The Silent Violence Behind "Smart Power" in U.S. Foreign Policy

By Peter Baofu, Ph.D.

On January 27, 2009, the U.S. President Barack Obama told Al-Arabiya host Hisham Melhem that “[m]y job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy,” so as to reinforce what he already said in his inaugural address that “[t]o the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”

This is what the Obama administration called the “smart power” approach to U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world, as the U.S. is now in a "damage control" mode for its image abroad, after the disastrous foreign policy experience of the Bush administration.

It has been about seven months now since Obama became the U.S. president. So, is his “smart power” approach producing any "real" mutual respect (not just cheap words) towards the Muslim world? The answer is that, although the rhetoric of "smart power" may help Obama's image in the short term (by manipulating those simple folks who are eager to believe in any promised hope), the violence towards the Muslim world as a result of U.S. foreign policy not only shows no sign of diminishing but also is on the rise.

This is true, even though Obama is different from George W. Bush (who, by the way, was ranked in a survey of U.S. presidential historians, conducted by the cable channel C-SPAN on February 15, 2009, as the 7th worst president in U.S. history -- and his vice president, Richard B. Cheney, was ranked by TIME magazine as one of the worst vice-presidents in U.S. history). To say that obama differs from Bush is trivial, however, since no two consecutive U.S. presidents have ever been identical anyway. After all, even twins do not behave exactly alike.

But the more important question now is how much Obama is really different from many of his predecessors, especially in the context of foreign policy. Just consider the following five foreign policy dealings (in the Middle East ) by the Obama administration so far. Although these five examples below are merely illustrative (not exhaustive), they show that Obama is not much different from his predecessors, contrary to his rhetoric of "mutual respect."

Firstly, Obama made the decision to have a major “surge” in U.S. military operation abroad, this time not in Iraq (as was the case in the Bush administration), but in Afghanistan. The initial planning was for 17,000 more (additional) U.S. troops to be sent to Afghanistan at the beginning stage (on top of the existing U.S. troops already put there by the Bush administration). But now, more troops are being considered to be sent abroad as the war drags on "for years to come," as Defense Secretary Robert Gates said earlier this year. Already, there was a leak, as reported by Norman Soloman, that "the Pentagon's top commander there [in Afghanistan ] will soon request 45,000 more.” This has become one of Obama's wars.

As the war drags on, many of those Afghans, including many civilians, who died in U.S. military attacks, have been time and again Muslims. On a weekly basis, there have been reports of killings of innocent civilians (by U.S. military attacks), time and again, for so long. For the U.S. , the lives of people in that region are not worth as much as Americans and do not mean much (except being dismissed as "collateral damage" in war, or any other slogan), and the killing continues.

After all, it is a standard procedure of the U.S. military that they do not count those whom they kill in foreign lands, because they do not want the country and the rest of the world to know the magnitude of their killing -- although they do diligently count every single American soldier who is wounded, killed, captured, or missing. Even the U.S.-imposed Afghan president Hamid Karzai had helplessly condemned, time and again, these attacks which often ended up killing so many more innocent Afghan civilians (than the few suspects) and injuring even many more, besides ruthlessly destroying the homes of these poor folks and the surroundings.

Secondly, during the Bush administration, the U.S. had violated many times the Pakistani territorial sovereignty with countless drone attacks on villages in certain parts of the country (like the North and South Waziristan regions), in spite of the helpless condemnation by the Pakistani government against the U.S. attacks which had also killed so many innocent civilians (and injured many more), besides destroying the homes of these poor folks and the surroundings too. Again, for the U.S., the lives of people in that region are not worth as much as Americans, and the U.S. military routinely refuses to count those whom they regularly kill in foreign lands, because they do not want the country and the rest of the world to know the magnitude of their killing.

But these U.S. drone attacks not only continue in the Obama administration but also have increasingly become the favorite hi-tech way to carry out the war effort. Defense Secretary Robert Gates (who also served in the Bush administration) even confirmed earlier this year that these missile strikes would continue, until the war on terror in the region is won.