Barack Obama: A Conflict Resolution Friendly White House?
Since his election and inauguration, it has been clear that Barack Obama, represents many things to many people, not only in the U.S., but worldwide as well. I experienced his global appeal when I was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and a Muslim Tamil Indian, who considers himself a member of Malaysia’s minority population, confided that he was exhilarated by Obama’s empowering maxim: “Yes, we can!"
Another dimension of Mr. Obama’s significance derives from the combined influence of his Kenyan Muslim father; his Anglo Christian mother from Kansas; his childhood spent in Hawaii and Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation; and his work as a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side. He has an undergraduate degree from Columbia and a law degree from Harvard, where he served as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Most notably, after delivering a rousing keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, he came out of nowhere to persuade Americans to elect him as the nation’s first African-American President!
The significance of Obama’s background, which resonates with conflict resolution theorists and practitioners, is that he is sensitive to the observation that different people of different backgrounds bring different perspectives. As a community organizer – and now global community organizer par excellence – Mr. Obama has indicated as one of his strengths: “put me in a room with a lot of different people, and by the end of the day, we will have consensus!” Given the perilous state of the world that he has inherited, nothing could be more important.
Chief among his talents is listening respectfully to people who are not accustomed to being listened to: those who have been marginalized, oppressed, and worse – part of the genesis of post-9/11 terrorism. This is evidenced by his inaugural address, and most recently, by his appearance on Al Arabiya, where he made a broad appeal to the Arab and Muslim worlds as someone who has Muslims in his own family. His message is that the United States is ready to work with them, including Iran. Former Senator George J. Mitchell, Obama’s personal emissary to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has been dispatched to the region with the charge to listen to all of the parties (with the exception of Hamas).
President Obama’s readiness to work with others at complex problem solving was demonstrated in his article, “Renewing American Leadership,” in the July/Aug 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, and in his first foreign policy speech, “Obama’s Remarks on Iraq and Afghanistan,” (New York Times 7/15/08). His core theme has been bringing people together to achieve consensus in order to solve complex global problems. His calls for appropriate changes of mindset plus the demonstration of effective U.S. leadership within multilateral settings represent significant departures from Washington’s ideologically driven policies of the last eight years.
The primary “outlier” in this otherwise “CR-friendly” portrait of the President is his stated position on the war in Afghanistan, where his draw down of U.S. troops in Iraq correlates to an increase in troop strength in Afghanistan, to deal with the resurrected Taliban insurgency. Associated with this concern is the recent attack on suspected Taliban targets in Pakistan, launched during Mr. Obama’s first week in office, which caused a number of casualties, possibly including children.
These concerns are valid, but if we examine President Obama’s Afghan policy in a larger framework, they may be put to rest. This larger framework is compatible with a conceptual device that I call the “three levels of conflict reality”: (1) Conflict as symptoms; (2) Conflict as underlying fractured relationships that give rise to symptoms; and (3) Conflict as underlying deep-rooted causes and conditions of the fractured relationships that give rise to symptoms.
Mr. Obama’s framework for Afghanistan, which corresponds to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “three legs to the stool of American foreign policy” -- defense, diplomacy, and development -- includes (1) more troops (defense) to deal with conflict as symptoms; (2) more diplomacy to deal with fractured relationships which give rise to the symptoms; and (3) more development to deal with the underlying deep-rooted causes and conditions of the fractured relationships. This reorientation of U.S. policy reflects the sentiments of General Petraeus, whose CENTCOM responsibilities include Afghanistan and Iraq and who co-wrote the U.S. military’s new guidelines on counterinsurgency.
Mr. Obama’s defense-based “surge” into Afghanistan (symptoms) must occur within a more comprehensive framework inclusive of diplomacy (relationships) and development (deep-rooted causes). The balance of the shifting investments and prioritization across these three interrelated components of his foreign policy “stool” will determine whether Mr. Obama’s conflict resolution promise remains intact or comes under significant challenge.