A boost for US foreign policy? At Politico, Laura Rozen and Ben Smith argue that the passing of the health care reform has an impact also on the US president’s international stature:
Obama’s health care victory may prove a decisive pivot point in the way he is viewed both domestically and abroad and in how powerful a negotiator he is perceived to be by foreign leaders. And nowhere is that true more than in Israel, a place obsessed with American politics.
“Every time I met with an Arab diplomat or anyone from the Middle East, including Israelis, they would invariably ask me, ‘How’s health care going?’” said former Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), who retired in December to become president of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace. “And the first couple [of] times, I didn’t really realize what they were actually asking. They were asking, ‘How strong is the president of the United States?’”
Netanyahu’s aides have recently confided that they see Obama as a weak leader whose tenure they can weather, but that calculus may now have to change. After his health care victory, says Wexler, “the president is now a much stronger president, and that will play out in a variety of ways in the Middle East, and also in his direct relations with the leaders in the region, especially Prime Minister Netanyahu.”
In the FT, Gideon Rachman says that “Obama’s bounce changes the world”:
President Barack Obama has leapt out of his political sick-bed, ripped out his feeding tubes and is ready to dance a jig around the Oval office. The Congressional approval of healthcare reform has reinvigorated the Obama presidency in a way that has implications not just for Americans, but for the world.
By pushing through a social reform that eluded generations of presidents from Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, Mr Obama can now point to a genuinely historic achievement. He has turned around his image as a weak president who cannot get things done – just when it was getting dangerously close to becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. (…)
Increasingly Mr Obama was portrayed overseas as weak, indecisive and ineffective. That is now likely to change – at least for a while – in the wake of the passage of healthcare reform. As a result, Mr Obama now has a chance to relaunch his presidency, abroad as well as at home.
Of course, there is no direct connection between the renewal of Mr Obama’s domestic political momentum and his chances of success in foreign policy. But there is an indirect connection. Put crudely, the passage of healthcare reform makes Mr Obama look like a winner rather than a loser. It also shows that he is tenacious and that his stubbornness can pay dividend.
However, at Foreign Policy, Stephen Walt is less exited. He puts water into the wine:
My sense is that yesterday’s House vote isn’t going to translate into a lot of new political clout, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Passing the health-care bill may mean that Obama doesn’t need coddle quite as many congressmen on foreign-policy issues they might care strongly about (such as trade policy or the Middle East), and that might give him a bit more flexibility to do what’s in the national interest. But overall, I don’t think yesterday’s vote in the House will have much impact at all. (…)
More importantly, there isn’t a lot of low-hanging fruit in foreign policy. He might get an arms-control agreement with Russia, but there aren’t a lot of votes in that and there’s no way he’ll get a comprehensive test-ban treaty through the post-2010 Senate. Passing health care at home won’t make Iran more cooperative, make sanctions more effective, or make preventive war more appealing, so that issue will continue to fester. Yesterday’s vote doesn’t change anything in Iraq; it is their domestic politics that matters, not ours. I’d say much the same thing about Afghanistan, though Obama will face another hard choice when the 18-month deadline for his “surge” is up in the summer of 2011.
Passing a health-care bill isn’t going to affect America’s increasingly fractious relationship with China, cause Osama bin Laden to surrender, or lead North Korea to embrace market reforms, hold elections, and give up its nuclear weapons.
Ashton: Palestinian state possible in two years. The Irish Times reports:
EU Foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has said planned “proximity” talks between Israel and the Palestinians should lead “within two years” to the creation of an independent Palestinian state. As the US makes renewed efforts to facilitate the resumption of talks under the chairmanship of former senator George Mitchell, the baroness told reporters in Brussels that the indirect engagement between both sides must lead to “meaningful” negotiations. “We want results and genuine commitment, a process that leads to outcomes,” she said after a meeting of EU foreign ministers.
“We also need immediately changes on the ground. We want to protect and sustain the sense of momentum in what are clearly very difficult circumstances. We believe that negotiations should within two years bring about settlement that will result in an independent democratic viable state of Palestine that lives side by side in peace and security with Israel and other neighbours.” (…)
(Spanish) Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said there was “broad agreement” on the need for proximity talks to commence. “There clearly is momentum building in the international community around Gaza and certainly as a significant confidence-building measure, the opening-up of the blockade and the facilitation of resources and material to build significant construction in Gaza would be a very significant confidence-building measure.”
Given the US lead in the process, Mr Martin said the EU will concentrate on fostering the rule of law, Palestinian governance capacity, economic development and “ensuring Israel takes steps to improve the lot of ordinary Palestinians working on the ground”.
EU puts pressure on Iran to end jamming, the BBC reports:
The European Union will put pressure on Iran to stop jamming satellite broadcasts from the BBC and other international channels. Iran has been blocking news channels broadcast into the country from a French satellite following widespread anti-government protests there.But it is not yet clear exactly what action the EU will take.
A statement from the EU foreign ministers said they would act to end the “unacceptable situation”. “The EU calls on the Iranian authorities to stop the jamming of satellite broadcasting and internet censorship and to put an end to this electronic interference immediately,” a statement from the EU foreign ministers said.
For more results of yesterday’s EU foreign ministers meeting go to Global Europe’s Statements section.
Usackas on Afghanistan. The newly appointed EU Special Representative Ygaudas Usackas talks on challenges in Afghanistan. Video here.
Struggle over EAS architecture. Libération’s Jean Quatremer, on his Coulisses de Bruxelles blog, presents an organigram of the planned structure of the new EU diplomatic service. Quatremer’s comment (translated from French original): “It keeps, essentially, the architecture that France has developed, in collaboration with Great Britain and Germany. The structure is close to that of a classic foreign ministry, with an all powerful secretary general (a post which France would like to give to Pierre Vimont, currently French ambassador in Washington, one of it’s best diplomates) who has two deputies, one charged with keeping the house in order (SG 1), the other close to a “political director” (SG 2).” “It is striking to note that the two parts of the organigram are completely separated. Catherine Ashton and her secretary general will be the only ones in touch with the ‘defence’ part which largely keeps the autonomy it has now.”
Quatremer has also obtained a paper on the EAS (to be downloaded as PDF here) as well as a organigram (here) worked out by two influential members of Parliament, Elmar Brok (EPP, Germany) and Guy Verhofstadt (ALDE, Belgium). He comments on their counterproposal: “One sees clearly that the ‘foreign minister’ (High Representative) gets back her title of Vice-President of the Commission and gets her legitimacy from both the Commission and the Council. Equally, the Commissioners whose activities she coordinates are reintegrated in the common diplomacy. The ’secretary general’ disappears, as well as the ‘political director’: they are replaced, like in Germany, by three half-political, half-administrative deputies, each of them charged with one field (bilateral, multilateral, crisis). Crisis management, including its military aspect, is, in this structure, completely integrated and not set apart.”
According to German parliamentarian Franziska Brantner (Greens), Quatremer says, the structure proposed by Ashton allows the Council to take away the budget for development and keeps defence apart. That would be “not acceptable” for parliament. But Quatremer adds that the Member States have already warned Parliament that Ashton’s proposal would be non-negotiable.
Today at 14.00 Elmar Brok and Guy Verhofstadt will give a press conference about the EAS (live here). At 15.00 Catherine Ashton will discuss the setting-up of the EAS with Parliaments Foreign Affairs Committee (live here).
See also MEP Andrew Duff’s call for moving forward with the EAS at the Financial Times.
Read today on Global Europe: The empire’s loyal courtiers. It’s time for Europe and America to rebuild their relationship. By Michael Brenner, Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, SAIS (Johns Hopkins University, Washington)
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