Obama faces challenges in moving beyond America alone

By DAN BALZ

President Obama delivered a global call to action at the United Nations on Wednesday morning, but it was an expression of apparent frustration that may have best captured the moment in which he finds himself.

His address came during a whirlwind week of international gatherings and diplomacy — a climate-change summit and Middle East meetings Tuesday, the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, a G-20 meeting on the international economy today. Those formal events coincided with an intensification here at home over critical choices facing the president in his Afghanistan policy.

Obama’s message to the other national leaders assembled in New York was that his administration represents a clear break with the posture of the Bush administration in its dealings with allies around the world. Hailing what he called a new era in the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world, Obama ticked through the changes he said his administration has undertaken in the first eight months of his presidency.

They included the banning of torture, the order to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, the winding down of the war in Iraq, a renewed focus on dismantling and defeating al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the appointment of a special envoy for the Middle East with the goal of a two-state peace agreement and fresh investment in combating climate change.

In return, Obama said, the United States expects the cooperation of others in addressing these problems.

Can a different style, a more open hand and expressions of respect prompt the rest of the world to follow along with this administration as it tries to solve many of the same problems that confronted the Bush administration?

And to what extent will the president be willing to act, if not exactly unilaterally, then mostly alone, to advance this nation’s interests?

Part of this will depend on the steadiness and consistency of Obama’s leadership. He has set clear goals and, in his speech Wednesday, outlined concrete steps in some of the areas of priority. But as he delivered his address, his administration was engaged in an important debate over Afghanistan — one that became all the more public Monday with Bob Woodward’s publication in The Washington Post of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s report warning of failure in the mission there unless more troops are committed.

The report puts Obama squarely on the spot. With public support for the war eroding and with liberal activists voicing opposition to what they see as a potential quagmire in Afghanistan, White House officials have responded cautiously to McChrystal’s assessment.

It was only a few months ago that the president announced a new strategy for Afghanistan. McChrystal was installed to implement that strategy. Now, in the wake of reports that the general wants more troops, administration officials suggest another new strategy may be needed.

They cite a new set of conditions, including the messy aftermath of the recent election in Afghanistan, as a cause for reassessment. In reality, the election certified rather than exposed what administration officials have long known — that President Hamid Karzai is an unreliable partner in the battle against the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Obama is confronted by Afghanistan’s history, and part of his task has been to define his goals in Afghanistan narrowly. His language on Afghanistan was similar to George W. Bush’s on Iraq. He called Afghanistan the central front in the war on terror. But how could he avoid the same kind of open-ended commitment there that had happened under Bush in Iraq?

At the United Nations on Wednesday, Obama sought to rally the world to collective action on the challenges as diverse as the economy, nuclear proliferation and the environment. But Afghanistan now looms as an example of how the United States must set its own course before others will follow along. The rest of the world will be watching to see how the president responds.