At last Obama makes his mark on foreign policy

It has taken eight months but United States President Barack Obama has now made a strategic foreign policy step that has put a few drops of clear blue water between his Administration and that of his predecessor.

The move last week to slash George W. Bush's Star Wars sequel is less an ideological feint leftwards than an exercise in pragmatic cost-cutting. Yet it is still a bold change.

Bush's defence system had a future price tag of US$5 billion ($7 billion), although Newsweek estimates the US has spent more than US$150 billion developing such systems since the 1980s. It was prepared for a long-range missile threat that is yet to materialise and was a cold stone weighing down Washington's relationship with Moscow. It will be replaced with a cheaper, more realistic programme that takes advantage of mobile military capability.

Critics of the change have focused on the risky appearance of concession to the Russian Bear after Moscow's long opposition to the stationing of missiles in areas it regards as its sphere of influence. The Telegraph quoted Dan Goure, a Pentagon consultant, as saying: "The Administration's policy seems to be to give away first and negotiate second. That's not how it works with the Russians."

But as Fareed Zakaria points out in Newsweek, "to continue with a bad policy simply because the Russians don't like it is not a sensible basis for US strategy".

Still, it's a seismic shift away from the no-compromise, granite, immobile security certainties of the early Bush era - the Axis of Evil, the US does not (officially, bilaterally) talk to rogue states, you're with us or against us ...

Missile defence, whatever its impracticalities, carried symbolic power. In Defence Secretary Robert Gates' words: "When it comes to missile defence, some hold a view bordering on theology that regards any change of plans or any cancellation of a programme as abandonment or even breaking faith."

But part of the reason why the decision has a special impact is that up until now the Obama Administration has largely resembled the less-ideological fag end of Bush's rule - the regime that was involved in multilateral Iran talks, that prodded North Korea through the six-power framework, that trod the Middle East in search of a two-state solution.

Differences between the administrations on foreign policy have been more a matter of nuance and aspiration than anything definitive.

* Obama has deepened America's involvement in Afghanistan without revealing any strategic cards to deal an exit.

* The withdrawal from Iraq is proceeding along the lines of candidate Obama's get-out clause - that he would take military advice on its pace - and is essentially keeping to Bush's timetable.

* The "war on terror" is being prosecuted just as fiercely as before on Pakistan's border (and Somalia) even if it's no longer called the "war on terror". The Guantanamo detention centre is to be closed but detainees' fates are still being decided. Other lockups remain. Detainees at Bagram will now get Bush-style military lawyers. Renditions continue, just with greater oversight from the State Department.

* George Mitchell is tracing Condoleezza Rice's dusty footsteps around the Middle East with the same lack of success. The US has tried to project a more even-handed demeanour by being publicly strident over settlement constructions but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has toughed out the demands. Obama is not even back to where Bush was with Israeli-Palestinian talks. What now?

* The US has presented its surprise move to talk to North Korea as mere enticement to bring Pyongyang back to the six-party table.

* And the move to join talks with other powers over Iran smacks of desperation to show some progress on Tehran's nuclear issue and hardly breaks new ground. The US will be represented by the same State Department official, William Burns, who attended the last round of multilateral discussions for the Bush Administration.

Change to complex issues was never certain nor likely to be swift. First-term presidents have the biggest job in the world to learn. Candidate Obama raised the roof with oratorical calls to arms but his legislative record suggested incremental, pragmatic change attached to a wide-horizon vision was more likely.

Obama complicated it by locking various policy areas in reviews which are only gradually being completed. Impatience with the pace of change has spilled over publicly and politically.

Financial Times analyst Daniel Dombey, in a piece headed "President procrastinator", said this month: "The world is waiting for Barack Obama to make up his mind", and quoted Carter-era national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski as saying "so much time has been spent diddling around".

Last week Gates said "everybody should take a deep breath" in response to grumbling on Capitol Hill over the war in Afghanistan and let Obama devise strategy at his own pace.

In all this, Obama is resembling the election candidate he once was.

In the midst of the campaign, Obama frustrated supporters by not seeming to be able to put his opponents away, winning more by suffocation than knockout. During the market meltdown, as with the Iran election, Obama preferred low-key caution to boots-and-all action. Despite his electrifying speechifying, he sometimes lacked a Clintonesque immediacy and force with words, becoming wrapped in a lawyerly distance. He was the canny long-view strategist who calmly dealt with multiple issues yet could often trip over sideshows.

His latest moves do help clear the murk over his foreign strategies.

The general approach has been to spread a swathe of clearly stated new American reasonableness over trenchant problems and states in the hope it lures some takers.

But it is an approach that is deeply dependent on others playing along to give it momentum and progress.

The underlying theory is that, rather as in Northern Ireland, incremental changes and a gradual growth of businesslike normality will eventually lessen extremist danger.

But as Dr Robin Niblett of the Chatham House think tank told the Telegraph: "Obama will soon learn whether his strategy of engagement will bear fruit or whether, like Iran itself in recent months, America's other opponents are simply not willing to bow to the new policy of engagement any more than than they were to the old policy of confrontation."

The US is working multilaterally and through key bodies such as the UN and Nato to draw Russia and China into a closer working relationship and to apply pressure with greater strength in numbers on Iran and North Korea.

A day after Obama's missile move, the new Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, in a clearly co-ordinated gambit, spoke of merging Russian missile systems and offered to include Russia in an international security planning exercise with the US and Nato. Obama has drawn Russia into an example-setting session of nuke cuts. Alongside an anti-proliferation push through the UN, it's designed to pressure wannabe members of the nuclear club to think again.

There have been high-level political visits and talks with Beijing designed - as with Moscow - to try to slice through the usual east/west division among the major powers and get China and Russia to use their influence with trading partners North Korea and Iran. Chinese envoy Dai Bingguo held talks in Pyongyang at the weekend

Likewise, the question of Palestinian statehood has been cast as a regional problem to solve. The US has tried to get Israel to commit to a freeze on settlement building in return for moves that could lead to eventual recognition of the Jewish state by neighbouring Arab countries such as opening trade offices and allowing overflights of Israeli planes. No state has been prepared to take the plunge.

There is no guarantee of this manoeuvring working. And the problems and need for decisions keep piling up. Afghanistan has to sort through its fraudulent election and the President has to decide whether to send more troops there. To what end? How exactly does he jolt through the Middle East deadlock?

This week's UN General Assembly may offer more clues to just how responsive Russia and Middle Eastern countries are to carrots of compromise and good faith, or whether more stick is needed.