In Relating to Foreign Leaders, Obama Keeps It Mostly Business
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

WASHINGTON — Less than three months into President Obama’s first term, a top White House national security official told reporters that the new commander in chief’s diplomacy would be different from the regular-guy friendships with foreign leaders sought by President George W. Bush.

No longer would the goal be “to establish some, you know, buddy-buddy relationship,” said the official, Michael A. McFaul.

The lack of such a relationship was starkly evident in Washington last week, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel took the extraordinary step of de nouncing Mr. Obama’s Iran policy in a speech to a joint meeting of Congress. The president responded icily hours later from the Oval Office. The two did not meet face to face.

Mr. Obama’s strained association with Mr. Netanyahu, who has clashed with other American presidents as well, has been difficult from the start. But the absence of any real connection between them underscores the rule, not the exception, for Mr. Obama, who has only occasionally invested time in cultivating foreign leaders.

It is a cool, businesslike approach, similar to the way Mr. Obama deals with members of Congress, donors and activists at home. But historians and some of the president’s former foreign policy advisers say the distance the president keeps from foreign leaders leaves him without the durable relationships that previous presidents forged to help smooth disagreements and secure reluctant cooperation.

“Personal relationships are not his style,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former special envoy for Middle East peace in the Obama administration who is now vice president of the Brookings Institution. Mr. Indyk said Mr. Bush and President Bill Clinton “yukked it up with everybody.”

“With Obama, some he invested in, some he clicked with,” Mr. Indyk said. “But you could count them on one hand.”

White House officials say that while warm relationships may be desirable, they do not necessarily lead to success in American foreign policy, and that Mr. Obama has made headway without them.

“The president is driven by an assessment of our interests in dealing with world leaders,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama. “It’s more about how do you get off the talking points with somebody, see where they are coming from.”

Mr. Rhodes pointed out that Mr. Obama has methodically assembled support from like-minded leaders for sanctions against Russia for its actions in Ukraine, for the fight against the Islamic State, and in some cases to confront climate change.

Robert Dallek, a historian who has written extensively on the American presidency, called Mr. Obama a “cool customer” and said he appears not to exude the kind of warmth that characterized the relationships between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher or between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

“If a foreign leader connects with another head of government, it can be salutary in helping them work through difficulties or problems that may exist,” Mr. Dallek said. “If they have a lot of animus toward each other, it impedes the diplomatic give-and-take.”

Churchill spent several weeks at the White House bonding with Roosevelt after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a time that Mr. Dallek said helped them form “a kind of comfort zone” that deepened the already strong relationship between the United States and Britain during World War II.

Aides say it is unlikely that a friendship between Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu could ease the fundamental disagreement the two have over how to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. But former advisers say the hard feelings have made the rift worse.

“There is a tone that’s set from the top,” said Tamara Cofman Wittes, who was deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs under Mr. Obama. “Right now, unfortunately, sadly, the tone between the United States and Israel is one of bitterness.”

In the past six years, administration officials have sometimes strayed from their early no-friends strategy. Aides say that Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia, both lawyers from the same generation, established a rapport after their first meeting. They also say that Mr. Obama developed warm feelings for Lee Myung-bak when he was the president of South Korea, and — for a time — Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey.

The president has built workmanlike relationships with allies like Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and President François Hollande of France, but nothing close. Aides say he had a genuine bond with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, but that has been strained by revelations that the United States tapped her private cellphone.

“He’s invested a lot of time in his relationship with Angela Merkel that has made it resilient through a lot of ups and downs,” Mr. Rhodes said.

For much of the rest of the world, aides say the president’s strategy is one of reality: He must forge working relationships based on mutual interests with leaders who are in many cases reserved personalities who keep their own distance.

Mr. Obama never got along with Nuri Kamal al-Maliki when he was prime minister of Iraq or with Hamid Karzai when he was president of Afghanistan, both of whom suspected — with justification — that Mr. Obama wanted to see them leave office. Soon after becoming president, Mr. Obama stopped holding the regular video conferences with Mr. Maliki that the Iraqi prime minister had with Mr. Bush. Mr. Obama is also not very close to other leaders in the Middle East, like King Abdullah II of Jordan.

Mr. Obama has largely outsourced the relationship building to Secretary of State John Kerry, who has tried to develop close bonds with some of the world’s most challenging characters. Mr. Kerry has spent hundreds of hours courting Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian minister of foreign affairs. Mr. Kerry also spent countless hours unsuccessfully wooing Mr. Netanyahu during failed talks on Middle East peace.

