By now you have probably watched or read President Obama’s State of the Union address to Congress last night and you’ve read the reports and analysis (CNN, Washington Post, New York Times) of the speech.

As expected, the speech was heavy on domestic issues and light on foreign policy. President Obama hit all the appropriate and necessary points of such a speech: he encouraged his party, challenged the opposition, defended his policies, called for reform, expressed hope, and reaffirmed enduring American values. This is the formula for the speech and although every president can add to the formula, put an individual spin on it, we’ve come to expect some version of this, with the predictable calls to American patriotism, a reminder of our shared history and values, and a commitment to push forward and preserve the American dream for the next generation.  CNN has put together this interesting look back at “Notable addresses: From Lincoln to Bush” that provides some nice historical context. From a U.S role perspective, I noted that President Obama mentioned the following actions the U.S. has taken in the word:

• prohibited torture
• strengthened partnerships from the Pacific to South Asia to the Arabian Peninsula
• captured or killed al Qaeda’s fighters and affiliates
• increasing our troops in Afghanistan and training Afghan security forces
• confronting the threat of nuclear weapons
• negotiating a new arms control treaty with Russia
• working on an international agreement securing all vulnerable nuclear materials
• enforcing sanctions on North Korea
• threatens Iran with growing consequences (sanctions?)
• working through the G20 for global economic recovery
• working with Muslim communities to promote science and education and innovation
• fighting climate change
• helping developing countries with food aid and HIV/AIDS programs
• planning responses to bioterrorism or infectious disease outbreaks
• helping Haiti recover and rebuild

President Obama concluded his comments on foreign policy by noting that, “As we have for over 60 years, America takes these actions because our destiny is connected to those beyond our shores. But we also do it because it is right.” Although he described many of the efforts the U.S. is currently making on the world scene, he did not announce any new initiatives. As a follow-up to the State of the Union speech, President Obama will be taking questions next week submitted by citizens on YouTube. The White House sees this as an opportunity to interact with the people and engage them on the issues raised in the speech. You may submit a question here.

President Obama will deliver his first State of the Union address to Congress tonight. As this report in the Washington Post notes, it is expected that domestic issues will dominate the speech. I’m fairly certain that some foreign policy issues will mentioned, but probably not as many as I would like. From a U.S. role perspective, I’m hoping that President Obama will mention the U.S. role in helping Haiti recover from the recent earthquake, the U.S. role in promoting political reform and reconciliation in Iraq, fighting the war in Afghanistan, negotiating a new arms control treaty with Russia, and countering emerging global threats like climate change. If you would like to participate in a web chat on these issues, Brookings President Strobe Talbott, former deputy secretary of state, and POLITICO senior editor Fred Barbash will be hosting a web chat on Global Threats at 12:30PM EST.

The U.S. is defending freedom on the internet. Amid allegations of cyberattacks on an American company, Secretary of State Clinton gave a speech encouraging China to respect the free flow of information on the net:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The full text can be found here and the full video here. China reacted angrily, denied participating in the attacks, and defended censorship and other restrictions they place on U.S. companies operating in China. Today, Bill Gates weighed in and added his voice to those assessing the situation. Meanwhile, in China, it appears that the issue has become sensationalized, with state media alleging an American conspiracy.

In my day job with an international academic association I’ve worked with Chinese scholars and assisted them in trying to gain access to academic information located on servers in the U.S., sites blocked on their end by the so-called “Great Firewall” of China. It was a frustrating experience for all involved and underscored for me the many ways in which censorship and internet control harms the long-term interests of China. It was, after all, their own scholars who were disadvantaged.

I’m proud of the U.S for defending internet freedom (and of Google for not being evil), and yet I remain skeptical of public diplomacy as a strategy for dealing with China. China would be far more flexible and responsive to quiet diplomacy, when matters are raised at the ministerial level in meetings and not made into a public spectacle. We tend to forget that it was not that long ago that China was a closed society and the transition to a more open and market oriented society is a relatively recent development. Are we expecting too much too soon?

