Obama v. Putin: Maintaining credibility in international politics

In the ongoing competition between the United States and
Russia to maintain international power, many say Obama
has thrown in the towel.

The recent diplomatic maneuvers over Syria’s long-running and bloody civil war have raised, yet again, the question of how much diplomacy is about state policy and how much is about leaders and their pride.

On Sept. 11, 2013, The New York Times 

published an op-ed piece written by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin directly addressed the people and the political leaders of the United States and warned against any military action against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

“The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders,” Putin wrote. “A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism.”

Putin’s letter was a direct response to a speech given by President Obama the day before in which the American leader outlined why military force was necessary.

 “This would be a targeted strike to achieve a clear objective: deterring the use of chemical weapons and degrading Assad’s capabilities,” Obama said, adding that he would not deploy American troops on the ground in Syria, nor pursue a prolonged bombing campaign.

In an August 2012 news conference Obama outlined when the U.S. would see it necessary to get involved in the Syrian war, saying, “We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.”

Now the U.S. is caught between its threat of a red line and Russian efforts to negotiate a non-military end to this chemical weapons issue.

At the United Nations this week President Obama said the U.S. has no plans to invade Syria (even though inspectors have found clear evidence Syria used chemical weapons against its own people last month) but will continue to pursue diplomatic pressure.

Some have been quick to criticize Obama for his flip-flopping and the this puts special pressure on the American president, said Abhishek Chatterjee, an assistant professor in the department of political science at the University of Montana.

Chatterjee said that political leaders often make decisions based off of the desire to maintain credibility.

One method of maintaining credibility in international politics, especially as a powerful country like the U.S., is by setting an example. Chatterjee said it comes down to being a bit of a mob boss.

When a mafia boss wants to get money from a shopkeeper who fails to pay, the mafia boss sends a couple people to break legs.

“He doesn’t want to break the legs because he’s proud, he wants it to set an example to everybody who is even thinking about not paying,” Chatterjee said, adding credibility has nothing to do with ego.

Chatterjee said that the United States’ embargo against Cuba is a 50-year-old example of this approach.

“If you’re in our backyard, you can’t be independent,” Chatterjee said. “By this logic, you don’t get to act like a super power if you are quiet and peaceful and not pushing around other countries… That’s how the world unfortunately works in the realm of great power politics.”

As a world leader, the U.S. depends on maintaining this credibility in order to keep its position. When Obama backed down from his initial plan of initiating a military strike against Syria, some saw this as weakness.

Putin’s letter in the New York Times made it personal. Many of these arguments have been focused more on the personalities of the two leaders rather than the geopolitics behind the actual issue.

Various publications have compared the situation between Obama and Putin to some type of game. Garry Kasparov contributed an article to Time on Sept. 18 titled “Putin’s Pawn: Forget Chess or Checkers – Obama Forfeited.” Israeli news outlet Haaretz published an article by Asaf Ronel with the title “In the poker game with Obama on Syria, Putin plays the Israel card.” Both articles depict Putin as the bully and Obama as a pushover.

Many people believe that Obama handing Putin the power to remove Syria’s chemical weapons has left Russia with the upper hand. Some think that Obama was too accommodating, given Russia’s “desire to limit American influence in the world and putting an end to what it sees as arrogance of bringing democracy by force to oppressive countries,” Ronel said in his article.

But there is another possibility, said International Relations & Comparative Politics Professor Terry Weidner.

Putin’s letter may have allowed Obama to avoid the perils of a hasty military attack. Weidner pointed to the actions of former President George W. Bush when he refused to wait and confirm that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before invading Iraq.

“There’s a lesson there,” Weidner said. “We went into this long and horrible war where you can argue we did almost no good and a lot of harm for the very same thing we would criticize Obama for. And that is simply waiting to get a viable alternative to military action.”

Still, Weidner wonders about American standing in the world.

“You can’t talk about democracy and invade people – you can’t talk about democracy being an efficient system when you have total gridlock, and people are acting like they hate each other’s guts,” he said. “Under those circumstances it is really difficult to say that we stand for something greater because people don’t believe us anymore.”