United States Secretary of State John Kerry outlined on Wednesday the Obama administration’s detailed vision for future of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. He declared that the two-state solution is in serious jeopardy almost a quarter of a century after the Oslo Process began, yet forcefully argued that it offers the only path to peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.
The potentially landmark speech comes as the relationship between the administrations of US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahui — not for the first time — under great stress, especially following Washington’s decision to abstain last Friday from a United Nations resolution condemning Israeli colonies in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. Kerry defended that decision asserting that the Obama team has done more for Israel than any other administration, yet acted as it did last week to try to preserve the viability of the two-state solution.
Kerry’s speech has already been condemned by US President-elect Donald Trump, whose designated next US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, has been heavily criticised by many Palestinians given his reported opposition to a two-state solution to the conflict, and support for Israeli annexation of the West Bank. Trump asserted Wednesday on Twitter that “We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect ... They used to have a great friend in the US, but not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal and now this (UN)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!”.
The roadmap of principles outlined by Kerry, comes less than a month before he leaves office. However, he hopes to put a marker in the ground that helps shape the debate, internationally, about the peace process, including with key allies such as the EU, and also consolidates the Obama administration’s foreign policy legacy.
Like Obama, previous US presidents have often seen foreign policy as a fundamental part of the legacy they wished to build. For instance, after the trauma of the 2001 terrorist attacks in US, the then US president George W. Bush sought to spread his democracy and freedom agenda across the Middle East, which included the toppling of former president Saddam Hussain’s Iraqi regime.
Former US president Bill Clinton was the last president to devote significant time to securing a comprehensive peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians. And he came relatively close to securing a breakthrough deal in 2000 at the Camp David Summit, but compromise ultimately proved elusive for him.
That Obama is looking to foreign policy to establish a legacy reflects, in part, the fact that since his re-election in 2012, he has achieved relatively little high-profile domestic policy success. For instance, his gun control bill and immigration reform were defeated and a long-term federal budgetary ‘grand bargain’ with Congress proved elusive.
Many re-elected presidents in the post-war era, just like Obama, have found it difficult to acquire momentum behind a significant new domestic agenda. In part, this is because the party of re-elected presidents, as with the Democrats now, often hold a weaker position in Congress in second terms of office.
Thus former US presdients Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, Richard Nixon in 1972 and Bill Clinton in 1996 were all re-elected alongside Congresses where both the House of Representatives and Senate were controlled by their partisan opponents. This dynamic means domestic policy initiative in Washington — if it exists at all — can edge back to Congress.
This overall political context means Obama has placed increasing emphasis on foreign policy (which Congress has less latitude over), as Wednesday’s Arab-Israeli speech by Kerry exemplified. This international orientation has been especially marked as the US economic recovery has built up steam allowing the president to focus his attention away from restoring US economic fortunes after the 2008-09 recession.
Laying down the potential foundations for a future Israel-Palestinian peace deal is only one key area in which Obama is looking to define his legacy. Also in the Middle East, amongst his key — albeit intensely controversial — foreign policy accomplishments has also been the final, historic nuclear deal with Iran. The agreement between Tehran and the so-called P5+1 (US, China, Russia, United Kingdom, France plus Germany) was a major victory for Kerry and Obama, albeit one that the incoming Trump administration may now seek to unwind in 2017.
The landmark deal has long-term potential not just to help forge a lasting rapprochement with Iran. For it also holds possibility, ultimately, to help transform the wider geopolitics of the Middle East, and help consolidate Obama’s broader desire to enhance global nuclear security.
It constitutes an important victory for long-standing efforts to combat global nuclear non-proliferation. And this at a time when, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, some 45 countries have expressed interest in joining the existing club of 30 states with nuclear energy. And in this policy area, as well as pushing inter-state nuclear diplomacy with countries like Iran and also Russia too, Obama has created the Nuclear Security Summit process to counter nuclear terrorism which he has described as the “most immediate and extreme threat to global security”.
Perhaps Obama’s biggest regret on the foreign front will be that his focus on the Middle East during his presidency, despite the drawdown of US forces from Iraq, has hindered his hopes for refocusing US policy towards the Asia-Pacific with his so-called ‘pivot’ to the region.
These hopes did not advance as much as he had wished, and the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement between the US and 11 countries in the Americas and Asia-Pacific now also looks dead in the water under Trump’s presidency. With this agreement, Obama had wanted to ‘lock-in’ a stronger focus on US policy towards the region and other markets in the Americas, allowing the country to help write what US officials have called “the rules of the road” for the 21st Century world economy.
Taken overall, Obama’s legacy will rest heavily on foreign affairs given that he has struggled to secure major domestic policy momentum in his second term. He scored some important international successes, including the Iran deal, but his strong focus on the Middle East was one of the reasons why he failed to advance further his re-orientation of US policy towards Asia-Pacific more fully.
Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS (the Centre for International Affairs, Diplomacy and Strategy) at the London School of Economics.