We are witnessing a clash between a country that values freedom and a country that values order. If China can be persuaded that internet freedom can also promote social order, then perhaps they will, in time, lessen their restrictions.

The news media is awash with reports on the first year anniversary of the Obama presidency. Take a look at this assortment on Google News and you will find that the assessment is grim. The Economist, for example, offers this rather dismal analysis of President Obama’s foreign policy:

Mr Obama has been on a goodwill tour of the world, proffering the open hand rather than the fist. Yet he has nothing much to show for it, other than a series of slaps in the face. Israel dismissed his settlement freeze. Going to China with human rights far down the agenda and the Dalai Lama royally snubbed seems to have done Mr Obama no good at all, judging by the fiasco that was the climate-change summit in Copenhagen. Co-operation between the “G2” was supposed to help fulfil Mr Obama’s grandiose promise that his presidency would be “the moment when…our planet began to heal”. Hitting the reset button on relations with Russia has produced nothing more than a click. Offering engagement with the Iranians was worth a go, but has produced nothing yet. This generosity to America’s enemies also sits ill with a more brusque approach to staunch allies, such as Japan (see article), Britain and several east European countries. Some worry that Mr Obama will always be a community organiser, never a commander-in-chief. In fact he did not get to the White House by merely being nice, but by being bold and often confronting awkward subjects head-on. It is not too late for him to toughen up. Firm talk about the budget in his state-of-the-union message would help. Now that the administration’s priority has shifted from engaging Iran to imposing sanctions, Mr Obama may be able to apply the stick and not the carrot. He is due to see the Dalai Lama. He might even, if he can relearn the virtues of bipartisan dealmaking, bully a climate-change bill through Congress. But this will all be a lot more difficult than anything he did in his first year.

I’m hard pressed to find a report offering a glowing assessment of Obama’s foreign policy in the first year, I’ll let you know if I do find one. Personally, I’d have to point to one success that still amazes me - the success of the special envoy system. When it was first announced that there would be special envoys dispatched to the Middle East (George Mitchell) and Afghanistan/Pakistan (Richard Holbrooke), that these special envoys would be given great leeway and discretion, and yet would report to the Secretary of State, I was a bit skeptical that this system would work. Sure, it looked great on paper, but how would it work in practice? Given the big names and big egos involved, it sounded more like a recipe for disaster. One year later, no disaster, no ego trip grandstanding, no meltdowns and it looks like some solid policy work is being done behind the scenes. I think it’s a credit to the professionalism of Secretary Clinton and special envoys Mitchell and Holbrooke that the system has worked as well as it has.

This report in the World Politics Review suggests that the U.S. and our allies have lost a contest you may not have realized we were engaged in. The contest was over energy resources in Central Asia and those of you who believe that much of what happens in world affairs is linked to the competition for energy will be interested to know that it’s over and Russia and China won.

Last month, the West officially lost the new “Great Game.” The 20-year competition for natural resources and influence in Central Asia between the United States (supported by the European Union), Russia and China has, for now, come to an end, with the outcome in favor of the latter two. Western defeat was already becoming clear with the slow progress of the Nabucco pipeline and the strategic reorientation of some Central Asian republics toward Russia and China. Two recent events, however, confirmed it.

One could argue that geographic proximity to Central Asia gave Russia and China a natural advantage in this particular “game” though I have to admit it would have been nice for the home team to mount a more robust challenge. Although this is but one of many ongoing contests that the U.S. is participating in, and certainly not the most important, it does raise an important issue about how the U.S. strategic focus has been dominated by Iraq and Afghanistan.

