por admin » Dom Jun 06, 2010 10:02 pm
Con amigos como US..... (quien necesita enemigos)
Obama ha hecho que los enemigos de US se agranden y ha puesto nerviosos a sus aliados.
Que hay en comun en lo siguiente: Israel despues del ataque de la flotilla de Hamas, los militares Chinos diciendole al secretario de defensa de US que no es bienvenido en Beijin y la declaraciond eNick Clegg - nuvo vice ministro de Gran Bretania - que la relacion especial de su pais con US se acabo?
Repuesta: Obama se las ha arreglado para convencer a la mayoria de paises alrededor del mundo que no vale nada ser amigo de US y menos ser enemigo.
La semana pasada, Israel entro a una trampa preparada por los simpatizantes de Hamas en lo que Lenin llamo "idiotas utiles". Los comandos Israelies que fueron atacados por los activistas y trataron de tirarlos sobre bordo y mataron a un grupo de gente que hubieran preferido no haber matado. Las fuerzas Americanas hace lo mismo en muchas ocasiones, como por ejemplo cuando ataca con los drones. De acuerdo a un informe no solo se mato al numero 3 de al Qaeda si no a su esposa y sus tres hijas y una nieta.
Los Israelies tienen derecho a cloquear Gaza, y hacen lo que pueden para evitar que se pasen armas a Gaza a travez de sus puertos. Hasta que el Vice Presidente Americano Joe Biden tuvo el coraje de admitir en un programa de television de que Israel estaba en guerra con Hamas y que tenian derecho de prevenir el pase de armas a Gaza, pero cuando US esta del lado de las 189 naciones que revisa la politica de no proliferacion nuclear acerca de Israel y donde no se menciona a Iran, algo realmente esta mal.
El pensar que dejar a Israel al ataque diplomatico de todas estas naciones pensando que les comprara buenas relaciones con el Medio Oriente, la misma region que continuamente imprime noticias que parecen provenir de la Alemania Nazi. Esa parte del mundo, como una vez dijo Osama bin Laden, prefiere un caballo fuerte a un caballo debil.
Lo peor es pensar que alejarse de Israel les ganara amigos en esa zona.
Cuando Israel abandonara Gaza? el dia que US tenga un presidente que los Israelies sepan que pueden confiar en el. Pero como estan las cosas Israel esta solo y desesperado, es mas o menos como pensar que Israel no trandra mas remedio que atacar las facilidades nucleares de Iran.
Obama y su administracion viene siendo totalmente inepta para lidiar con los aliados hasta el punto de amenazar algunas de las mas importantes relaciones con aliados en el mundo. El hecho que un politico Ingles descuente al pilar de la politica Inglesa desde 1940 es altamente preocupante. Nick Clegg dijo en una reciente entrevista que la relacion especial entre Inglaterra y US se ha terminado y que US entendia eso muy bien asi Inglaterra aun no lo entienda. El 17% de los Britanicos dice que las relaciones con US han mejorado, 25% dice que se han deteriorado.
Obama se rehusa a aprovar el avance de los tratados de libre comercio con aliados incluyendo a Colombia, una historia exitosa pero solo si US lo dice. El desarme ha alterado los nervios de otro aliado: Francia quien quiere un fuerte defensa. Esta es parte de un rechazo general del mundo en el que US tiene verdaderos aliados que necesita cultivar y reforzar.
No menos sorprendente es la politica de Obama frente a los enemigos de US. En primer lugar se niegan a aceptar que hay enemigos. La necesidad de US de balancear China en el Asia es evidente a los ojos de cualquier observador o ministro del exterior en la mayoria de paises del Asia. Sin embargo todas estas nociones no se encuentran en un documento que habla sobre la politica de la educacion, desarrollo economico y los limites del poder Americano, pero muy poco acerca de geopolitica.
