama is weak in the face of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the menacing Mullahs of Tehran.
While currying favour with America’s enemies and cutting defence spending, Barack Obama has paid scant attention to maintaining or strengthening America’s key alliances, including NATO and the Anglo-American Special Relationship. His recent shameful surrender to Moscow over the installation of Third Site missile defences in Poland and the Czech Republic was viewed as an appalling betrayal by key US allies in eastern and central Europe.
It is vital that, as Prime Minister, Mr Cameron is prepared to enhance British power on the world stage, rather than weaken it, as Gordon Brown has consistently done. He should take a fundamentally different approach to that of Barack Obama, based upon an aggressively confident projection of British power, the defence of British sovereignty in Europe, increased spending on the Armed Forces, and the strengthening of transatlantic alliances.
Great Britain may no longer be a superpower, but it remains a world force and a powerful global player, despite the best efforts of the Labour government to gut the military and turn the UK into a province of Brussels. The Conservatives must look beyond the shores of Europe with a forward-looking foreign policy that projects global interests.
The world’s fifth biggest nuclear power, the UK is second only to the United States in terms of conventional military force projection and the ability to deploy thousands of troops on the far side of the world, with greater strategic reach than either China or Russia. The UK has the second largest deployment in Afghanistan, with almost as many personnel deployed as all other major European Union countries combined.
Britain is also a global economic powerhouse, with the City of London continuing to dominate as the world’s biggest financial centre, and UK foreign direct investment (FDI) sitting at number two in world rankings. With a rapidly rising population, the UK is on course to overtake Germany as the most populous country in Western Europe by 2060, with a population of over 75 million.
There is little doubt that David Cameron will seek a close partnership with his US counterpart if he enters Downing Street. This will be good for Britain and the Special Relationship. He must, though, avoid following the Obama foreign policy model, and demonstrate strong British leadership on key issues such as the Iranian nuclear crisis, the war in south Asia, and the fight against Islamist terrorism.
In contrast to the White House’s dithering, Cameron must support an increase in British troop numbers in Afghanistan with a clear-cut strategy to defeat the Taliban. There also has to be a firm commitment to the future of NATO as the guarantor of transatlantic security. A Cameron government should send an unequivocal signal to Moscow that London will back the further eastward expansion of the organization to include Georgia and Ukraine, and will oppose Russian attempts to intimidate its neighbours in the Caucasus and Eastern Europe.
President Obama’s naïve and weak approach to international affairs threatens to usher in the biggest decline of American global power since the days of Jimmy Carter, and has created a distinct leadership vacuum. In contrast, the next British Prime Minister should seek a resurgence of British power, with a foreign policy that projects pride and confidence in Britain’s great and distinguished past, as well as a firm commitment to the transatlantic alliance. David Cameron must reject the folly of the Obama doctrine and follow the example of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in advancing real international leadership.
Nile Gardiner is the Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC
Comments: 11
David Cameron must fill the leadership vacuum left by Barack Obama. David Cameron must reject the folly of the Obama doctrine and follow the example of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, writes Nile Gardiner. The Fight for the Public Option Hits Home Stretch -- Is Obama Hiding? By Adele Stan, AlterNet. Posted October 6, 2009. For months, as Congress has debated health-care reform, President Barack Obama's tepid rhetoric about the importance -- but not the necessity -- of a public health-care plan has caused anxiety among progressives. Then the left got serious. When word dropped, via Politico, that Obama might use the occasion of his health-care speech before a joint session of Congress to skirt the public option, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee gathered a group of former Obama campaign staffers together (including a manager of the campaign's field operation) to sign a petition calling for the president to hold to his promise for the public option. Greenwald Film on Afghanistan Destroys the Logic of the War, Leading the New York Times to Whine Posted by Jeremy Scahill, Rebel Reports at 3:00 PM on October 5, 2009. The "paper of record" also complains that Robert Greenwald's film has no 'sympathy' for pro-war views. Perhaps more than any other major corporate news outlet, The New York Times played a central role in promoting the Bush administration's fraudulent case for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The "reporting" of Judith Miller and Michael Gordon basically served as a front-page fiction-laundering factory for Dick Cheney�s fantasy of a �mushroom cloud� threat from Saddam Hussein looming on the immediate horizon, topped off with a celebratory slice of yellowcake. More recently, the paper�s propagandists, William Broad and David Sanger, have aimed their sights on reporting dubious claims about Iran�s nuclear program. Readers of the Times, therefore, should take with a huge grain of weaponized salt the paper�s �review� of Robert Greenwald�s new documentary, Rethink Afghanistan. With no sense of the painful irony of writing such gibberish in the Times, reviewer Andy Webster declares that the film could "use balance, something in short supply here:" At an almost breathless pace that leaves little room for reflection, Mr. Greenwald presents a flurry of sights, voices and figures, many of them compelling but all reflecting his point of view. A historical summary is fleeting. What appears, again and again, are terrifying images of children: dead, hideously maimed or, in one instance, almost put up for sale by a frantic civilian in a refugee camp. Military engagements, it seems, are messy and claim innocent lives. Okay we have unanimously decided hat David stay and Goliath goes, as Prince too is tired of swimming in the river to and from France Now can we go to SKY.COM and face the public. I am afraid of Brown losing the weight and buying new trousers. Efficiency is doing things-not wishing you could do them, dreaming about them, or wondering if you can do them. -- Frank Crane NO Malice towards any. Without prejudices. "The horse, a sorrel color male temporarily named Wildfire, is small and might make a good pasture companion for another horse." Susan Burgess; Horse Abandoned; Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Florida); Sep 28, 2009. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. -Frank Zappa, composer, musician, film director (1940-1993) We are here on Earth to do good to others. What others are here for, I don't know. -- WH Auden I thank you Firozali A. Mulla
More complete bunk out of Nile Gardiner. Give it up: the NeoCons have completely lost credibility. Attacking Obama is not helpful to anyone other than Gardiner's friends... and all this does is set Cameron up for failure on an already difficult path. Reading Gardiner is like listening to Dubya Bush: he is simply wrong about almost everything and seeks notariety by being an advocate of utter foolishness. Or maybe April Fools Day came very early, and Gardiner is just playing one big prank on Telegraph readers.
