Paying for Obama’s political education

Recently, in an interview with Time magazine on the first anniversary of his taking office, President Barack Obama was asked about how the United States was faring in its mediation efforts between Israelis and Palestinians. His answer was remarkably disingenuous.

“I'll be honest with you,” Obama said, “[t]his is just really hard. Even for a guy like [US envoy] George Mitchell, who helped bring about the peace in Northern Ireland. This is as intractable a problem as you get … [a]nd I think that we overestimated our ability to persuade [the parties] to do so when their politics ran contrary to that.” With this in mind, the president declared, “[I]f we had anticipated some of these political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations as high.”

Of course, that was sheer nonsense. It was always apparent during the election campaign that a resolution of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians would be monumentally difficult. Even then we knew that “the political environment, the nature of their coalitions or the divisions within their societies, were such that it was very hard for them to start engaging in a meaningful conversation,” as Obama told Time.

However, the US president today is in the uncomfortable position of having to excuse his once hefty dose of hubris. It was convenient during the campaign to blame everything on the diplomatic idleness of the Bush administration, if only to demonstrate why Barack Obama would be better. Yet in retrospect, as dubious commentators explained at the time, among them your humble servant, the obstacles to a settlement were systemic, explaining why George W. Bush actually did so little. No president likes to tie his wagon to a losing cause, and we should reconcile ourselves with the fact that Obama may soon apply that lesson.

This is a mid-term election year, and the US president will be more reluctant, and less able, to push hard toward any kind of a settlement. Mitchell’s latest visit to the Middle East did little to brighten faces. The envoy was unable (albeit perhaps only momentarily) to convince Palestinians to resume peace negotiations before a halt in Israeli settlement building, while the Israelis see little reason to concede much to a weak Palestinian Authority – and perhaps more important, to a Barack Obama who so unwisely implied that he had overestimated his capacities.

Adding to the ambient skepticism is a widespread belief in the region that Obama will not anger the pro-Israel lobby in an election year by pressuring Israel on negotiations. That’s partly true, since after the Senate election debacle in Massachusetts last week, the president cannot afford to alienate an important Democratic voting bloc.

However, things are also more complicated. A year into his term, Obama has come under criticism for his foreign policy shortcomings, particularly in the Middle East. America may be liked more, but this hasn’t helped it any in the nuclear standoff with Iran, in Afghanistan, and on the Palestinian-Israeli track; and it hasn’t made Americans feel more secure when it comes to terrorism. Obama may conclude that he has no interest in wasting valuable political capital in the coming months by pushing for an impossible reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, and his admission to Time may have been a forewarning of that mood.

Mediators come and go in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations knowing that their chances of success are almost nil; yet no one ever seriously contemplates calling the diplomatic efforts off. When George W. Bush took office, he sought to do just that, in reaction to what was perceived as Bill Clinton’s over-indulgence in regional peace-making.

Very soon, however, Bush was obliged to reverse course, particularly after 9/11 and the Israeli reconquest of the West Bank following a bomb attack against an Israeli hotel in Netanya in March 2002. The president erred in trying to isolate Yasser Arafat and in recognizing that part of the Arab territories occupied in June 1967 would remain Israeli, but he also made a historical statement declaring, for the first time, that the United States was favorable to Palestinian statehood. Palestine was never a priority of his administration, but nor was it something he could ignore, or be perceived of as ignoring, despite the improbability of a solution.

What is Obama’s next step? If one must guess, he will likely pull a Bush on us. Mitchell will continue to try peddling the latest peace plan, but he will not enjoy the requisite presidential backing to knock heads together and induce Israelis and Palestinians to make fundamental compromises. The problem, as Obama so rightly put it, is that there are domestic impediments to a solution on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli divide – impediments that Washington has only narrow latitude to remove.

So, Barack Obama has now learned how easily the Middle East grinds down high expectations. Anyone could have told him that years ago. It’s striking, though, how many “specialists” did not do so, allowing the president to let his self-confidence get the better of him on a settlement. Now, once more, we pay the price for his ongoing political education.

The Ali Hassan al-Majid anticlimax

When a mass murderer dies, it is usually an anticlimax. At his hanging this week, Ali Hassan al-Majid, the cousin of Saddam Hussein, had only ambient impassiveness to serenade him into the pit. A photograph was released by the Iraqiyah television station showing Majid dressed in an orange jumpsuit, minutes before death. Otherwise, there was an evasiveness and expediency to the execution that, for all the rules of due process it violated, was paradoxically fitting for so brutal a man.

I first heard the name Ali Hassan al-Majid in 1991. As I recall, a video filmed by the Iraqi Army was obtained, then distributed, by the Iraqi opposition. It showed Majid leading the suppression of Shiites in the aftermath of the Gulf war, when Saddam, having been expelled by President George H. W. Bush from Kuwait, was allowed to slaughter his own people. The video showed Majid ordering soldiers to be merciless, then walking through a field to be shown bound Shiite prisoners. One began to shout the fatiha, prompting an officer to pull out a gun as if preparing to shoot him. The prisoners were later executed nearby.

