Obama's Foreign Policy: Haven't We Seen This Before?

It was three years ago exactly -- July 23, 2007 -- during the halcyon days when Barack Obama's hair was a lot less gray and Hillary Clinton was still mastering the Art of Just Letting Go. In a CNN/YouTube sponsored debate, the two would-be leaders of the free world outlined what their foreign policy doctrine might be as president.

Obama caused a stir by saying he would engage with leaders of rogue states -- Cuba, North Korea and Iran -- calling it "a disgrace that we have not spoken to them." Clinton chided her opponent as naïve, but Obama stuck to his guns: for too long (well, for eight years) the United States had pursued a dangerously unilateral position, favoring tough, "my way or the highway" approaches, alienating allies, and forcing isolated regimes to dig in their heels even deeper. In other words, all stick, no carrot.

Obama aimed to end this: Change was, after all, what the guy was running on. But, three years later, it appears as if Obama's engagement strategy -- while laudable, and perhaps even necessary -- has failed. Instead, it looks as if the administration is reverting to a Bush-era policy of sanctions and sticks. Across the board -- from North Korea, to Sudan, to Iran, to Burma -- the road ahead looks a lot like what George Bush might have mapped out.

On North Korea, Obama's attempts to persuade reclusive leader Kim Jong-Il to abandon the country's nuclear weapons program have withered. On Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates were in the region and announced a new round of sanctions aimed at pressuring the North Korean military elite -- a familiar strategy, and one previously employed by the Bush administration.

On Sunday, joint exercises are slated to begin between the U.S. Navy and the South Korean Navy, a show of force in the wake of the presumed North Korean sinking of the South Korean Navy ship Cheonan, which resulted in the loss of 46 sailors. Evan Feigenbaum, former deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia and head of the Asia practice group at the Eurasia Group, noted that the sanctions approach "shouldn't be a surprise. In large part, the U.S. is bumping up against the reality of North Korea -- that North Korea has done very little to suggest it will abandon its nuclear weapons program or cease its provocative behavior."

Unlike Iran, where the U.S. has abandoned engagement with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in favor of multilateral United Nations sanctions and tougher congressional sanctions, the United States has been forced to act largely unilaterally on North Korea: a close replica of the Bush doctrine. Following the sinking of the Cheonan, the U.S. was unable to procure anything beyond a U.N. Presidential Statement that condemned the sinking, but did not name the North Koreans specifically. The reason for this -- and the reason the United States is back to unilateral action in the region -- is quite simple, according to Feigenbaum. "China doesn't buy the idea of coercive diplomacy towards North Korea," he said. Without the region's major power player on board, the United States is basically seated at a table for one.

In other areas where the Obama administration has yet to fully abandon its engagement policy, a distinct lack of results and a deteriorating situation on the ground have put pressure on the administration to adopt stronger, tougher measures. Rich Williamson, George W. Bush's special envoy to Sudan, posits, Obama "said, 'We believe in engagement, multilateralism, and international law.' But that is not a foreign policy strategy -- those are all techniques." Though candidate Obama stumped early in his political career for the Save Darfur campaign, his special envoy to the country, retired Gen. Scott Gration, has characterized the U.S. policy there as a "gold stars and cookies" approach.

Gration has taken a conciliatory approach toward the recalcitrant President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, praising progress made in stemming the blood flow in the region, and casting doubt as to whether the situation is as serious as activists have portrayed. In the meantime, violence continues, and the country remains stitched together in a tenuous peace agreement that threatens to crumble in January, when a referendum is scheduled on whether the oil-rich South will secede from the North. Sudan activists, among them John Prendergast, co-founder of the ENOUGH anti-genocide project, have pressed for tougher measures – and soon.

"Every administration that comes into office over the last two decades thinks it can convince the Sudanese government to change its behavior through dialogue and constructive engagement alone," Prendergrast wrote in an e-mail. "It usually takes a year or two to figure out that this won't work, that a more forceful approach is required that mixes sticks with carrots. . . . President Obama has been no different, and has deferred to General Gration, who remains convinced that nice guys finish first in diplomacy. [Obama] will slowly become disabused of this misconception, but the cost to Sudanese civilians for this macabrely slow learning curve will likely be excessively high."

And while the United States announced it would pursue strategic dialogue coupled with existing sanctions in Burma (also known as Myanmar, a longtime member of the repressive regime roundtable), this new policy has produced little advantage. Democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest, and the Burmese regime is marching forward on planned elections that will likely cement military rule.

"So far, Obama has not seen the influx of foreign policy successes that many hoped would result from a pragmatic engagement approach," said Jared Genser, a prominent human rights lawyer who has worked on Burmese issues for several years. "In fact, I think he's perceived in many circles as being the same as George W. Bush, with the exception of some warm n' fuzzy feelings for having been more multilateral. But those feelings have not translated to an advantage for the U.S."

If the administration is, in fact, ready to put its carrots back in the crisper and sharpen its knives instead, then time's a-wastin': Iran appears to be closer than ever to producing a nuclear weapon, North Korea shows no sign of reversing its aggressive posture in the run up to the presumed hand-off of power from Kim Jong-Il to his son Kim Jong-Un, and game-changing Sudanese and Burmese elections are on the horizon. Genser said: "It took eight months for the administration to announce its Burma policy of enhanced engagement and sanctions. Those eight months gave the junta time to consolidate power. They should have spent those eight months outlining timelines, benchmarks, and sticks.

"Now is the time we need to see a Plan B being put into action."