The Democrats’ loss of control of the House of Representatives and their reduced majority in the Senate have left many outsiders pondering whether the open hand of the newly inaugurated president — extended to Iran, Russia and the Middle East in 2009 — will close, replaced by an introspective and distracted White House, prone to protectionism abroad while maneuvering at home with Republicans eyeing their newly enhanced prospects for the 2012 presidential election.
“After Obama the candidate and Obama the great orator, it is Obama the politician who should take to the stage,” said Pierre Rousselin, a columnist in Le Figaro newspaper.
Or, as George Friedman, an American foreign affairs specialist put it, “the substantial change in America’s place in the world that Europeans and his supporters entertained has not materialized.” Indeed, “the gulf between what Obama said and what has happened is so deep that it shapes global perceptions.”
The shift in foreign attitudes is not simply one of mood music. From the Jewish settlements of the West Bank to the nuclear arsenals of Russia, the changed power relationships in Washington have left many wondering whether cornerstone policies may now have moved beyond Mr. Obama’s reach.
And, as much as American leaders weakened at home traditionally seek compensatory triumph abroad, analysts in several countries seemed unsure of Mr. Obama’s prospects of redeeming promises in Iraq and Afghanistan — both issues of central importance to America’s allies.
“American elections are largely driven by domestic concerns, but their outcomes have global ramifications,” wrote Bruce Stokes of the German Marshall Fund in Washington. “Never has this been more evident than in the wake” of this week’s mid-term vote.
“Europeans hopeful of cooperation with the United States on Afghanistan, arms control, the global economy and climate change will notice that Washington is about to become an even more frustrating partner.”
Against that, said Seumas Milne in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Mr. Obama “can deliver abroad” despite constraints at home. “If the U.S. president really were to end the occupation of Iraq and begin a genuine withdrawal from Afghanistan next year, that would be a change people everywhere could believe in.”
The response to the mid-term ballot has been nuanced and uneven, suggesting that many of America’s partners would prefer to see themselves confronting not so much a cataclysm as shifting ground rules whose import cannot yet be reliably computed.
Some fear the worst, imperiling progress on two issues in particular — arms control with Russia and an always elusive settlement between Israelis and Palestinians.
A first sign of alarm came when, soon after the mid-term results emerged in the United States, the international committee of the State Duma in Russia withdrew its recommendation to ratify a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Washington. That is because many in Russia fear that Republicans, some of whom have opposed the treaty because they believe it may limit American anti-missile defense deployments, now have greater clout to block action in the Senate and deny Mr. Obama what had been seen as a significant foreign policy achievement.
While the committee’s gesture seemed largely symbolic, it was nonetheless an important signal of the Kremlin’s concerns.
If the Senate cannot ratify the treaty before Congress resumes with its new members in January, said Konstantin Kosachyov, the Duma committee chairman, “it will be much more difficult for President Obama to conduct his foreign policy, termed a ‘reset’ as far as relations with Russia go.”
The worries extend beyond Russia. Even while expressing his faith in the continuity of American foreign policy, the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, urged America’s newly chosen lawmakers to support nuclear nonproliferation and to oppose what he called “American unilateralism as it was in the previous administration of President Bush.”
Many forecast an equally profound turn in the Middle East, enabling Israel’s right-wing government to continue to resist pressure to freeze the expansion of settlements in the West Bank.
“The huge influx of newly elected representatives and senators to Washington includes dozens of strong friends of Israel who will put the brakes on the consistently dubious, sometimes dangerous, policies of President Obama regarding these past two years,” said Danny Danon, a legislator from the right wing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party.
Like most forecasts of radical change in Washington, that argument had its opponents. “Any expectation that Obama will be too weak and too scarred to pursue an activist policy vis-à-vis the Israel-Palestinian conflict is likely to be confounded,” said Mark Heller, of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Indeed, said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior Palestinian official, Palestinians “are not affected by the results of these elections.”
But the proof will be on the ground, quite literally. “The real game begins now, and the name of the game is Palestine,” said Ari Shavit, a columnist in Haaretz newspaper. Only the creation of a “viable” Palestinian state within a year “can lift the spirit of Obama’s self-defined liberal camp.”
Of course, Washington’s relationship with Israel has much wider regional repercussions, particularly in dealing with Iran, where some commentators believe that the impact of a more hawkish Congress will erode the frail trans-Atlantic consensus on diplomacy and sanctions.
Abroad, Fear That Midterm Result May Turn U.S. Inward - NYTimes.com
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