The unrelenting grimness of the scene, the certitude the prisoners surely had that their time was up, since they had become a trade fair exhibition for a man whose commerce was death, was difficult to shake off. And yet within no time Arab publicists had done precisely that, as their outrage was turned against the sanctions regime imposed on Iraq by the United Nations. And when Saddam transformed that regime into an instrument to reinforce his authority and wealth, the publicists’ amnesia returned, their outrage displaced to condemn America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Displacement has been a useful aspect of the Arab mindset when the region has considered Iraq. Take Majid’s orange jumpsuit. How appropriate that this was Al-Qaeda’s fashion of choice for the hostages it once decapitated. And yet how many people in the Arab world allowed their outrage with America to displace what should have been their disgust with Al-Qaeda, still rewarded with the designation of “resistance,” despite its ongoing deployment of suicide bombers to murder civilians and deny Iraqis a normal life.

On the same day that Majid was hanged, he was sent off with a drum roll of devastating attacks against three Iraqi hotels. The carnage continued on Tuesday, and a convergence of factors has pushed the Arab world and the United States to take a relatively low-key approach to these crimes. Vice President Joe Biden flew from Washington to Baghdad to encourage Iraqi leaders to avoid a rift over the 511 mostly Sunni candidates barred from the upcoming parliamentary elections. However, when it comes to the suicide bombings, all American officials can seem to say, with studied detachment, is that these were expected in the pre-election period.

The only thing in Iraq that truly interests the Obama administration these days is the American military withdrawal. Washington’s haste is creating a vacuum that Iraq’s neighbors are seeking to fill to their own advantage. That’s why American aloofness is shameful: The attacks are directly linked to the US pullout, and the suicide bombers are either transiting through Syria, or are Iraqis financed by Baathist networks there. This is well known, and has been confirmed by Iraqi and US officials. However, both the US and the Arab states have no interest in highlighting that fact: the Americans because they don’t want to complicate their departure; the Arabs because there is a consensus among Middle Eastern regimes that a Shiite-dominated order in Baghdad ultimately threatens their power.

We’re back full circle to the ambiguous American relationship with the Arab world’s Sunnis, and those of Iraq particularly. That’s not to say that the Obama administration has decided to entirely disregard Sunni violence directed against Shiites. Things are more subtle than that. Given the growing fear in Washington of Iranian predominance in the Gulf, and the reality that the American exit from Iraq could very well facilitate this, the US has fallen back on an old instinct: a reluctance to challenge the Sunni-dominated regimes opposing Tehran, and that includes in Iraq.

The Americans have also been apathetic toward Syria’s actions directed against its eastern neighbor. The Obama administration knows the only way of bringing about “behavior change” in Syria is to take the Assad regime on politically and militarily. Given the Arab mood and new US priorities, not least Barack Obama’s Afghanistan campaign, Washington has neither the regional support nor the wherewithal to do this. So, the administration calls for “dialogue” between Baghdad and Damascus, which in Syrian parlance means intensifying Iraq’s destabilization.

That explains the dispatch with which the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki hanged Ali Hassan al-Majid, even though President Jalal Talabani refused to sign off on the execution order. There was much symbolism in that discord. Majid was condemned for several crimes, including the Anfal campaigns of 1988 against the Kurds, which included the chemical weapons attack against Halabja, as well as the crushing of the Shiites in 1991. That Talabani, a Kurd, disagreed with Maliki, a Shiite, over the death sentence was interesting and in a way disconcerting. But it also said much about where both men are today.

Talabani and the Kurds have come a long way since Anfal, winning considerable autonomy and influence in an Iraq they often appear to have the option of taking or leaving. But Maliki suffers from two sets of insecurities: he is facing an electoral challenge from within his own Shiite community, and Shiites in general know that the Arab world is not close to accepting their takeover of power in Baghdad. That Majid should have been used as a ball to be kicked around in this developing game of affirmation was apt, even if the legal form was wanting. It was another knife in Saddam’s legacy.

Nabih Berri gets the Syria treatment

You have to sympathize with Nabih Berri. His recent proposal to begin a process of political deconfessionalization may have been pure, conniving maneuver, but the parliament speaker is facing genuine difficulty in being unable to find a clear role for himself in the new Lebanese order.

How odd, you might reasonably reply. After all, Berri has always been one of Syria’s more stalwart Lebanese followers, so you would expect him to benefit from the Syrian political return to Beirut. Yet that has not happened. Everyone has been invited to Damascus, from President Michel Sleiman to Prime Minister Saad Hariri to Michel Aoun, who has time and again humiliated Berri. Even Walid Jumblatt holds in his hands a road map of apologies back to Syria’s capital. However, Berri has stayed home. Is this a case of Syrian familiarity breeding contempt?

Things are a bit more complicated than that, but one wonders by how much. The parliament speaker is caught between competing political logics, and his performance in the elections last June was poor enough that he has little leverage to claw back what he then lost. That is one reason why Berri raised the deconfessionalization issue: it is a means of regaining Shia legitimacy, since the perception is that the community, because of its numbers, gains most from abolishing sectarian quotas.

What are the different logics Berri has had to satisfy? For starters, he has adjusted, albeit gingerly, to a new kind of Lebanese state, with a president and prime minister who are no longer moving--at least quite as they once were--to the rhythms of Syrian instructions. Both Sleiman and Hariri in many ways represent an aspiration for, if not quite the reality of, a sovereign state. In that context, and for Berri to retain any authority, particularly after the long stretch during which he closed down parliament, he can no longer afford to be seen as entirely Syria’s man.

