Washington will be more humble under new president: U.S. expert

Lilian Budianto , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Tue, 09/09/2008 10:20 AM | World

The next U.S. president, no matter who it is, will have to exercise a more modest, cautious and humble foreign policy toward Muslim countries than the current administration has, says a Washington-based expert.

Jon B. Alterman, senior fellow and director of the Middle East Program at the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told a forum Monday in Jakarta that whoever is elected, John McCain or Barack Obama, the winner has to cope with international pressure and must change the way the United States deals with its priority issue of terrorism.

"There is a limit to what we can do and no matter how excited the next president is about bringing change, there is a growing sense of uncertainty about just how much change the United States can affect," Alterman said at the forum organized by the United States-Indonesia Society.

He said the next administration would have to engage more with local governments diplomatically in combating terrorism while in the past it had been perceived that ruling powers had contributed to the rise of extremism.

"We have relied too much on military intervention to fight terrorism abroad, sparking tensions not only in the region but all over the world," he said.

Relationships between the United States and Islamic nations are at their lowest since the United States launched its war against terrorism in the aftermath of the attack on Sept. 11. People living in Muslim countries have been perceiving the Bush administration as acting more like a patron rather than as an equal partner in its efforts to combat terrorism.

Alterman added that at the end of the day people would see that both Obama's and McCain's policies were more similar than different in how to safeguard the country's national interests and security.

"No matter what stance they take in terms of their attitude toward Middle Eastern issues, they still have to assure the nation they can protect its citizens. Their biggest difference is how they have told the public what they are going to pursue."

As an example, he cited the unpopular Iraq war in which neither candidate had set the exact date for withdrawing U.S. troops and that their decision might change simply due to public pressure.

"Obama said it would be 2010 and McCain after some pressure said 2013. Just like the Bush administration, I have seen a bit of resistance from them to set a specific time line for it."

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