Photo Credit: Wall Street Journal/ITAR-TASS

My last post highlighted the efforts of the U.S. military to assist the Haiti relief effort and now I’m turning to the commercial and private sector, they have really stepped up to make it easy for people to donate to earthquake relief. Many major U.S. media companies have created special donation portals to allow the public to quickly make donations. Google, for example, has put together this site with disaster relief informaiton. Large cell phone companies like AT&T and Verizon have waived text charges to encourage people to donate money by text messages. Apple has crafted an online site to allow subscribers to donate from within the iTunes store with the donation billed to your iTunes account and the major news media companies have created sites (CNN, for example) showcasing various methods of contributing to the relief effort. The relief effort received a major boost days ago when President Obama appointed former presidents Clinton and Bush to lead the private fundraising effort. In the below video from MSNBC, President Obama makes the announcement flanked by the former presidents:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In this op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times, former President George Bush and former President Bill Clinton write about why they joined together together to lead the fundraising relief effort for Haiti and why they are hopeful for the country’s future. The extraordinary combination of public and private aid efforts gives hope that the people of Haiti will soon receive the food, water, medicine and supplies they need to recovery from this major disaster.

Here is another update on the U.S. role in dealing with the Haiti earthquake disaster. In the MSNBC video report below, Ann Curry reports on how the U.S. military is assisting the Haiti rescue and relief effort. The role of Army, Air Force and Coast Guard personnel is highlighted:




You are invited to participate in an online discussion today about “Obama’s Foreign Policy—One Year On” hosted by BBC Live at Carnegie. The online event will bring together foreign policy experts and scholars Jessica Tuchman Mathews, Robert Kagan, Douglas H. Paal, Paul Salem,  Robin Lustig, Ashraf Ghani to assess, “President Obama’s first year in office and the chief challenges that lie ahead: strengthening the nonproliferation regime, climate change, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Iran, and Afghanistan.” The event will be broadcast from 5:00-6:30 p.m. ET. You may submit questions for the panel ahead of the event here.

The U.S. is rushing aid and assistance to the quake stricken nation of Haiti in response to the unfolding disaster. President Obama made a public statement this morning expressing the condolences and support of the American people and directing his administration to, “respond with a swift, coordinated, and aggressive effort to save lives.” Based on news wire reports I’ve culled the following list of actions taken by the U.S. in response to the Haiti earthquake:

• Obama named U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Rajiv Shah to coordinate American relief efforts, USAID is sending a disaster response team to Haiti, the team should arrive later today to coordinate the delivery of food, water and medicine
• U.S. military overflights have assessed the quake damage and relayed this info to disaster relief planners
• civilian disaster assistance teams from Florida, Virginia and California will arrive throughout today and tomorrow
• Obama is considering sending a brigade of U.S. troops to aid U.N. relief efforts as well as a Marine amphibious ship with an expeditionary unit of 2,000 Marines that could land troops
• members of the U.S. Air Force 1st Special Operations Wing will arrive Wednesday afternoon to help with air traffic control and airfield operations at the international airport at Port au Prince
• the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson is under way and expected to arrive off the coast of Haiti Thursday, additional U.S. Navy ships are also under way
• The USS Comfort hospital ship, now berthed in Baltimore, has begun to recall its crew and 560 medical personnel to prepare to depart to Haiti
• the U.S. Southern Command is deploying a team of 30 engineers, operational planners and other specialists to Haiti

As in recent disasters, the social networking site Twitter has become a major resource. The New York Times has assembled a list of the top tweets offering reports from individuals, news organizations, and relief agencies in Haiti, the constantly updated list can be found here.

Photo Credit: The Los Angeles County Fire Department urban search and rescue team loads equipment before heading to Haiti Jan. 12. (Reuters)

Stratfor is a global intelligence company founded in 1996 that is well respected for both the breadth and depth of their strategic analysis. In the following video report, Stratfor founder George Friedman examines the U.S. relationships with Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, noting U.S. goals and the likely complications that may arise in this new year. He expresses pessimism regarding prospects for sanctions in persuading Iran to curb their nuclear program as well as doubts about achieving a military victory in Afghanistan.