For Obama its all personal

Robert Kagan:

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Like Wilson's, Obama's foreign policy increasingly seems to rest on the assumption that nations will act on the basis of what they perceive to be the goodwill, good intentions or moral purity of other nations, in particular the United States. If other nations have refused to cooperate with us, it is because they perceive the United States as aggressive or evil. Obama's job is to change that perception. From the outreach to Iran and to Muslims, to the call for eliminating all nuclear weapons, to the desire for a "reset" in relations with Russia, the central point of Obama's diplomacy is that America is, suddenly, different. It has changed. It is better. It is time, therefore, for other nations to cooperate.

But how has America changed? Obama's policies toward Iran, the Middle East, Russia, North Korea, China, Latin America, Afghanistan and even Iraq have at most shifted only at the margins -- as many in those countries repeatedly complain. So what, for instance, is the source of the "new beginning" in U.S.-Muslim relations that Obama called for in Cairo?

The answer, it seems, is Obama himself. In the speech, The Post reports, "Obama made his own biography the starting point for a new U.S. relationship with Islam." Or as the New York Times put it, while "the president offered few details on how to solve problems around the globe," his basic argument "boiled down to this: Barack Hussein Obama was standing on the podium in this Muslim capital as the American president."

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Finally, Guantanamo. Who knows when Obama will be able to close it, what he will be able to put in its place or whether, ultimately, he will be able to strike a fundamentally different balance between American security and the legal rights of detainees than was struck by Bush or by previous presidents in times of perceived national security threats? It probably won't be all that different. But Obama hopes that by displaying earnestness to change American practices, he can build an image of greater moral authority and that this in turn will produce diplomatic results that have hitherto eluded us.

It is conceivable that this theory may prove correct. Certainly, it will soon be tested. But let us not call it realism. The last president who sincerely pursued this approach was Woodrow Wilson. He, too, believed that the display of evident goodwill and desire for peace, uncorrupted by the base motives of national interest or ambition, gave him the special moral authority to sway other nations. And Wilson was as beloved around the globe as Obama is today, possibly more beloved, at least for a moment. Millions took to the streets in the great cities of Europe when he crossed the Atlantic in 1918. His gifts to persuade, however, proved ephemeral, and the results of his efforts were, from his own perspective, an utter failure. Not only the nations of Europe but his own United States proved more self-interested and less amenable to moral appeals. We will see whether Barack Obama, the most Wilsonian president in a century, fares better.

The problem with personal diplomacy when it is about you and not the issues or the self interest of the parties is that the failure is also about you. That means that when Obama inevitably fails to persuade people to give up their self interest he is going to be seen as a failure to the voters. Like Woodrow Wilson he may not be able to handle that failure.

Most people do not know how really bad a President Woodrow Wilson was. His "punitive expedition" into Mexico was a disaster that was rescued by the entry into World War I. He also failed in dealing with Central American insurgencies. As Jonah Goldberg points out in Liberal Fascism Wilson had a fascist streak on the domestic front and particularly in dealing with some of his critics.

Obama will fail in the Middle East, not because of what does and does not happen in Israeli settlements, but because the Arabs and other Muslims are not interested in any peace in which Israel still exists. They may give lip service to a two state solution, but their actions reveal people who prefer the status quo to permanent recognition of Israel. Their religious and ethnic bigotry drives their policy more than any other factor. If they were really interested in a peace deal they could have had one on several occasions over the last 60 years.