World leaders in town this week for the annual United Nations gabfest are going to feel a lot like Clint Eastwood: When they look to talk to President Obama, they’re going to face an empty chair.
Oh, sure, Obama will attend today’s opening session of the General Assembly’s annual debate, launching the festivities with the traditional “host nation” second speech. And last night he hosted heads of state at his Waldorf Astoria suite for a meet-and-greet.
But by tomorrow Obama will move on — the first US president in memory to skip the other ritual of the week: the one-on-one meetings with fellow heads of state.
Yes, he’s campaigning — but come on: Even President George W. Bush, the supposed “cowboy diplomacy” master, pow-wowed with several leaders at the UN in 2004 amid his own tough re-election campaign. “It was certainly more than none,” recalls the spokesman for our UN mission then, Ric Grenell.
Not Obama. No sitdown with Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi, who warned America in a Friday New York Times interview that if we want better ties with Muslims and the Arab world we must show some respect.
It would be one thing if Obama were dissing Morsi as a result of those remarks — after all, Egypt is still dependant on billions in US aid. But even after the wave of anti-American violence that hit the Muslim world starting with the Sept. 11 assaults on our diplomats, all Morsi got was one terse phone call. The “New Beginning” Obama promised the Muslim world in his 2009 Cairo speech is now long forgotten.
Nor will Obama deal personally this week with the most dangerous side of the Arab Spring: Syria. Sure, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will attend a high-level meeting of the “friends of Syria” group on Friday — but no one expects any progress, not after three Sino-Russian vetoes of Security Council measures to stop the slaughter.
So Syria will continue to bleed — and Obama won’t tell Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (representing Moscow at the session) that the time has come for a different kind of “reset.”
On perhaps the touchiest world issue, Iran’s nuclear program, Obama will offer only another speech. Word is that today’s UN address willbe “tough” on the mullahs. Big deal — expect a similarly “tough” reply tomorrow, when Iran’s odious President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad takes the podium.
Yesterday, Ahmadinejad treated journalists to a breakfast filled with his usual eliminate-Israel rhetoric. Later, he doubled down at a UN “rule of law” symposium, denouncing US support of the “fake” Zionist regime.
Incidentally, Ahmadinejad used the word “noise” to describe Israeli concerns that those who preach genocide will soon have the power to inflict it. Was he intentionally echoing Obama’s vow (on “60 Minutes” Sunday) to block out “noise” such as Israel’s demand to set “red lines” on Iran?
Mind you, on Friday the Senate set an Iran “red line” of its own in a 90-1 vote (only Kentucky’s Rand Paul opposed), passing a resolution declaring that preventing Iran “from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability” is a “vital interest” for America. The House passed a similar measure back in May.
In other words, Congress agrees with the Israelis — not with Obama’s sense of “what’s good for the American people.”
The president is handing off this week’s Iran-nukes meetings to Hillary, too. (No wonder she’s set to retire.) On top of the Syria meeting, she’ll sit down Friday with leaders of the six powers trying to negotiate away the mullahs’ nuclear-weapons program. Again, without the president there to potentially offer real tough talk, Russia and China will decline to inflict enough economic harm to change Tehran’s calculations.
On the plus side, at least Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needn’t feel uniquely slighted by our president. Maybe he’ll even offer Obama an olive branch when he speaks Thursday.
No: Everybody gets the empty chair.
Despite Obama’s promise to “pivot” from the Mideast to the Pacific, the president won’t hobnob with any Asian leader this week, either.
Nor will he pow-wow with European allies like France — which happens to be desperately trying to warn him that its former African colony, Mali, is becoming the next al Qaeda hub.
Perhaps Obama has just joined the ranks of UN skeptics: With all his world policies crumbling, maybe all this global diplomacy stuff is just a waste of valuable time better spent on, say, a chat with the ladies of “The View.”
Twitter: @bennyavni