El negarle una visita a Robert Gates a China es un rechazo a US, esto es una parte del escenario total. La estudiada negacion por parte de China de reconocer que North Korea lanzo un ataque no provocado a South Korea nos dice que China no tiene que considerar a US en forma seria.
En el caso de Turkey, la declaracion increible del gobierno acusando a Israel de "inhumanos y terroristas" por el incidente de la flotilla de Gaza refleja una tendencia general que lleva muchos anios en la evolucion de un pais muy diferente al que era 20 o 30 anios atras. Una combinacion de Islamismo, resentimiento y exclusion por parte de Europa, un neo-Ottomanist ideologia que ambiciona a Turkey como un gran poder en el Medio Oriente hace de Turkey un estado hostil no solamente contra Israel si no contra US y sus intereses. La conclusion es clara - primero hay que reconocer los hechos por lo que son.
No hay castigo para los gobierno extranjeros que estan contra US, a menos que seas el primer ministro de Israel visitando la Casa Blanca, en ese caso parafraseando a "Seinfield": "No hay comida para ti!!" Lo maximo que Brasil puede esperar de US por tratar de contener los esfuerzos de Iran en sus ambiciones nucleares.
En lo que se refiere a North Korea e Iran, la amenaza es ....aislamiento. North Korea ya esta aislada e Iran esta aislada cuando tiene a los gobiernos de Turkey and Brasil de su aldo? Que es lo que US ha ganado por acercarse al Syrian government?
No hay una politica seria cuando se fracasa en reconocer que hay extremistas en la religion Islamica.
La administracion de Obama esta haciendo que un mundo peligroso lo sea aun mas. Ha anunciado que se ira de Afghanistan, que no defendera a sus aliadso, como los Ingleses han descubierto cuando con fastidio US rehuso tomar su lado en la disputa de las Flaklands Islands. Los Israelies no deberian ser los unicos preocupados.
Mr. Cohen ensenia estragia en la Universidad Johns Hopkins y sirvio como counselor en el Departamento de Estado bajo el mando de Condoleezza Rice.
With Friends Like the United States . . .
President Obama has emboldened America's adversaries and unnerved its allies.
By ELIOT A. COHEN
What do the following have in common: the piling on Israel after the botched interception of the Hamas relief flotilla, the Chinese military telling the U.S. secretary of defense that he was not welcome in Beijing, and the declaration by Nick Clegg—now deputy prime minister of Great Britain—that his country's special relationship with America is over?
Answer: The Obama administration has managed to convince most countries around the world that we are worth little as friends and even less as enemies.
Last week, Israel walked into a trap set by a flotilla of Hamas sympathizers and what Lenin used to call useful idiots. Israeli commandos who were being attacked by burly men trying to throw them overboard or beat them senseless killed a bunch of people whom they would rather not have killed. American forces do the same thing on many occasions when, for example, we use missile-firing drones to support U.S. policies. According to some accounts the recent assassination of al Qaeda No. 3 Sheikh Said al-Masri also killed his wife, three daughters and a granddaughter.
The Israelis have a right to blockade Gaza, from which they withdrew only to soak up several thousand rockets in return, and they did what they could to get the ships to send supplies into Gaza through their ports. Until Vice President Joe Biden plucked up the courage to acknowledge on "Charlie Rose" that the Israelis are at war with Hamas and have the right to prevent arms from entering Gaza, the Israelis could have been forgiven for thinking that we would hang them out to dry. When the U.S. accepted last week, albeit with some tut-tutting, the recent conclusion of the 189-nation nuclear nonproliferation review conference that singles out Israel but does not mention Iran, it was obvious that something is seriously amiss.
The folly here is to think that leaving the Israelis open to these kinds of diplomatic attacks will buy good will in a Middle East that gets its opinions from Al Jazeera and a venomous media that routinely prints outrageous lies and hate literature that echoes Nazi Germany. That part of the world, as Osama bin Laden once correctly observed, prefers a strong horse to a weak horse.
