2015: A World Confused

 

 

 

In the Middle East, Israel appears to have given up on peace and to have settled into a dead-end policy of growing belligerence that will make either a two-state solution or a stable one-state outcome impossible, but with no other obvious alternative.

 

Iran is close to what would be a historically important agreement to resolve the world’s concerns over its nuclear program. But it, too, is torn. It may yet decide, as Carnegie’s Karim Sadjadpour has explained, to put the interests of its Islamic revolution ahead of those of the Iranian nation and scuttle a final deal. (The U.S. Congress may make a tough choice unnecessary for Tehran by enacting premature sanctions over the failure to meet the negotiating deadline—thereby playing directly into the hands of the Revolutionary Guards and the rest of Iran’s right wing who profit from its isolation and confirming the supreme leader in his conviction that what the United States has wanted all along is regime change.) The Arab world is riven by vicious sectarian strife that will consume and define it for the foreseeable future. Saudi Arabia and the small Gulf states cannot decide which of two contending nightmares they like least: that the United States will make a nuclear deal with Iran or that negotiations will fail and Iran will become a nuclear power.

 

Alone among the major powers, Europe is not confused about its international role. Indeed, it is strikingly clear about its values, and where its comparative strengths in international affairs lie. But Europe as a whole has not yet confronted its eventual need to play a greater strategic part in assuring its own security and that of the region and countries farther afield. Europe remains so submerged in its immense union project that there is little capacity left to grapple with the world beyond its borders.

 

That leaves the riddle of President Putin’s Russia. Three years ago, Putin was shocked and his legitimacy deeply undercut by large street protests against his government. In 2012, hoping to divert attention abroad, as wounded leaders often do, he executed his own pivot to Asia, huffily turning his back on the West. The United States and much of Europe retaliated by officially snubbing the Olympic Games in Sochi that he had made his personal mission and on which he had spared no expense.

 

Russia intends to prevent Georgia or Ukraine from becoming members of NATO at all costs, and sees EU affiliation leading to EU membership and then to NATO membership as one extended slippery slope. But there were other ways to achieve that end, and decoding Putin’s long-term plan—if he had one—in invading and annexing Crimea and then sending weapons, fighters, and eventually Russian troops into eastern Ukraine is largely guesswork. True, the operations in Ukraine have won him the popularity of a wartime president. But Russia buries its dead soldiers at night, and the economic cost of sanctions is high and rising steeply. Putin badly underestimated Western unity and, especially, the strength of Angela Merkel’s leadership. And over the long term, Russia’s natural place is in Europe, not Asia.

 

So, in 2015, the United States will have plenty of company in its uncertainty about its foreign policies and core interests. Many past mistakes cannot be unwound: the only choice is to go forward within constrained options. There is an enormous agenda, but action is essential in four areas—Iran, Syria, Russia, and China.

 

Most important, the United States should continue to do whatever it can to reach a sound nuclear deal with Iran (as the administration has done thus far). That means Congress, in the country’s interest, must keep its sanctions weapon holstered until the negotiations fail or Tehran resumes nuclear activities it has suspended.

 

President Obama can no longer afford to prolong his ambivalence over the fate of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. He needs to make a clear choice, and to recognize the glaring hole in his current policy, which simply doesn’t provide for an adequate ground force to fight the Islamic State in Syria. Without that, Syria becomes a sanctuary for the group, an unwilling sacrifice to the success of military operations against the jihadis in Iraq.

 

Nor ought Obama permit U.S. relations with Russia to continue in their present, frozen condition with no one at a senior level able to reestablish or interested in restoring a functioning relationship.

 

Finally, the United States needs to act on its expressed policy of rebalancing toward Asia. The message Beijing received from the so-called pivot was that Washington planned a policy of containing China. The fact that the United States did nothing to execute such a policy was not reassuring; just confusing. The rebalance without substance behind it is a lose-lose policy, allowing Beijing to fear the worst without strengthening U.S. interests.

 

Looking back a year from now, though, it’s likely that the most consequential development of 2015 will not have been any of the above. If, as now seems quite possible, oil prices settle at around $60 per barrel, less than half of their recent peak, that will be a global game changer. Virtually no economy and few economic relationships will be unaffected. There are any number of positive opportunities—geopolitical, economic, and environmental—that will open up if prices stay in this neighborhood for some years. Defining those opportunities and seizing them is the new top-tier priority for policymakers everywhere.