A president’s words ought to be his defining character

By Peter Wanyonyi

Kenya: It is a truism that the word of a politician should never be relied upon. And when that politician is a Kenyan, one need to double the caution — Kenyan politicians are infamously two-faced, saying one thing and believing something totally different.

But when that Kenyan politician is also the most powerful man in the world, running the mighty machine that is the United States of America, the consequences of his running with the hare and hunting with the fox can be deadly on geopolitical scales.

Cousin Barry came to power on the back of lofty rhetoric that was as musical as it was promising.

 Here was a man who would, we all believed, finally change the way the world relates to the sole superpower. Not by making the USA weaker, but by changing the way America views the world, and by making inclusiveness in world decision-making a principle of international relations.

Butchering

The old people say be careful what you wish for, since you just might get it. We got what we wished for and more.

 And suddenly, like a child with a new toy, buyer’s remorse is setting in. We are not too sure that we like what we got in our man in the White House.

A president’s words ought to be his defining character, and in this, President Obama has been a complete, unmitigated failure. In the Middle East, two best crises illustrate his vacuous foreign policy.

First, the Syrian civil war — when the world learnt that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons on unarmed civilians, outrage was universal.

 President Obama promised a swift, targeted retaliation to make it clear to Mr Assad that his murderous regime had gone too far. Never mind that Assad had been butchering thousands of civilians before that.

Decisive

The world waited for a decisive follow-through from Obama. But wapi! None came.

 Emboldened, Assad is back to murdering women and children and starving whole villages, the better before world attention turns back to his murderous regime.

Assad does not act alone. He is publicly backed by Iran, which also openly sponsors Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia that has all but taken over the State of Lebanon. Iran has been having its own issues with the world: it has defied the United Nations’ demand to open up its nuclear facilities for international inspection. In strode Obama.

 He placed a call to Iran’s new president, and suddenly the Iranians were willing to play ball. We all heaved a heavy sigh of relief, until the details of the nuclear deal that Obama offered Iran became clear. In an astonishing capitulation, Obama offered to lift sanctions against Iran if the Iranians merely suspended their nuclear programme for six months, after which they are effectively free to resume it.

 Obama even threw in $7 billion of US money as a sweetener. The Saudis and the Israelis — America’s traditional allies in the region — are still reeling from the shock.

All over the world, US allies are discovering that decades of US foreign policy commitments are going up in flames. Cousin Barry, it appears, has no time for Realpolitik and the steadfastness of old, enduring alliances.

But in his quest to shrink America, President Obama risks not making the world a more peaceful place, but a far more volatile one, with America’s word counting for nothing.