Engaging Today's Global Citizens

State of the World 2006

State of the Union presented only modest guidance for foreign policy

By most measures, 2005 was a difficult year for both the Bush administration and US leadership in general. Constrained by events in Iraq—and perhaps sobered by the realization that democratic elections do not necessarily lead to stability—the president's 2006 State of the Union address proposed a much more modest foreign policy agenda for the United States in the year ahead. While he touched on some of the foreign policy issues he will be managing this year, he omitted a number of issues that are of great importance.

The Ongoing Challenge of Iraq

The president could not have avoided talking about Iraq. It will continue to dominate the agenda for the balance of the year, perhaps at the expense of other, equally important issues. But the administration's legacy rests on the situation in Iraq, as do the congressional midterm elections and the future of peace and stability in the Middle East.

Yet the debate over Iraq that has dominated US politics for the past several years is over. The new debate is about how and how quickly the United States can withdraw from the country and how to minimize further damage to the United States' reputation in the region and around the world.

The president remains committed to a plan of drawing down US forces as Iraqi security and governmental institutions stand up—an approach which will probably continue to receive public and congressional support, albeit weakened from a year ago. And this support will last as long as there is a sense that the United States can achieve its goals.

Yet elections in Iraq have not dampened what appears to be an increasingly bitter political struggle, and as a response, US policy appears to be increasingly oriented away from democracy promotion and toward "stability operations." Support for reconstruction of basic electricity, water, and oil systems are falling by the wayside. The results of a recent poll suggest a way forward: establish a clear timeline for the drawdown of US forces, allow the United Nations to assume responsibility for Iraqi reconstruction efforts, and allow an international conference to address Iraqi and regional security issues. How such a plan could be implemented remains to be seen.

Beyond Iraq: Iran and North Korea

While Iraq is invariably important to the United States, Washington will be dealing with two other states that have been dubbed "defiant" and "tyrannical": Iran and North Korea. Driven in no small part by policy failures in Iraq (and because military commitments in Iraq make it difficult to commit troops elsewhere), the administration is coming to recognize the limits of unilateral action and imposing democracy by force. Recently, the administration has affirmed the importance of cooperative efforts in addressing the growing nuclear dangers posed by Iran and North Korea.

IAEA Director General ElBaradei has characterized moves to report Iran to the UN Security Council as "a window of opportunity" toward resolving the standoff. But with Iran threatening to begin "large-scale enrichment" of uranium at nuclear facilities if it is referred to the UN Security Council, the key question before the international community has become whether Iran can be convinced to suspend enrichment activities in return for further discussion on the Russian proposal. If this cannot be accomplished, it may change the tone of the conversation: instead of asking how to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, leaders will be considering how to deal with a nuclear Iran.

Prospects for resolving the North Korea situation remain equally dim. Despite the apparent revival of the six-party talks in the fall, diplomatic efforts appear to have again reached a stalemate. Many are watching to see how much leverage China has to get North Korea to negotiate. But like Iran, the North Korea situation may see little positive progress in 2006. Instead of rolling back North Korea's nuclear ambitions, the international community may simply have to try to alleviate the consequences of North Korea transferring fissile material to others.

The key to addressing nuclear proliferation in each of these countries may well lie in the willingness of the United States to accept the role of multilateral diplomacy and the importance of regional security frameworks and nonaggression treaties in building a common solution.

Democracy Now?

In 2006 Washington will also have to start dealing with the real world consequences of democracy promotion. President Bush may well be right that in the long term free elections and democracy are critical for creating good governance and public goods. But as the administration has realized only recently, democracy promotion and transitions away from authoritarianism is not just about elections. Elections by themselves can also create instability and unpredictability, and in the short term even consequences for security. So while democratic forms of government will ultimately serve the people of Palestine, Iran, Egypt, and Iraq well, other aspects of democracy such as the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian territories, the election of President Ahmadinejad in Iran, the electoral inroads by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and the electoral strength of Islamicist Shiite factions aligned with Iran in Iraq all complicate US policy in the region.

Hamas's victory complicates one particular US foreign policy priority: the Road Map to Peace between Israel and the Palestinians. With the passing of the Sharon era and Israel's own elections in the offing, the dispute appears to be little closer to resolution. The Israeli elections will likely come down to a contest between occupation hard-liners and a mainstream faction seeking the unilateral evacuations of Palestinian territories. Furthermore, the Bush administration has not given any indication that it intends to become more deeply involved in restarting negotiations.