But herein lies a paradox. If Berri does not have Syria’s full endorsement, then there seems no overriding reason to defer to Nabih Berri. In fact that is precisely what is happening today. The speaker is trusted neither by his own allies nor by the parliamentary majority. In raising the deconfessionalization issue, Berri allowed himself to become a punching ball for Michel Aoun, while March 14 is not prepared to forgive him for what he did between 2006 and 2008, particularly when his Amal militia brutalized the inhabitants of western Beirut during the May 7 onslaught.

Despite all he did for the opposition, Berri was little rewarded at election time. His Shia partner, Hezbollah, ended up supporting Aoun in Jezzine, while even in places like Baabda and Jbeil, where the speaker had hoped to back candidates independent of Hezbollah and the Aounists, his efforts were negated by a concerted Shia vote in favor of both. Berri, who with Walid Jumblatt perhaps once dreamt of forming the core of a centrist bloc able to play the opposition and March 14 off against each other, saw that scheme dashed. He returned as speaker, as everyone expected he would, but was again beholden to Hezbollah for that appointment.

Berri’s relative weakness has also done him no good in Damascus. The Syrians reportedly don’t much care for his friendly relationship with Sleiman, who will never match Emile Lahoud in submissiveness; they see the speaker’s election performance as a black mark against him; and they know that he has no solid Shia presence separate from Hezbollah. Consequently, it’s simpler to deal with Hassan Nasrallah, who would anyway neutralize a serious Syrian endeavor to inflate Berri politically.

So what is the speaker to do? Unfortunately for him, there are almost no decent options available. He discredited himself so thoroughly during the years of domestic tension after the start of the downtown sit-in in December 2006, that he cannot even buy consideration. Even the conciliatory Jumblatt is too busy repairing his own relationship with Damascus, while simultaneously reassuring his dubious March 14 allies, to help bolster Berri. The speaker is on his own, adrift in a sea of scorn.

There is a lesson here: For all its faults, the Lebanese system can sometimes be unforgiving to those who violate its dictates. When Syria was around, Berri’s legitimacy was a gift from Damascus, with Hezbollah the dominant Shia representative. When the Syrians left, the speaker lost the aura he had enjoyed, even as his subordination to Hezbollah further marginalized him communally. And when Berri closed down parliament, his own institution, he relinquished any remaining esteem, despised by his enemies, owed nothing by his stronger partners.

Certainly, that’s how the Syrians like their Lebanese allies: dependent, isolated, reviled. Which is why they may well continue to give second-class treatment to Berri, someone so debilitated politically that he can but remain loyal to them, but toward which Syria need make no efforts.

Decoding the Abou Moussa statement

There was something vaguely surrealistic in the Lebanese government’s response on Tuesday to the reservations expressed last weekend by Abou Moussa, the secretary of Fatah al-Intifada, about ending the Palestinian military presence outside the refugee camps. In response to a subsequent remark by the Palestinian official that he would accept a dialogue on the matter, the government declared, “Sovereignty cannot be negotiated.”

Of course it cannot be, but as everyone realized when Abou Moussa announced that he would refuse to disarm his group (and in the presence of Sidon’s mayor no less, a political enemy of the Hariri family), he was transmitting a message from Syria, which undermines Lebanese sovereignty on a daily basis. That’s because Fatah al-Intifada is a Syrian creation. It was established as a breakaway faction from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement in May 1983, as the Palestinian leader prepared to battle Syria to secure a foothold in Tripoli. The Syrians didn’t want their old enemy there, engineered the rift in his movement, then expelled Arafat from the north.

The decision to terminate the armed Palestinian presence outside the refugee camps, but also to remove military outposts of pro-Syrian Palestinian groups located inside Lebanese territory along the eastern border, was agreed during the national dialogue sessions of 2006. So, what were the Syrian intentions in ordering Abu Moussa to take the position that he did and defy the Lebanese consensus?

There seemed to be four primary objectives. First, and more generally, to put up obstacles to political normalization in Lebanon, and in that way strengthen Syria’s bargaining hand in shaping Lebanese government decisions whose outcome will determine how much power Damascus regains in Beirut. This includes, above all, security and administrative appointments, through which the Syrians hope to place political allies in positions of authority, eliminating most of the practical vestiges of sovereignty.

A second Syrian aim was to further erode UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for the disarmament of armed groups in Lebanon, including Hizbullah and Palestinian organizations. Syria and its Lebanese allies have tried time and again to push the Lebanese state into declaring Resolution 1559 null and void – which would also knock out a vital prop of Resolution 1701 that ended the 2006 war. Until now, President Michel Sleiman and Prime Minister Saad Hariri have doggedly resisted this, angering Hizbullah and Damascus, so that Abou Moussa’s assertions were a sign that there would be no letup in the pressure.

A third Syrian aim was to issue a pointed reminder to the United States and the international community on the eve of the visit to Beirut of George Mitchell, the American envoy for the Middle East peace process. The reminder was that there could be no independent Lebanese negotiating track; there is a Syrian track, to which Lebanon is subordinate. How so? Any Lebanese participation in peace talks must begin with agreement over security guarantees in the southern border area. This, in turn, requires the Hariri government to have control over all armed groups inside the country. By reminding everyone that the government has no such control, Abou Moussa also reminded them that Syria alone could make that claim.

