Going Deeper
Passing on the torch
ON November 4, Barack Obama created history. He was elected the 44th president of the United States, the first from the minority community in US history. His election reflected a generational divide, passing of an old order, and flexibility of the US society to embrace what was once thought impossible, a signal that African-Americans, Asians, Latinos, Native Americans, and, most importantly, the youth, together can change Martin Luther King's dream into a reality.
His election would change the tectonic shift in US foreign and defense policy that Madeline Albright had spoken of that had taken place in the change of guards from Bill Clinton's administration to the one of George W. Bush.
Indeed, Bush's total reliance on hard power encouraged by the neo-cons, who were raised to positions of power along with him, advocating total disregard of the rest of the international community and subordination of international law to US domestic law, disappointed the allies and the rest of the world.
Initially, the average Americans, more interested in their wallets than the genocide in Darfur, gave the Bush presidency a long rope in the conduct of governmental business, both at home and abroad.
Their support became a national and patriotic cry with 9/11. The Americans were aghast at the audacity of these nomads head-quartered in Afghanistan, a place they had never heard of. So when President Bush sent his men and arms to reduce the country to rubble the Americans, and indeed the entire world, clapped in approval.
But when Bush miscalculated by invading Iraq in the face of the opposition of the great part of humanity in the wrong belief that Iraq was the front line of al-Qaeda, and that the loathed dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction itching to attack the Western world, the pliant US Congress agreed to give him the authority to invade.
Bush had thought that the American soldiers would be welcomed as liberators like in the Second World War. Saddam and his cohorts were hanged yet Iraqis continued to feel occupied and the US Treasury continues to pour in $10 billion dollars a month to maintain the US army and the "ungrateful" Iraqis are now insisting that the US give them a firm time-line for the army's departure from their country.
Though the eight years of long wintry night has come to an end with the exit of the most failed president in US history, the questions staring at the face of Barack Obama, the president-elect, are many and would be difficult to solve in his four-year term.
The most urgent task would be to fix the economy, the largest yet the most indebted developed economy in the world, to bring back consumer confidence, to bring the banking system back on the rails, to stop Americans from being thrown out of their homes, to keep his election promise of tax cut to Americans earning not more than $250,000 a year and go for progressive taxation to finance education and health projects, to reduce outsourcing of jobs overseas, to start giving loans to medium and small business, to promote fuel efficient auto industry, to create jobs, to reduce dependency on Middle East oil, to assure the Americans that homeland security is bulletproof, and, above all, to reassure the world that the US shall remain the leader of the world.
Barack Obama is a breath of fresh air after the failure of Bush presidency. Matt Yglesias (The Atlantic) wrote: "Obama has always been an independent thinker … he has built a team of national security advisors who disproportionately took the same, then unpopular anti-war view."
Obama's opposition to Iraq war produced, wrote Yglesias, a meaningful new approach to foreign policy and the first substantial alternative to Bush policy that had entered the political mainstream since 9/11.
Obama articulated his views of renewing America's leadership in Foreign Affairs magazine where he wrote on how Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy "managed to protect the American people and expand opportunities for the next generation."
Obama wrote that once again the US has been "called to provide visionary leadership" as this century's threats can kill on a massive scale by non-state actors who "respond to alienation or perceived injustice with murderous nihilism." He criticised Bush for responding "to the unconventional attacks of 9/11 with conventional thinking of the past."
Obama has called for retrieval of the fundamental insight of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy that the security and well-being of each and every American depends on the security and well-being of those who live beyond the borders of the US. Advocating multi-lateralism, sadly abandoned by the Bush administration, Obama feels that "we can neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission. We must lead the world by deed and by example."
The Iraq war must be brought to a responsible end because Iraq is not and never was the main front of the war on terror. He called for more focus to be given to Afghanistan (according to Obama advisor Dr. Susan Rice al-Qaeda is now believed to have extended its reach to sixty countries worldwide).
Regarding Pakistan, Obama advocates a policy that "compels Pakistani action against terrorists who threaten our common security and are using the FATA and Northwest territories of Pakistan as a safe haven" and warns that if actionable intelligence of high value terrorist targets are available then the US would take unilateral action across the border into Pakistan.
But continuing US missile attacks inside Pakistani territory forced a consensus resolution passed by Pakistan parliament in October that, among other things, clearly stated that US drone attacks would no longer be tolerated. US State Department replied that US was ready to work out the problem with Pakistan.
On India, Obama declares that he would build a close strategic partnership because the two countries have both experienced major terrorist attacks and "have a shared interest in succeeding in the fight against al-Qaeda and its operational and ideological affiliates."
Obama voted to approve US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement in October 2008 and praised in September 2008 the Nuclear Suppliers Group for deciding to allow members to co-operate with India on nuclear issues. But then again, as Professor Stephen Zunes points out, while Obama has indicated a willingness to take international law and the UN more seriously than Bush administration, he still appears to accept the same double standard regarding to whom such laws shall apply.
Climate change will certainly attract attention of Barak Obama as he wrote in his Foreign Affairs article: "By 2050 famine could displace 250 million people worldwide. That means increased instability in some of the most volatile parts of the world."
While these are early days for a tour d'horizon of Barack Obama's foreign policy objectives, the world can certainly heave a sigh of relief that the past eight years of global anxiety may be over.
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