The still greater folly is to think that distancing ourselves from the Israelis will buy us leverage with them. When did the Israelis withdraw from Gaza? When they had a president in the White House upon whom they knew they could count. If, as is the case now, Israel is alone and desperate, is it more or less likely to conclude it has no choice but to attack Iran's nuclear facilities?
The Obama administration has been peculiarly inept at handling allies, to the point that it has jeopardized some of our most important relationships. That a senior British politician would dismiss the pillar of British foreign policy since 1940 is astounding. But Nick Clegg said during the recent British election that the special relationship is over and that the American government understands this even if the British government does not. When asked about relations with the U.S. under President Barack Obama, 17% of Britons in a recent poll thought they had improved; 25% thought they had deteriorated.
The administration refuses out of timidity to advance a free trade agreement with any ally, including Colombia, a success story if only we would claim it. And its quixotic quest for total nuclear disarmament unnerves, among others, our French allies, who want to keep a robust deterrent. These are part of a broader rejection of a world in which the U.S. has real allies that need cultivating and reinforcing.
No less dismaying is Mr. Obama's attitude to U.S. rivals. Its most recent National Security Strategy, issued a month ago, barely acknowledges that such a category exists. The need for the U.S. to balance China in Asia is evident to any moderately alert clerk in the foreign ministry of most Asian countries. Yet such notions are missing from a document that talks a great deal about education policy, economic development and the limits on American power, but very little about geopolitics.
China's snub to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates—its rejection last week of an American request for a visit as he travels to a conference in Singapore—is part of a larger picture. The studied unwillingness of the Chinese even to acknowledge that the North Koreans launched an unprovoked attack on a South Korean naval vessel tells us that they do not think they have to take American anger about anything seriously.
Or take the case of Turkey. The outrageous statements of the Turkish government denouncing Israel for "inhumane state terrorism" toward the Gaza flotilla reflect a broader pattern, going back a number of years, of Turkey's evolution into a country very different from that of 20 or 30 years ago. A combination of Islamist rule, resentment at exclusion from Europe, and a neo-Ottomanist ideology that envisions Turkey as a great power in the Middle East have made Turkey a state that is often plainly hostile not only to Israel but to American aims and interests. The conclusion is sobering—but first one has to recognize the facts for what they are.
There is no penalty for a foreign government crossing this U.S. president—unless you are the hapless prime minister of Israel visiting the White House, in which case, to paraphrase the deli bully in "Seinfeld," "No dinner for you!" The most that a leader like President Lula da Silva of Brazil can expect from doing his best to derail the painfully slow effort to contain Iran is pursed lips.
As for North Korea and Iran, the National Security Strategy threatens them with . . . isolation. North Korea is not already isolated? And Iran is isolated when it has the governments of Turkey and Brazil cozying up to it? What precisely have we gained from reaching out to the Syrian government, whose leaders pocketed our restoration of ambassadorial relations, and in return lessened their ties to Hezbollah and Iran not a wit?
The administration cannot even bring itself to characterize accurately the enemies that it must admit we have. The National Security Strategy declares that we are at war with "Al Qaeda and its affiliates." Islamist extremists? Jihadis? Perish the thought.
Senior officials have repeatedly insisted that they know that radical Islamism runs counter to the authoritative teachings of an altogether peace-loving religion—when the truth is that all religions, including Islam, have within them entirely authentic, deeply rooted, and often sophisticated fanatical streams. This refusal to acknowledge the creed of our enemies is further evidence of a lack of strategic seriousness.
The administration is making a dangerous world even more so. It has announced that it will head for the exits in Afghanistan, that it will not stand by our closest ally, as the Brits discovered when we fastidiously refused to take their side on the latest round of the Falklands dispute. The Israelis should not be the only ones who are worried.
Mr. Cohen teaches strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University and served as counselor of the Department of State under Condoleezza Rice.