Ironically, while focusing on democracy promotion in the Middle East, the administration has taken its eye off the preservation of democratic institutions in Russia and Latin America—two locations with important ties to US national security. Both Russia and Latin America have the potential to regress in their pursuit of a democratic system.

Elections, in some sense, are easy. Democracy—which depends on preconditions like the rule of law and freedom of speech that need to be built from the ground up—is much harder. A key question for 2006 is whether the administration is willing to shift the focus of its efforts from the ease of elections to the harder work of laying the long-term groundwork for the support of democratic institutions.

The Long War?

In the State of the Union address, President Bush made passing reference to the new way the military is thinking about the war on terror. They are beginning to characterize it as "the Long War," an ongoing, perhaps decades-long struggle between the United States and radical Islamic terrorists. Four years after September 11, bin Laden and his top deputies remain at large and Al Qaeda remains a threat to the United States and our allies. While there have been no attacks in the United States since 9/11, attacks in Madrid, London, the greater Middle East, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are a distinct reminder of the limits of a purely military approach of dealing with the threat of Islamicist terrorism. And these attacks reinforce the need for the United States to implement a multifaceted and multidimensional effort to address the root causes of terror.

The Rise of China and India

Although the Middle East is undoubtedly a critical region to US national security, President Bush also addressed briefly the importance of the United States managing its relations with both China and India. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick challenged China last year with the concept of being a "responsible stakeholder" in the international community. Chinese President Hu Jintao is expected to visit the United States in April. And with China playing a key role in both the Iran and North Korea nuclear crises, this visit presents an opportunity to develop a truly durable basis for cooperation between the United States and China.

US-Indian relations will also face a key test this year as Congress considers President Bush's proposal for nuclear cooperation with the Asian country. The current US Nonproliferation Act prevents India and other countries that have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty from acquiring a wide range of US military technology, which includes components that could be used for nuclear programs. Under the proposed deal, India would place its civilian nuclear facilities, but not its nuclear weapons program, under international monitoring and would continue a ban on nuclear testing in exchange for access to US nuclear technology and conventional weapons systems. Balancing these rising states will be a challenge in 2006 and for years to come.

Trade and Energy Security

The rise of China and India also highlight another growing concern that is sure to take up an increasing amount of attention in 2006 and garnered only a few minutes of the nearly hour-long speech: US dependence on foreign oil and the need to develop alternative energy sources. This is not a new issue, of course. Presidents have been warning the American public about the dangers of overdependence on Middle East oil since the early 1970s. The problem has been, however, that in the past—including the first term of the Bush administration—little has been done by way of follow-up. With his stark statement that the United States is "addicted" to oil, the president took the first and necessary step of turning around the administration's policy. But some doubt whether he is willing to take the next step necessary to turn rhetoric into reality and whether the policies he is proposing are, in fact, the most effective ones for lessening dependence on foreign oil. And all of this in a congressional election year.

While the administration pursues an energy policy this year, it will also be negotiating with South Korea over a possible Free Trade Agreement. South Korea is the United States' seventh largest trading partner and, in economic terms, this agreement may be the largest trade deal since NAFTA was ratified more than a decade ago. Globalization, and the entrance of India and China on the world stage as economic competitors, has presented new challenges to the United States, its workforce, and its standard of living. The president has proposed a competitiveness initiative to address some of these issues, but it is far from clear what resources can be brought to bear to address the underlying challenges.

Multilateral Potential?

In two ambitious speeches this past January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice laid out a new vision for US foreign policy, encapsulated in the phrase "transformational diplomacy," which acknowledges that threats such as terrorism, pandemics, and failed states can only be effectively addressed with the cooperation of others and that the United States cannot simply run roughshod throughout the world, but instead must deal with rising powers and alternate power centers.

If the speeches are followed up with concrete action to reengage with friends and allies around the world in order to deal with common challenges and common threats—following five years in which the United States seemed to willfully enjoy alienating friends and allies and casting aspersions on all forms of international cooperation—it could well mark a return by the United States to genuine leadership in the world, and a critical step in putting the annus horribilis of 2005 behind us.

—Michael Schiffer