The Democrats’ shock defeat in Massachusetts plus the deepening impact of the recession on US jobs and incomes are having a devastating impact on US foreign policy. Having started with a welcome post-Bush drive to conciliate long-standing opponents in an effort to ease tensions where aggressive threatening had previously merely hardened enmities, Obama’s original welcome intentions, which required far beyond a single year to realise, are now being swamped by declining polls in US domestic politics. He is certainly right to make his first priority winning back domestic support by focusing on reversing the ravages of the deep recession, but that does not require a foreign policy beginning to veer wildly in contrary directions. He has sent almost 40,000 extra troops into Afghanistan, but then almost immediately signs up to a phased withdrawal. He extended an unclenched fist to Iran, which probably helped to stimulate the ‘green’ proto-revolution there after the stolen presidential election, but now is quite suddenly ratcheting up the arms race without apparent provocation in the highly combustible cauldron of the Middle East.

The real danger of this sudden change of policy is not only that it may well be counter-productive, but that it will be seen across the world as the US reverting to type. It will be seen as once again demonising Iran which won’t actually stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons (if that is their intention, which has never been proved) but will certainly swing the Iranian population behind their hard-line authoritarian leadership and stifle the green movement for reform, whilst at the same time placating the Israeli hawks who have never been equally challenged over the threat posed by their 200 nuclear warheads. If only we had a UK Government that stood up to the Americans in the interests of world peace and as a check on the excesses of US interventionism (as Wilson did over Vietnam), now would be the moment to counsel caution and a reappraisal of a very dangerous policy before it’s too late.

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