Here we come full circle to the 1990s, but with a twist. At the time, Syrian President Hafez Assad saw negotiations with Israel as serving two purposes: returning the Golan Heights to Syria and creating a mechanism for consolidating Syrian hegemony over Lebanon, since Syria would be the guarantor of Lebanese implementation of any final settlement. Given the presence of Hizbullah, the international community was largely willing to go along with this. The Israeli prime minister at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, let the cat out of the bag when he declared that he would much prefer to see Syrian soldiers deployed in Lebanon rather than on the Golan. Assad had every intention of fulfilling both conditions.

The twist, however, is that the Syrians no longer have an army in Lebanon. Yet this has not eased President Bashar Assad’s eagerness to replicate his father’s designs, albeit using the only instrument left at his disposal, at least for now: political hegemony. That is why Assad will continue to order his Lebanese and Palestinian proxies to chip away at any strand of Lebanese sovereignty with which he is unhappy.

A fourth Syrian objective was to warn the prime minister, Saad Hariri, that he is mistaken in imagining that his regional and international diplomacy will pry Lebanon out of Syria’s hands. By following up his trip to Damascus with visits to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and, this week, France, Hariri sought to emphasize that Lebanese prime ministers no longer needed Syrian permission to conduct their foreign policy. This has greatly irritated Syria’s followers in Lebanon, who point out that Hariri will fail in watering down the greater importance of his Damascus visit. Abou Moussa was there to show why.

There are several influential people in the Hariri entourage more openly advocating friendlier relations with Damascus. This is partly a reflection of Saudi interests, but it also echoes a more established line of argument in Hariri circles – one heard even after Rafik Hariri’s assassination and most notably expressed by his sister, Bahia, in her speech of March 14, 2005 – that Lebanon cannot sustain a break with Syria. In the coming months Saad Hariri will have to manage those two discordant faces in his political movement: satisfying those around him, and more importantly the men in Riyadh, who want to exploit his opening to Syria, while also ensuring that Lebanon retains its sovereignty within that framework.

The Abou Moussa maneuver demonstrated that even as Saad Hariri pursues his high wire act with Syria, Assad will go on trying to push him off. Sovereignty cannot be negotiated, the Lebanese government tells us. The Syrian rejoinder is: Who says we’re negotiating?

Hezbollah’s vision thing

Whenever you entertain the thought that Hezbollah is prepared to integrate into the Lebanese state, be sure, first, to listen to the party’s deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem.

Speaking at a Hezbollah gathering earlier this week, Qassem criticized those who, he said, believed that “if there are solutions in the region and Israel withdrew and the Zionist problem were ended, that would end the presence of [the Resistance].” Such thinking was “naïve”, Qassem added, since “the Resistance was not present because of a situation, but because of principle, and principle does not end because a situation changes.”

The statement echoed a very similar one that Qassem made in June 2008, to which he had affixed the intriguing thought that “[t]he Resistance is a vision and a methodology, not just a military reaction.” Methodology, vision, principle? So many words so difficult to pin down, yet also so indicative of the totalistic nature of Hezbollah, which brooks no effective independent political action outside the confines imposed by the party, which will survive as it is simply because the Truth must prevail.

Qassem was justified in mocking those trusting souls who imagine that Hezbollah perceives itself as a transitory phenomenon. And yet for a long time Lebanese and foreign analysts or social scientists have asked, with undue sincerity, “What does it take to turn Hezbollah into a political party?” The question has been interesting for two reasons: it presumes that Hezbollah might accept such an outcome, and it has usually steered away from drawing attention to the fact that the party apparatus is basically an extension of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Qassem’s remarks explode the argument that Hezbollah will voluntarily pack up its guns once Israel ceases to threaten Lebanon. By its nature Israel is a threat, party officials believe, and that says nothing about other ambient threats, for example that represented by the United States. And yet those who want to believe that Hezbollah can fundamentally change have often bravely tried to adjust to the party’s moving goal posts, suggesting ways it can be reassured and given less latitude to see open-ended menaces everywhere. They’re the ones Qassem calls naïve.

The effort to ignore Hezbollah’s relations with Iran is a second characteristic of those who believe the party can be recycled into a non-military organization. The reason for this is easy to understand: If Hezbollah is characterized as an appendage of Iran, then considerable doubt would be cast on its authenticity as a Lebanese party, making less likely its willingness to recycle itself into something peaceful and well integrated into Lebanon’s political life. Yet if there is any prospect of seeing Hezbollah turned into a political party, and mind you this remains slim, it would require an end to Iranian funding.

The positivists increasingly grasp today that their assumptions about Hezbollah are off the mark. But that doesn’t mean that they have given up on a functional reading of the party; on analyzing it mainly in a pragmatic framework, that of costs and benefits, without considering enough that Hezbollah regards itself as a collection of true believers.

That is the value of Qassem’s statements. A party that talks about principle, a methodology, vision is one that tends to see its actions in a transcendental light, as being beyond experience and costs and benefits, even if an astute estimation of costs and benefits may very well be a part of the party’s transcendental strategy. Being on the side of God does that to you. But then what of Lebanon in that exclusive relationship?

In his comments to the party faithful, Qassem also noted that Hezbollah was “comfortable” with where it was, by which he meant the endorsement it secured from the state for its weapons. However, the shift in the balance in Lebanon, Syria’s relative regaining of power when compared to that of its ally Iran, which, through Hezbollah, was the most powerful outside force on the ground in the period 2005-2009, appears to be at the back of the minds of Hezbollah officials whenever they utter something.

