Analysis: Obama and Hillary Clinton Must Move More Decisively on Key Issues in Afghanistan, Iran and Middle East

Unlike the nation's school children who've just returned to classes after having the summer off, President Barack Obama's foreign policy team has not been exactly idle the first seven months of the administration term in office. But it has limited its foreign policy making initiatives, focusing instead on staffing, reviewing existing policies and waiting for the outcome of elections in such critical places as Israel, Iran and Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton now must move much more decisively on a number of key issues. You can have "ongoing policy reviews" only so long and although Mr. Obama is preoccupied with the health care reform debate and other domestic issues, he can no longer put off more specific policy implementation on Afghanistan, Iran and Middle East peace negotiations without being taken to task.

No one ever uses the words "Afghanistan" and "easy" in the same sentence - or at least they never should. Still, Afghanistan is proving more and more problematic on both the military and political sides of the problem. Not only is the fight against the Taliban requiring additional numbers of U.S. troops and causing increased American casualties but Afghan politics is providing policymakers unexpected problems as accusations mount against President Hamid Karzai for tampering with recent election results. The bottom line is an increased questioning of America's role in Afghanistan in the body politic, not something easily ignored or dismissed by the White House.

The Obama administration's Iran policy was predicated on extending an open hand to Tehran if only Iranian leadership would "unclench its fist." Well, so far they have refused to do so, neither before nor after their presidential elections in July. Iran says it will deliver a "package" of proposals this week aimed at dealing with various global "challenges," presumably including its nuclear programs. Expectations are low.

Washington, along with European allies plus Russia and China, have threatened further sanctions if Iran doesn't take steps to curb its nuclear ambitions but these threats never seem to amount to much and certainly not enough to pressure Iran to drop its efforts to obtain a nuclear weapons capability. This fall Washington is likely to find out whether it has enough international support to prevent Iran from reaching its goals.

And then there is the diplomatic portfolio that keeps on giving - the pursuit of peace in the Middle East. George Mitchell, the administration's special envoy, has been working with Israelis, Palestinians and others in the region but to date - and to no one's surprise - there has been little to show for it.

The focus now is on late September when it is hoped Mr. Obama will have a three-way meeting in New York with Israel's newly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority. Such a "tri-lateral" get-together would be proclaimed a big step forward but, if it happens, it would be expected to announce only a temporary freeze on settlement construction and a resumption of direct talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Even this step is not guaranteed since Netanyahu's policy of West Bank settlement expansion continues to alarm Palestinian and other regional leaders in the Arab world and is contrary to Washington's policy that further settlement activity should be "frozen."

In the best of circumstances, what Mitchell is discussing still falls in the category of process, i.e. just getting the parties back to the negotiating table.

Efforts continue on other issues as well, most notably North Korea, but positive steps are hard to find and no one seems to have found the key to getting Pyongyang back to the negotiating table in the first months of this administration. Again, the emphasis is on process and talk of more sanctions. Washington has taken some additional unilateral steps to bring pressure but so far without effect.

Through the first months of the administration the role of Hillary Clinton has not been as high profile as many predicted. Instead, special envoys have handled the details as policy reviews have proceeded. This fall, Clinton already has planned trips to key capitals like Islamabad and Moscow, perhaps a signal she is going to engage more directly in coming months.

In October 2008, then Vice-Presidential candidate Joe Biden famously predicted: "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy.... Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy." So far the only tests have been relatively minor - North Korea testing a small nuclear weapon, Netanyahu ignoring Washington on a settlements freeze and Iran continuing its defiance of the international community. The next six months promise to pose a greater problem: become much more pro-active with your policies and move your agenda forward or risk being seen as "weak" - something no president or secretary of state wants to be called.





By Charles Wolfson, CBS News, September 8, 2009