“People of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead — they call us,” U.S. president Barrack Obama declared with confidence during his latest and last 2016 state of the Union address receiving a standing ovation from the U.S. congress. Obama further expanded his panegyric on U.S. power by mentioning a famous historical case: When the Soviets sent up Sputnik, America gathered itself together and twelve years later had men walking on the moon the president declared.
This daring statement of U.S. supremacy signified a change of rhetoric from previous SOTU addresses on the image of China in at least Obama’s eyes. In each of his past SOTU addresses, Obama solely cited Chinese accomplishments to raise awareness (Chinese trade power to make a call for TPP, Chinese innovation and R&D to make a call for a more innovative America) and rally the American people. However, this year he indisputably declared U.S. preeminence in all issues related to comprehensive national power: from the economy and commerce to foreign policy and military power. He only mentioned China’s struggling economy and ambivalent reform trends.
Yet to what extent is Obama’s optimistic assessment of U.S. power and recovery an objective reflection of reality, and not merely a boost to democratic 2016 presidential election campaigning?
To be sure the United States during Obama’s presidency recovered in many indicators of power and the president deserves recognition for his achievements in domestic U.S. politics. He fought, against overwhelming conservatism, a powerful big money and big business establishment and was still able to reform healthcare, cut unemployment substantially and most of all reinvigorate the innovation and industrial capacity by jumpstarting its dormant economic machine post-2008 Great Recession.
However in his foreign policy accomplishments, the president faces mixed reviews. While the image of the United States is much better than under George W. Bush, America has opened new fronts, particularly with Russia after the failure of the ‘reset.’
While indeed Obama ended the two disastrous and hawkish U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan (a difficult endeavor of damage control) he nonetheless stood idle if not actually indirectly supported the empowerment of religiously fundamentalist regimes in an Arab spring—which has since turned into a frozen bloody winter. Now his administration is spending much more resources to annihilate ISIS instead of preventing the creation of the Caliphate in the first place.
Breaking away from a “realist foreign policy” as Harvard’s Stephen Walt has put it, the president saw democratization as a teleological process, yet failed to perceive that democracy is also analogous to a gentle flower, needing time and attention to grow, let alone flourish. Humanitarian catastrophe in Syria ensued with millions of impoverished immigrants flooding Europe and destabilizing the U.S.’s core strategic ally.
On his foreign policy’s positive scorecard is indisputably the U.S. Paris agreement on climate change. Yet contrary to the president’ claim that the world calls only Washington to exercise virtuous leadership, in Paris most leaders called Chinese president Xi Jinping, instead. President Xi arguably took the costly call and affirmatively exercised Chinese leadership on resolving a problem of global proportions even though Chinese commitments will certainly slow Chinese economic growth during a phase of “soft landing.” A similar argument could be made for the resolution of the Iranian nuclear problem where America certainly led but China also contributed substantially.
In president Obama’s “still too early to tell” foreign policy initiatives is the pivot to Asia which was later framed as a rebalance to highlight U.S. strategic resolve and provide reassurance to U.S. allies neighboring a rising behemoth like China. Obama did not mention the pivot apart from its trade dimension. The pivot has not only increased the fear within China that Washington is looking to contain the recovery of the Chinese civilization from 200 years of turbulence, but it has also increased nationalistic calls all over Asia and polarized sentiments among Asian countries.
However as the pivot has also been tactically accompanied by unprecedented China-U.S. military-to-military cooperation, it has provided direct lines of communication between the two sides and thus limited the risk of a “P-3 Orion” scenario leading to unintentional escalation. The tactical/operational entrepreneurship and the strategic intensity with which the next U.S. administration will pursue the pivot will determine its ultimate success or failure for Asia’s stability and peace.
Overall, President Obama’s last SOTU speech was also his personal testament to his ideological and political legacy. Perhaps the “Sputnik moment” was Obama’s powerful rhetoric which overstressed his achievements while paying little attention to indicators of China’s power, which is continuing to narrow the gap with the United States.
This interpretation of Obama’s SOTU as a domestic policy message is reflected in the opening paragraphs of his speech. Surprisingly, Obama echoed Senator Barry Sanders’ core political statements asking for the empowerment of the people against big business and the reform of student loan financing. Will such implicit endorsement to Sanders allow the “incorruptible” senator from the “green mountain state” to highjack the campaign from the democratic frontrunner and power woman Hillary Clinton?
What is certain is that the United States, however successful have Obama’s domestic policies been, will head to increasing political polarization. It is not inconceivable to see Donald Trump – an ardent social Darwinist, running against Sanders – a self-attributed democratic Socialist.
China will be watching closely and as history unveils the 2017 SOTU will be much more interesting to watch and assess. With or without a Sputnik moment Obama deserves praise for his leadership and as he is too young and bright to abandon the political headlights it is certain that Obama’s experience will provide substantial benefit in high-level track 1.5 China-U.S. dialogues.