Hezbollah will not enter into a confrontation with Syria. However, the party is not keen, either, to be turned into a Syrian bargaining chip, especially when it has just spent four and a half years defending Syria’s stakes in Lebanon. That is perhaps why its secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, has been so busy stressing that Hezbollah is anchored in the country. That message is a warning shot directed at his domestic rivals, certainly, but it is also an implicit signal to Syria that, ultimately, the party’s fate cannot be negotiated between Syria, the United States, Israel, or anyone else in the international community.

Yet there is one lingering problem. For all of Qassem’s talk of the transcendental choice of adopting the Resistance as a vision, Hezbollah’s only way of defending that choice is through its weapons. But transcendental principles and visions usually imply something different. In the jargon of political science, they are examples of what we might call soft power – values that shape action through persuasion, not force, or hard power. What Qassem will not tell us is that Hezbollah’s vision is all about hard power, which made May 2008 possible and which Hezbollah will not live down, despite the reconciliations taking place today.

Hezbollah, as a political organization (though not necessarily as a manifestation of Shia communal expression), will never truly be a part of Lebanon. The guns are its reason to exist, without which its methodology would collapse and its vision evaporate. We should thank Naim Qassem for making that clear, then draw the obvious conclusions.

Loved, not feared: Obama and the curse of Carter

The current issue of Foreign Policy magazine has a cover story comparing Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter. The implication is that Mr Obama, if he performs unwisely, may go the dismal way of his predecessor. While many applaud the US president as someone who has persuaded the world to like America again, the real question this mid-term election year is whether Americans like Mr Obama's America as it is; and on that, the jury is still out.

Americans are, understandably, addicted to optimism. Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in 1980 in large part because he persuaded the electorate that he could bring them a new morning, after years of economic decline and foreign policy calamities. The perception was at times harsh, but Mr Carter could never shake off the feeling that he was inept, and that the US looked inept in consequence.

Mr Obama is not inept, but the hopes that greeted the beginning of his term have been displaced by a jarring dose of realism. Economic recovery has been more sluggish than expected, with unemployment still in the double digits, despite growth in manufacturing. The president's health plan remains divisive, adding to a sense of doubt among voters, weighed unfairly against the incumbent, about the debt burden inherited from the financial recovery package. And even where a consensus exists, namely on limiting carbon-dioxide emissions, Mr Obama could do no better than emerge from the wreckage of Copenhagen looking like the villain.

As for his foreign policy, everyone agrees that Mr Obama is more popular than his predecessor, George W Bush, but in large part that is because most people misread the second Bush term. The current president had relatively little room to overhaul the Bush White House's alleged unilateralism, disregard for international law, and scorn for international institutions and compromise, because Mr Bush was himself a faithful multilateralist between 2005 and 2009, manoeuvred within the confines of international law, and compromised with most of the international partners he had so angered before.

There is another reason why Mr Obama has failed to convince. His approach to foreign affairs seems bound by no clear unifying theme. The president set ambitious goals before taking office, but otherwise doesn't stand for much - indeed often exhibits the intellectual's innate mistrust of clearly defined opinion. He is pulling out of Iraq, as promised, though this might play to the advantage of Iran, America's main rival in the Gulf. His effort to curb Iran's nuclear programme and facilitate Palestinian-Israeli peace have yet to show results. And Mr Obama has escalated US involvement in an Afghan war that even he appears unconvinced by.

The repercussions of Middle Eastern issues are also handicapping the president at home. For example, a recent poll suggested that two-thirds of Americans felt that Mr Obama's policies on terrorism either had no effect on their safety or made them feel less safe. The Democrats have traditionally been viewed as weak on national security, which is why Mr Obama reacted so virulently against the intelligence agencies after they allowed the failed Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to fly to the US unhindered.

To make matters worse, among those defending Mr Obama the most loudly are relics from the Carter years. They include the former national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who argues that the president has "comprehensibly reconceptualised" US foreign policy and shown "a genuine sense of strategic direction". If that is so, few have noticed. A pointed critique of the administration has come from the academic Fouad Ajami, an intellectual champion of the Bush years. His disapproval was directed more at the mood governing US foreign relations. Mr Obama presides over an administration isolating itself globally, Mr Ajami wrote, one imprisoned by its own declared limitations, without the ethos of a great power and offering no "overriding commitment to the defence of American primacy in the world".

Mr Ajami was not wrong. Powerful nations retain their power partly through self-confidence. Yet Mr Obama, despite his high rhetoric, has often drawn attention to American shortcomings. For example, the US is preparing only targeted sanctions against Iranian officials as punishment for Tehran's intransigence on its nuclear project. This is defensible in light of domestic Iranian tensions, but it is hardly a compelling deterrent given Washington's own description of what is at stake. It is, rather, a confirmation that America can do no more.

After declaring Palestinian-Israeli peace a Middle Eastern priority, the Obama administration is now quietly admitting just how difficult the task is. The US is putting together new proposals, but they will almost certainly go nowhere. The same can be said of American behaviour in Iraq. Americans welcome the withdrawal, but withdrawals by their very nature imply setbacks, not strength, reinforcing the sense that Mr Obama is better at sounding the retreat than seizing the initiative.