Mr. Obama’s own efforts to get closer to prime ministers and his fellow presidents have ended with largely disappointing results.

In June 2013, Mr. Obama and President Xi Jinping of China spent two days at the Sunnylands estate in Southern California, hoping to build a more comfortable relationship. Aides later conceded that the effort at friendship had largely failed.

“Xi Jinping wasn’t exactly interested in having a warm and sunny relationship,” Mr. Indyk said.

From the beginning of his presidency, Mr. Obama made little effort with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, a relationship that has since turned hostile over Russia’s military incursions into Ukraine and the anti-American wave of nationalism that Mr. Putin has overseen at home. In 2013, Mr. Obama infuriated Mr. Putin by publicly describing him as “looking like the bored kid in the back of the classroom.”

But Mr. McFaul, a former American ambassador to Russia, said there was little Mr. Obama could have done to right the relationship with Mr. Putin. “No amount of golfing, banya-sharing or hunting with Putin would have changed that,” he said, using a Russian word for sauna.

White House officials say Mr. Obama has established a personal connection with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, and point out that

Ashraf Ghani, the president of Afghanistan, and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq are expected at the White House in the coming weeks.

But few think Mr. Obama is making a fundamental change in his approach to his fellow leaders.

“It’s not where he’s chosen to put his time,” Ms. Wittes said.

不愛稱兄道弟 歐巴馬外交「卡卡」

紐約時報報導，美國總統歐巴馬上任六年來，與外國領袖大多是公事公辦，不太花時間建立私交，只有少數例外，他曾努力和德國總理梅克爾和大陸國家主席習近平拉近關係，結果也不盡如人意。歷史學家說，與外國領袖沒有交情，辦起外交來會「卡卡」。

歐巴馬上任不到三個月，白宮國家安全會議的總統特別助理麥克福爾就對記者說，歐巴馬的外交作風與前任布希不同，不會與外國領袖建立「稱兄道弟」的私交。

上周以色列總理內唐亞胡在美國國會發表演說，譴責歐巴馬的伊朗政策，就是兩人沒交情的明證。

歐巴馬對外國領袖不熱絡、公事公辦，類似他與國會議員、金主和社會運動人士的相處模式。

史學家和歐巴馬的一些前外交顧問說，歐巴馬與外國領袖保持距離，不像前幾任總統與外國領袖建立持久的友誼，而私交有助於化解歧見和達成不情願的合作。

曾在歐巴馬政府擔任中東特使的英迪克說，歐巴馬不像布希和柯林頓，「和每個人都能混熟，歐巴馬只花時間與少數合得來的領袖建立交情，但屈指可數。」

白宮幕僚說，歐巴馬和俄國總理麥維德夫初次見面就很麻吉，兩人年齡相仿，都是律師出身。歐巴馬對南韓前總統李明博也有好感，曾經與土耳其總統厄多岡關係不錯，但現在已鬧翻。

歐巴馬與英國首相卡麥隆和法國總統歐蘭德維持工作上的關係，但不親近。歐巴馬曾與梅克爾很親近，但美國監聽她的私人手機一事曝光後，兩人關係緊張。

歐巴馬的副國家安全顧問羅德茲說：「歐巴馬花很多時間與梅克爾建立關係，雖然經過風風雨雨，還能維持好交情。」

2013年六月，歐巴馬和習近平在南加州莊園共度兩天，希望建立更自在的關係。不過，幕僚後來透露，歐巴馬想與習近平建立友誼的努力大體而言失敗了。

英迪克說：「習近平對熱絡和陽光的關係沒有興趣。」

至於俄國總統普亭，歐巴馬從開始就沒有花精神與他建立交情，歐巴馬倒是與印度總理莫迪交情不錯。

史學家達萊克說，歐巴馬沒和外國領袖建立像雷根與柴契爾夫人，或是小羅斯福與邱吉爾那樣的好交情。「兩國領袖交情好，可互相幫助度過難關。如果彼此有敵意，妨礙外交折衝。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/us/politics/with-foreign-leaders-obama-keeps-it-mostly-business.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/usa/20150311/c11leaders/zh-hant/

2015-03-11．聯合報．A17．國際．編譯田思怡