How Copenhagen died during Barack Obama's Asia trip

U.S. President Barack Obama, left and Chinese President Hu Jintao reach out to shake hands after a press conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2009. Photo: AP

He did it! During his trip to China, President Barack Obama mentioned human rights and the importance of free thinking, and China didn’t dump its massive pile of U.S. dollars. America must still have some sway left in the world.

Perhaps Obama is now on a roll and will score a last-minute deal with China on climate change reduction targets or revaluing the Chinese yuan to get the global economic order rebalanced. Not.

Despite all this Asia trip fanfare, the truth is, America is foundering beneath Obama’s sizzle. The world doubts America’s ability to achieve objectives that it has set for itself — and this includes several key goals Obama had before going on his wide cut through Northeast and Southeast Asia.

Among Obama’s goals for this trip were, first, to convince Asians that the region is a U.S. priority at the presidential level. Box checked. Second was to get into the race of multilateral trade that Australia, China and Japan are each spearheading in their own way. Trans-Pacific partnership — check (but a pathetically sized check).

Third was to secure support for serious, binding targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050, particularly for China. Missed target — sizzle fizzled. Fourth was to strike a deal with China and other key Asian nations to structurally re-engineer their economies to prioritize consumption over production — and to encourage them to buy American products on the way to rebalancing the global economy. Another big fizzle.

Obama is a mesmerizing force on the global stage. His presence and open-minded, swaggerless posture, his way of framing opportunity and hope not just for the U.S. but for the world, are all welcomed by other nations and their citizens. But the world is interconnected in exactly the ways that Obama described during the campaign.

That means that America’s being stuck in a worsening quagmire in Afghanistan and pricked hard as it tries to adjust its forces out of Iraq have created doubt in allies about U.S. dependability, along with an appetite for change among global foes.

If America is perceived as weak militarily — and, after exporting toxic financial products to the world, dethroned economically — and also morally doubted given the ongoing drama at Guantanamo and memories of Abu Ghraib, then nations will not easily be moved to a course Obama is encouraging.

The reaction around much of the world is that the Copenhagen climate change meeting in December will be a soft summit, not a hard one that moves beyond pretense to action.

Given expectations and Obama’s own early declarations of its importance, Copenhagen is now dead. But what killed it is a fundamental error of the Obama White House: that it can be all things to all causes.

Obama’s attentions are spread too thin. It is vital for the White House to demonstrate an ability to accomplish goals, be they in reorienting Iran’s course, establishing a Palestinian state, ending the embargo of Cuba, creating a new global management pact with China, establishing a Manhattan Project for the next generation or developing renewable energy — anything that might create a “Nixon goes to China” strategic leap out of the incrementalism and inertia driving America’s course now.

But Obama has pulled off nothing big yet, and until he shows an ability to change the way gravitational forces have pulled global affairs out of equilibrium, then the world will resist America’s most benign entreaties to collectively solve problems that face all of us — particularly climate change.

Steve Clemons directs the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation and publishes the political blog The Washington Note.