But there is Afghanistan, some might reply. Perhaps, but what kind of self-assurance did the US president inspire in his new strategy there? Even as he announced the deployment of more troops, he set a deadline for the start of their pullout. And Mr Obama sounded positively disconsolate when remarking: "In the wake of an economic crisis, too many of our neighbours and friends are out of work and struggle to pay the bills. Too many Americans are worried about the future facing our children. Meanwhile, competition within the global economy has grown more fierce. So we can't simply afford to ignore the price of these wars."

It is too early to write off Mr Obama as a new Jimmy Carter. However, he has not resolved a conundrum that preoccupied Machiavelli: whether it is best for a leader to be loved or feared. Mr Obama is more loved than Mr Bush, but he is not feared. That may come back to haunt him

By the way, the Hariri tribunal is dying

Only days after it was announced that the chief investigator, Neguib “Nick” Kaldas, would soon leave the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, we now hear that the registrar, David Tolbert, is doing the same. The next tribunal statement about a departure should perhaps come with a laughing track.

For four years between 2005 and 2009 the March 14 majority told the Lebanese people that its priority was the “truth” about who had killed Rafik Hariri and all those afterward. The opposition sought to block the Hariri tribunal, and nearly carried Lebanon into a civil war as a consequence. And yet here we are, near the fifth anniversary of the former prime minister’s assassination, with myriad signs that the investigation and tribunal process is in crisis, and all we are hearing is silence from those once the loudest champions of justice, not least the victims’ families.

It’s obvious that the tribunal will not produce an accusation in the foreseeable future. It is equally obvious that the prosecutor, Daniel Bellemare, is not someone who inspires much confidence, and that the alleged deterrence power of the Hariri investigation has evaporated completely. This dismal evolution merits recapitulation.

The first major sign that something was amiss was the decision of the second UN commissioner, Serge Brammertz, to reopen the Hariri crime scene in 2006. Although three reports had indicated that the former prime minister was killed by an above-ground explosion, Brammertz wasted time and resources to ultimately reach the same conclusion.

The episode indicated one of two things: either that the commissioner consciously sought to delay progress, perhaps because he knew that UN headquarters did not want a serious inquiry; or that Brammertz was inexperienced. The second possibility is alarming in itself, but the first is hardly far-fetched. Recall that the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, told the first UN commissioner, Detlev Mehlis, that “he did not want another trouble spot” because of the Hariri investigation, which Mehlis put on the record in an interview with me. If Annan told Brammertz the same thing, and surely he did, the Belgian may well have decided to comply. His appointment as prosecutor of a leading UN tribunal, that for the former Yugoslavia, was perceived by many to be a promotion, although Brammertz had done nothing in Lebanon to earn that accolade.

Mehlis expanded on his doubts about Brammertz in that interview with me, conducted in January 2007 for The Wall Street Journal. Brammertz was preparing to move to the former Yugoslavia tribunal, and Mehlis saw this as an opportunity to sound a warning shot about his successor. He criticized Brammertz’s imparting of scant information in his reports to the Security Council, under the guise of protecting the “secrecy of the investigation”, then declared: “From what I am hearing, the investigation has lost all the momentum it had [when Brammertz took over] in January 2006.” Mehlis went on to argue, “Unfortunately, I haven’t seen a word in his reports during the past two years confirming that he has moved forward. When I left we were ready to name suspects, but [the investigation] seems not to have progressed from that stage.”

Subsequent developments proved Mehlis right, and last year Brammertz rebuffed my efforts to obtain his reaction to the criticism. By all accounts, and both Lebanese and non-Lebanese sources have confirmed this to me, Brammertz did not advance much in his work, certainly not on the Syrian track anyway. A police investigation requires suspects, not just analysis. It is only by arresting suspects that an investigator can compare testimonies and unravel the chain of command and the decision-making process in a crime to determine who ordered what, and when. In many ways, an investigation without suspects in custody is a contradiction in terms.

The Mehlis interview was received apathetically in Beirut, especially from those who had a vested interest in ensuring that Brammertz had done his work well. The fact that the Belgian was replaced by Bellemare, a man with no expertise in conducting a complex political investigation, who was recommended and briefed by Brammertz, was, similarly, unworthy of comment; and this despite the fact that the high expectations of the years before were now being questioned by the individual, Mehlis, who had the most advantage in seeing his initial findings vindicated.

Bellemare’s two years in office have been even more disturbing than Brammertz’s. The Canadian’s reports as investigator told us less than his predecessor’s, if that was humanly possible. We quickly learned that the laconism hid no new information. Just over a year later, sitting as prosecutor, Bellemare would be compelled to release all those suspects in his case still in detention, because he did not have enough to indict. Far from implying the suspects’ innocence, however, the decision only affirmed that Brammertz, who had approved of the continuing detentions (as had Bellemare himself), left the Canadian with a deficient dossier.

And then came another incomprehensible development: Bellemare’s decision to declare the suspect and witness Mohammad Zuhayr al-Saddiq “no longer of interest to the case.” That Saddiq may have been a plant to discredit investigators is quite possible. However, it was, therefore, up to the prosecutor to determine who put him up to this, just as it was up to Bellemare to explain why Saddiq, who presented testimony under oath, was not sanctioned for lying. One is not a suspect and witness in a murder case at one moment and no longer of interest the next. Yet Lebanon’s judicial authorities said nothing about Bellemare’s astonishing measure.