As an American, I couldn't agree with you more!
What a load of absolute Republican Neo-Con BOLLOCKS written for an American audience with no possibility that Cameron will follow it. [i}The UK has the second largest deployment in Afghanistan, with almost as many personnel deployed as all other major European Union countries combined. [/i] So why in the hell should the UK send any more until others are willing to do the same. Ukraine and Georgia must be kept out of NATO under all circumstances unless we are willing to go to war with Russia over the pensioners of the Crimea or the details of Ossetia. Korea is an issue for China and Japan and not us. A new PM should act in the interest of the UK and tell the trigger happy armchair warriors of Washington to worry about their own problems before daring to demand we do anything.
On one hand these people say that America is too over bearing and then when it acts like number one they say it is arrogrant. I disagree with this article it is once again a knee-jerk foley that the British press is known for now. Obama is aware that in order to project power you have to have a strong economy. We don't have that now. We have to accept the Bush mistakes that this newspaper strongly supported.
You are working from a false premise : Cameron will not be the next Prime Minister. All the clever people said Ronald Reagan was a joke and he proved them very wrong. Give Obama a chance. And anyway, it's President Blair or whoever it is who will need wooing, not the US President.
Oh Really!!!! Any would be aggressor looking at UK Plc would be well to ask how many divisions we have? Answer, not many. How many naval Flotilla's? Answer, too few. What proportion of GDP goes on Defence? Answer, 2.2%. How many Aircraft Carriers? 2 small ones and a clapped out one that will take 18 months to restore to service and 2 large ones that will likely never see water. Oh yes, and insufficient escorts to protect them in any event. One may as well ask why we are giving India, that emerging Superpower, �850 millions in aid, whilst at the same time they are launching SSN submarines and laying down the keel of a nuclear powered large Aircraft Carrier and our own Forces are starved of kit! What of the Army? Well, the famous names remain but they have been gutted and it is a tiny little Army. Not contemptible by any means, just very small. Highly professional but small and as Field Marshall Slim once remarked in respect to operations, "the more you use the less you lose". We no longer have the critical mass to ensure that is so which is why we have a steady stream of casualties in Afghanistan. We also of course have the governments, and for that read Gordon Browns, criminal neglect of the Armed Forces to contend with which has sent far too many splendid service personnel to a premature death. If the writer is serious about his article he should be prevailing on the government to properly invest in our Armed Forces, but especially the Royal Navy and the incomparable Corp of Royal Marines. We live on an Island and 92% of everything we consume comes by the sea. Logic dictates that a strong navy is the key to our security and prosperity. The Army is no more than a projectile to be fired by the Navy. Only with a strong navy will we be properly respected and feared, fear being a deterrent of course.As Teddy Roosevelt said, "Talk quietly and carry a big stick".
Exactly how will Dave or anyone else project leadership into an alleged Obama-oriented power vacuum or anywhere else for that matter - as the local chieftain of a small offshore province of the EUSR? This is not the game being played our side of the Pond - unless Britain wakes up and smells the coffee soon. Indeed, we have reach, we have the entire English speaking world save for the hot-in-the-fold Irish Republic and the US in our remit within the Commonwealth - and we instead want to be part of a rag-bag of European nations - not a single one of which has enjoyed our political stability and power in the past several centuries? Obama is contracting the projection of US power at a faster rate than in many decades, and with less reason some would argue than when Britain did the same thing as to her Empire across the globe. For if it is not a global empire, the US has long had a sphere of influence - projected by many methods, support to this or that regime, or its enemies. That sort of influence is surely the product of strength - and that begins in economic power. The US now has the same disease as most of the rest of the developed western economies - a crippling welfare state (and they should imagine their problems if it was as extensive pro rata as ours) and a massive balance of payments deficit. I don't know if Obama is *naive and weak* as to his handling of international affairs. He is conscious of fiscals that do not stack up, of home issues which are a greater concern to his constituency - and the bankruptcy of distant ideological wars that take on an extended timescale even as the outcome, the goals, the cost all cloud-up. If there is one thing Cameron might do, at a change of UK government, then it would be to call upon NATO to evidence commitment to Afghanistan on a more evenly spread basis, pro rata to Member size and resources - and to urge a collective assessment of what this campaign is about, and what achievements enable an exit strategy for all concerned.
What a load of dangerous Internationalist rubbish. If NATO should ever let Georgia or Ukraine in then Britain needs to get out because these countries will be used to provoke Russia into attacking them, sucking all of NATO into a major war. IRAN is a danger to nobody. It is however not under the sphere of control of the International Bankers and must therefore be targetted, right? The same trick of building up a boogey man is being used that has been so often used in the past. The Taliban is also of no danger to the West and Britain has no purpose in being there other than to fight for the interests of others who are manipulating events.
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