Grading Obama’s First 100 Days

Foreign Policy asked a bunch of us to grade Obama’s first 100 days, and the responses were posted last night.  You’ll be shocked to learn that neo-conservatives who oppose Obama’s foreign policy positions give him low grades (thankfully: if Elliott Abrams didn’t give Obama a "D", I’d be appalled and a bit worried). The response to which I paid the most attention comes from Iran expert Suzanne Maloney, who is worried about drift in Obama’s Iran policy.  The most honest souls admit that issuing a grade after 100 days is silly.  

Here’s my take:

Grade: A-

Obama has taken on an incredibly ambitious agenda in the Middle East, against long odds. He managed the recasting of Iraq policy brilliantly, emerging with solid bipartisan consensus around his plan to draw down forces and withdraw by the end of 2011. His personal outreach to the Muslim world has been stellar, tapping into his potential to be a transformative figure in America’s relations with the Islamic world — and he has backed that up with concrete policy changes on hot issues such as Guantanamo and torture. He has consistently emphasized the U.S. commitment to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, and especially to the two-state solution… although I worry that some people in the administration are too wedded to a West Bank first, Fatah only strategy that is very likely to fail. I don’t have a great deal of hope that there can be much progress with this Israeli government or with the divided Palestinian leadership. But Obama has delivered on his promise to engage directly with rivals such as Iran, Syria, and Venezuela, putting some meat on his earlier convictions about the value of such diplomacy.

I am less confident about the direction of his policy on two key issues: Iran and Afghanistan. The contours of his engagement with Iran are not yet clear, and there could be some serious negative fallout if the administration opts for a narrow dialogue on the nuclear program on a short clock, rather than a broad dialogue over the full set of regional issues. I worry at the number of key positions which remain unfilled. And I don’t really understand the logic of the new "Af-Pak" strategy, or see any reason to believe that the additional troops or the new strategy are likely to significantly change the situation there. But overall Obama has demonstrated tremendous instincts thus far on foreign policy, delivering just the approach he promised during the campaign and putting a lot of potential issues into play.