But then the Lebanese government, officially a part of the prosecution, has said nothing about anything else that has gone wrong with the tribunal either. Bellemare’s decision to unfreeze the assets of the former Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon, Rustom Ghazaleh, only reinforced a conviction that he has little of note on the Syrian angle in the Hariri assassination, for which he can doubtless thank Brammertz. That might help explain why Bellemare dropped the case against Saddiq.

Then there was Kaldas’ departure, and now Tolbert’s. Despite the official explanation that Kaldas left because his one-year contract was up, his exit was almost certainly the result of two far more significant factors: his personal differences with Bellemare, and their mutual disagreement over the mechanics of the investigation. It is true that Kaldas was offered a professional promotion in Australia, in much the same way as Tolbert received an attractive offer from the International Center for Transitional Justice. But the reality is that both men felt that nothing particularly compelling retained them at the Lebanon tribunal, therefore preferred to abandon what they once imagined might be an interesting trial.

The Lebanon tribunal is not yet dead, but it seems very nearly there, amid embarrassing indifference in Beirut. Those committed to the rights of the victims must denounce more forcefully the charade now taking place in a suburb of The Hague. The supreme insult is to be told that justice will come when everything points to the contrary. Bellemare has to provide real answers soon, or else its time to close his stumbling operation down.

The Kaldas departure is more bad news for the Hariri tribunal

The statement released Thursday by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon announcing that its chief investigator, Naguib “Nick” Kaldas, would be leaving on February 28 is more bad news for the prosecutor, Daniel Bellemare. While officially Kaldas is departing because he committed only for one year, and will resume his duties as deputy commissioner of the New South Wales police, there is doubtless more to the matter than that.

How obvious that becomes when reading the tribunal’s statement. If Kaldas’ end of term was scheduled, then why has Bellemare not already started finding a replacement, as the statement reveals? Then there is the telltale wording suggesting the decision was not routine. The passage indicating Bellemare’s expectation that Kaldas might have renewed his contract, surely a possibility in itself, was yet indicative at this late hour of limited coordination between the investigator and prosecutor.

Then there were the more apparent contradictions, especially Kaldas’ obligatory expression of “optimism” in an investigation he described as “ground breaking,” followed by the jarring intimation that, despite this, he had to return to more pedestrian pursuits in Australia. Any investigator worth his salt, like Kaldas, lives for a complex, interesting international case like the assassination of Rafik al-Hariri, if he or she feels it is worthwhile. Four years into a high-profile affair, chief investigators do not sign on for just a year, no matter what timeframe their initial contract specifies, nor did Bellemare go to the trouble of picking Kaldas for him to ultimately clock in for so brief a period. He hired him to lead an investigation on behalf of a tribunal expected to function for several years.

The statement released by the tribunal is mostly nonsense. Kaldas’ departure is a severe blow to Bellemare’s efforts, another to be added to his forced release of the four generals last April; his inability to foresee, let alone capably contain the repercussions of, the Der Spiegel article last May; and his incomprehensible, and unexplained, decision to declare Mohammad Zuhayr al-Saddiq a person “no longer of interest” to his investigation, when Saddiq was named a suspect in Hariri’s murder, lied under oath, and may have been a Syrian plant to discredit investigators.

This raises the more critical question of why Kaldas left. We can only speculate, but there are relatively few possible answers. Perhaps the investigator failed to get on well with Bellemare personally, and therefore preferred to go home, as happened with the tribunal’s former registrar, Robin Vincent; or there was fundamental disagreement between Kaldas and Bellemare on the methodology of the investigation; or Kaldas felt that the tribunal would not reach what he deemed to be a successful, or a thorough, outcome; or a combination of these factors.

Whichever reason it is, Bellemare’s delivery of an indictment has again been hampered. We can ruminate further. If Bellemare had been on the verge of issuing an indictment, it is highly unlikely that even personal differences between him and Kaldas would have led to the latter’s leaving at this stage. Usually in such situations, a modus vivendi is reached between prosecutor and investigator. Bellemare could have persuaded Kaldas to stay on until an indictment was issued, to avoid undermining their shared objective, and only then would the two have parted ways.

If this conclusion is correct, it means that Bellemare may be further from an indictment than many people seem to believe. It may also imply that Kaldas’ problems have more to do with the mechanics of the investigation and where the trial might lead, or not lead, than anything else.

There was little encouraging in Bellemare’s decision last week to acquiesce in the unfreezing of the assets of Syria’s former intelligence chief in Lebanon, Rustom Ghazaleh. Those assets were frozen at the recommendation of Detlev Mehlis, the first United Nations commissioner looking into the Hariri assassination. At the time, Mehlis had considerable reason to suspect Ghazaleh. In December 2005, the UN commission interviewed the Syrian officer in Vienna, along with colleagues of his, after the Security Council reinforced Mehlis’ mandate.

That Bellemare permitted the Lebanese authorities to release Ghazaleh’s assets appears to confirm that the prosecutor will not, or cannot, aggressively pursue the Syrian angle in the assassination – therefore that his focus may end up being on the suspects in Lebanon. And yet, from much of the information emerging during the past four years, Syria for a long time remained at the heart of the United Nations inquiry, something evident in reading even among the more uninformative reports published by the independent international investigation team.

