Obama, budgets and Syria: It's all about face

With the partial shutdown of the US federal government, White House staffers may well have been worried over images of a US president in Bali during a time of Washington gridlock and some 800,000 furloughed workers. From that perspective, US President Barack Obama’s cancellation of his planned trip to Asia this week is understandable. He would have had much more to worry about than diplomatic communiques, banquets and photo opportunities if the partisan face-off continues between the president and the US Congress.

Had Obama made it to Indonesia to participate in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit and Brunei for the East Asia Summit, he would have been welcomed with the appropriate respect and ceremony that Asian hospitality and diplomatic protocol would dictate. Yet, with about-face after about-face on Syria by the US president these past weeks, and his inability to strike a budget deal with Congress, the view from Asia of recent American leadership is not necessarily a positive one. That does not bode well for the so-called “pivot”, or re-balance in US policy, toward Asia,

This is, after all, a region where there remains tremendous respect not just for thoughtful but also strong and decisive leaders. Singapore’s senior statesman, Lee Kuan Yew, who as prime minister took his nation from third world to first in a few decades and who just celebrated his 90th birthday, is a leading example.

But with Obama’s on-again, off-again approach to Syria dominating headlines – to strike or not to strike, to consult or not to consult, to vote or not to vote – and his ongoing struggles with a divided US Congress, one can well understand some Asian leaders’ quiet concerns about America’s attention span and focus, particularly in the face of China’s rise. Even as Obama had scaled back and then cancelled his own presidential trip, Chinese President Xi Jinping had begun with great fanfare his own first Southeast Asia trip since taking office in March.

Xi became the first foreign leader to address the Indonesian parliament, and in Malaysia he announced strengthened Chinese-Malaysian strategic and economic ties. In contrast, Obama was cancelling stops first in Malaysia and the Philippines, and then finally calling off his entire trip.

Ironically, as foreign businesspeople continue to take steps to understand China’s shifting landscape and the implications of recent leadership changes in what is now the world’s second-largest economy, Obama has provided an unfortunate “teaching moment” about what is arguably, along with money and power, one of the three great motivators in modern China – the concept of “face”, or mianzi.

I spoke recently with Scott D Seligman, a historian, former Fortune 500 business executive and author of “Chinese Business Etiquette”. In Chinese, as in English, the definition of “face” includes the features between forehead and chin. But Seligman explains, for Chinese and many others in Asia, face also describes a somewhat intangible concept tied to notions of personal dignity and respect.

Losing face in Asia can have more consequences than momentary embarrassment. People think of you differently. Credibility erodes. Power, prestige, influence and even expectations of your abilities can decline.

Just more than a year ago, Obama drew his “red line” in the sand. If Syrian President Bashar Assad were to cross that line by using chemical weapons against his own people, a significant US response would follow. 

So what happened? Chemical weapons were used, and Obama’s bluff, so to speak, was called. A non-response would have been a huge loss of face to the US president. But as the American public and numerous members of the US Congress made clear, the president had failed to make a strong enough case for the US to enter into another military action so soon after Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

And so, the president did an about-face on whether or not he needed to have Congress authorise what seemed to be a potential strike of ever-shrinking size. That was before he changed his mind again and welcomed a decision to delay a possible vote. All of this may well have been seen by Obama and his defenders as a face-saving way out of a dilemma of his own making, but the view from Asia was of a leader who was far from decisive.

Votes – meaningful or otherwise – may well still come about Syria in Congress and again at the United Nations, but Russia has already shrewdly stepped into the breach by taking advantage of a seemingly offhand comment by US Secretary of State John Kerry as the basis for a proposed agreement that would avert a US military strike.

Make no mistake, though. Russian President Vladimir Putin was not practicing the Chinese concept of “giving face” – described by Seligman as the practice of “enhancing someone else’s esteem through compliments, flattery or a show of respect”. Putin has helped keep Assad in power in the near term and reasserted Russian influence in the Middle East.

If the US can be outmanoeuvred by Russia when it comes to Syria, what about by an increasingly assertive China in Southeast and East Asia? As much of the region comes to terms with China’s economic and military growth, a US that moves beyond budget impasses and issues of face, and complements defence and diplomacy with greater commercial, educational and cultural engagement would be welcome in Asia. A “soft power” pivot, if you will.

Why will a Chinese manager stick stubbornly to an announced policy, even when subsequent events prove it to have been irretrievably misguided, when a western boss would have long since reversed himself? The answer, Seligman says, is the concept of face.  And in the case of Obama and Syria, we may well have the worst of East and West – stubborn insistence by Obama that he does have a consistent, thought-through policy when the world sees otherwise.

Seligman writes “no one can say how much money has been wasted, how many people toppled from power or how many friendships have been destroyed” over the abstract concept of face.   But as those of us who work in Asia know, and the people of Syria may well ultimately find out, face can also be deadly serious business.

Obama might yet again change his mind on Syria, congressional positions may evolve on budgets, and regime change might come once again to the Middle East. The flow of history toward greater economic and individual freedom may be slow and uneven, but it is inevitable, whether Korea yesterday, Myanmar today or Syria tomorrow. Budget crisis or not, there is no loss of face in holding fast to that belief.

 

Curtis S Chin served as US ambassador to the Asian Development Bank under presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama, and is managing director of advisory firm RiverPeak Group, LLC.