As the Edward Snowden saga illustrates, the Obama
administration is running out of foreign influence.
By Bret Stephens
WSJ.com
At this writing, Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive
National Security Agency contractor indicted on
espionage charges, is in Moscow, where Vladimir
Putin's spokesman insists his government is
powerless to detain him. "We have nothing to do with
this story," says Dmitri Peskov. "I don't approve or
disapprove plane tickets."
Funny how Mr. Putin always seems to discover his
inner civil libertarian when it's an opportunity to
humiliate the United States. When the Russian
government wants someone off Russian soil, it either
removes him from it or puts him under it. Just ask
investor Bill Browder, who was declared persona non
grata when he tried to land in Moscow in November
2005. Or think of Mr. Browder's lawyer, Sergei
Magnitsky, murdered by Russian prison officials four
years later.
Mr. Snowden arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong, where
local officials refused a U.S. arrest request,
supposedly on grounds it "did not fully comply with
the legal requirements under Hong Kong law." That's
funny, too, since Mr. Snowden had been staying in a
Chinese government safe house before Beijing gave
the order to ignore the U.S. request and let him go.
"The Hong Kong government didn't have much of a
role," Albert Ho, a Hong Kong legislator, told
Reuters. "Its role was to receive instructions to
not stop him at the airport."
Now Mr. Snowden may be on his way to Havana, or
Caracas, or Quito. It's been said often enough that
this so-called transparency crusader remains free
thanks to the cheek and indulgence of dictatorships
and strongmen. It's also been said that his case
illustrates how little has been achieved by
President Obama's "reset" with Moscow, or with his
California schmoozing of China's Xi Jinping earlier
this month.
But however the Snowden episode turns out (and don't
be surprised if the Russians wind up handing him
over in exchange for an unspecified American favor),
what it mainly illustrates is that we are living in
an age of American impotence. The Obama
administration has decided it wants out from
nettlesome foreign entanglements, and now finds
itself surprised that it's running out of foreign
influence.
That is the larger significance of last week's
Afghan diplomatic debacle, in which the Taliban
opened an office in Doha for the "Islamic Emirate of
Afghanistan"—the name Mullah Omar grandiloquently
gave his regime in Kabul before its 2001 downfall.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai responded by shutting
down negotiations with the U.S. over post-2014
security cooperation.
Now the U.S. finds itself in an amazing position.
Merely to get the Taliban to the table for a bogus
peace process, the administration agreed at
Pakistan's urging to let Mullah Omar come to the
table on his owns terms: no acceptance of the Afghan
Constitution, no cease-fire with international
forces, not even a formal pledge to never again
allow Afghanistan to become a haven for
international terrorism. The U.S. also agreed,
according to Pakistani sources, to allow the
terrorist Haqqani network—whose exploits include the
2011 siege of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul—a seat at
the table.
Yet having legitimized Haqqani and given the Taliban
everything it wanted in exchange for nothing, the
U.S. finds itself being dumped by its own client
government in Kabul, which can always turn to Iran
as a substitute patron. Incredible: no peace, no
peace process, no ally, no leverage and no moral
standing, all in a single stroke. John Kerry is off
to quite a start.
What's happening in Afghanistan is of a piece with
the larger pattern of U.S. diplomacy. Iraq? The
administration made the complete withdrawal of our
troops a cornerstone of its first-term foreign
policy, and now finds itself surprised that Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki won't lift a finger to
prevent Iranian cargo planes from overflying his
airspace en route to resupplying Bashar Assad's
military. Syria? President Obama spent two years
giving the country's civil war the widest berth,
creating the power vacuum in which Iran, Hezbollah
and Russia may soon achieve their strategic goals.
And Iran: In 2003, Tehran briefly halted its secret
nuclear-weapons work and agreed to suspend its
enrichment activities, at least for a few months.
Yet since then, every U.S. effort to persuade Iran
to alter its nuclear course has failed. Is it
because the Obama administration was insufficiently
solicitous, patient, or eager for a deal? Or is it
that Tehran believes that treating this
administration with contempt carries little cost?
"America can't do a damn thing against us" was a
maxim of the Iranian revolution in its early days
when America meant Jimmy Carter. Under President
Obama, the new maxim could well be "America won't do
a damn thing."
Which brings us back to the Snowden file. Speaking
from India, Mr. Kerry offered a view on what it
would mean for Russia to allow him to flee.
"Disappointing," said our 68th secretary of state.
He added "there would be without any question some
effect and impact on the relationship and
consequences."
Moscow must be trembling.