If today Bellemare is unwilling, or unable, to pursue the Syrian connection, that may be because he inherited a weak dossier from his predecessor, Serge Brammertz. That very accusation has been directed against Brammertz by his detractors, notably Detlev Mehlis. However, in my own research, I heard such criticism echoed by senior Lebanese officials involved in advancing the Hariri investigation and tribunal.

As for Bellemare, part of his responsibility before he became UN commissioner was to accurately assess how effective was the dossier he had received from Brammertz. Bellemare essentially legitimized Brammertz’s activities by taking on the case, and in so doing must now demonstrate, beyond mere expressions of confidence, that there was something to build on. Yet with no indictment in sight, Bellemare’s judgment is under scrutiny. Kaldas’ exit hardly reassures us on that count.

The Nick Kaldas bombshell

The statement released yesterday by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon announcing that its chief investigator, Naguib “Nick” Kaldas, will be leaving on February 28 is more bad news for the prosecutor, Daniel Bellemare. While officially Kaldas is departing because he committed only for one year, and will resume his duties as deputy commissioner of the New South Wales police, there is doubtless more to the matter than that.

How obvious that becomes when reading the tribunal’s statement. If Kaldas’ end of term was scheduled, then why has Bellemare not already started identifying a replacement, as the statement reveals? Then there is the telltale wording suggesting the decision was not routine. The passage indicating Bellemare’s expectation that Kaldas might have renewed his contract, surely possible in itself, was yet indicative at this late date of limited coordination between the investigator and prosecutor.

Then there were the more apparent contradictions, especially Kaldas’ obligatory expression of “optimism” in an investigation he described as “ground breaking”, followed by the jarring intimation that, despite this, he had to return to more pedestrian pursuits in New South Wales. Any investigator worth his salt, like Kaldas, literally lives for a complex, interesting international case like the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri. Four years into a high-profile affair, chief investigators do not sign on for a year, nor did Bellemare go to the trouble of picking Kaldas for him to clock in for so restricted a period. He hired him to lead an investigation on behalf of a tribunal expected to function for several years.

The statement released by the tribunal is mostly nonsense. Kaldas’ departure is a severe blow to Bellemare’s efforts, another to be added to his forced release of the four generals last April; his inability to foresee, let alone capably contain the repercussions of, the Der Spiegel article last May; and his incomprehensible, and unexplained, decision to declare Muhammad Zuhayr al-Saddiq a person “no longer of interest” to his investigation, when Saddiq was named a suspect in Hariri’s murder, lied under oath, and may have been a Syrian plant to discredit investigators.

This raises the more interesting question of why Kaldas left. We can only speculate, but there are relatively few possible answers. Perhaps the investigator failed to get on well with Bellemare personally, and therefore preferred to go home, as happened with the tribunal’s former registrar, Robin Vincent; or there was fundamental disagreement between Kaldas and Bellemare on the methodology of the investigation; or Kaldas felt that the tribunal would not reach what he deemed to be a successful, or a thorough, outcome; or a combination of these factors.

Whichever reason it is, Bellemare’s delivery of an indictment has again been hampered. We can ruminate further. If Bellemare had been on the verge of issuing an indictment, it is highly unlikely that even personal differences between him and Kaldas would have led to the latter’s leaving at this time. Usually in such situations, a modus vivendi is reached between prosecutor and investigator. Bellemare could have persuaded Kaldas to stay on until an indictment was issued, to avoid undermining their shared objective, and only then would the two have parted ways.

If this conclusion is correct, it means that Bellemare may be further from an indictment than many people believe. It may also imply that Kaldas’ problems have more to do with the mechanics of the investigation and where the trial might lead, or not lead, than anything else.

There was little encouraging in Bellemare’s decision last week to acquiesce in the unfreezing of the assets of Syria’s former intelligence chief in Lebanon, Rustom Ghazaleh. Those assets were frozen at the recommendation of Detlev Mehlis, the first United Nations commissioner looking into the Hariri assassination. At the time, Mehlis had considerable reason to suspect Ghazaleh. In December 2005, the UN commission interviewed the Syrian officer in Vienna, along with colleagues of his, after the Security Council reinforced Mehlis’ mandate.

The fact that Bellemare permitted the Lebanese authorities to release Ghazaleh’s assets appears to confirm that the prosecutor will not, or cannot, aggressively pursue the Syrian angle in the assassination--therefore that his focus may end up being on those suspects in Lebanon. And yet, from much of the information emerging during the past four years, Syria for a long time remained at the heart of the United Nations inquiry, something evident in reading even the more uninformative reports published by the independent international investigation team.

If today Bellemare is unwilling, or unable, to pursue the Syrian connection, that may be because he inherited a weak dossier from his predecessor, Serge Brammertz. That very accusation has been directed against Brammertz by his detractors, notably Detlev Mehlis. However, in my own research, I heard such criticism echoed by senior Lebanese officials involved in advancing the Hariri investigation and tribunal.

As for Bellemare, part of his responsibility before he became UN commissioner was to accurately assess the effectiveness of the dossier he had received from Brammertz. Bellemare essentially legitimized Brammertz’s activities by taking on the case, and in doing so must now demonstrate, beyond mere expressions of confidence, that there was something to build on. Yet with no indictment in sight, Bellemare’s judgment is under scrutiny. Kaldas’ exit hardly reassures us on that count.