Plain Words
Outsider hopes
OBAMA'S ascent to power in the US is an occasion where the use of clichés cannot be avoided. It is a historic occasion. He has successfully crossed many divides in American politics: there were racial and economic disparities and, of course, partisanship. He is the best president that America can have according to most other nations, including those in South Asia.
Secondly, he climbed to power with a message of change. He represents, primarily, the youth of America: white, black, Hispanic and those with origins in Latin America and Asia.
It is now clear that the white, young and well to do people voted for him despite his colour and the clear-cut message that he would increase taxes for the rich so as to compensate the less-well-to-do and the poor in various ways. This is some change; Americans were sick and tired of what the Republican administration under George W. Bush had achieved.
No one can forget that he was the favoured candidate of most non-Americans also. Europe was raving for him. His success has been heartily welcomed in Africa, from where his father had originated.
Many, if not most, Asians are not behind the others. This is pertinent against the background of various external challenges that will beset the new Obama government from outside. These are galore. There are the ongoing Iraq and Afghanistan wars. There are the questions concerning relationship with Russia and China in both Europe and Asia, and much else.
But let's not forget that he is a president of, and primarily for, the people living in the US. He has to take along the people of America in all his initiatives. He cannot say or do anything that is shockingly new or unacceptable to the majority of Americans. Local traditions and, of course, well-organised local pressures will bear down mercilessly on him and his government-to-be.
The wider challenges include climate change and food shortages, as also the expected shortages of many of the requirements of modern civilisation in days to comesuch as petroleum products: their sources being finite and the demand for oil growing steadily. This is going to pose problems for the whole world, just as food shortages will in the context of growing population all over the world.
Europe and Russia may be exceptions, with static or declining populations. But the rest of the world is growing and climate change is making things difficult.
Nevertheless, the president of the US has to tackle America's economic troubles first, and he has to deliver on his all promises. His promises were premised on a less clearly adumbrated commitment to social justice, such as providing healthcare to all Americans and improving the quality of primary and secondary education in the government-run schools.
But, above all, the question of unemployment has to be tackled, while Obama also has to not only restore the health of the financial system -- a challenging job in itself -- but also ensure that the American economy continues to produce ever more jobs so that the scourge of unemployment can be overcome.
These domestic challenges, it must be remembered, take primacy over foreign policy. Not that foreign policy is less important. Foreign policies are a natural extension of the overall design of domestic, economic and political policies.
That embedding of American foreign policy in Obama's domestic needs and requirements cannot but be the determining factor for future American foreign policies. One has already enumerated the challenges that the Bush administration had not been able to adequately tackle and, in many cases, had aggravated.
This concerns the relationship with Iran, and its supposedly dangerous nuclear program. The Arab street is angry and does not love America any more. American policies have been mortgaged, insofar as Arabs are concerned, to Israel and its security.
Israel's security is like a Chasire cat's grin; it is uncertain where it begins and where in ends. Indeed, Israel has no firm borders to defend but wants the US help to defend them. This is one side of the picture.
The other side is that the Arabs had been dealt a very bad hand. They were cheated by British imperialism through creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine rather than elsewhere. The Americans have, by championing the Israelis, neglected, and indeed betrayed, their many alliances with, and assurances to, the Arabs.
The Palestine issue is still a live one, and is likely to remain so. Although the two-state solution has finally been accepted by the Palestinians, if only tentatively and reluctantly, it cannot keep American attention riveted to the Palestinian question. The need for the US to be even-handed in this Arab-Israeli dispute continues to pose a big challenge.
Indeed, what the Arabs notice is the Israelis' ability to recycle a chunk of American aid to buy a growing leverage in American policies. It does seem to be the case of the tail wagging the dog.
The Americans also have to help rebuild the international financial and monetary order. The Breton Woods-created system has by now outlived its usefulness and is in tatters. It requires a replacement, even if some of its elements or institutions might be refashioned. Along with it is the question of world economic order, particularly the growing poverty of very large number of people in Africa, Asia and South America.
A new economic order is needed, which would need an appropriate financial and monetary order. This is a huge challenge, though not for America alone. It will have to cooperate with the rest of the world, and give them sincere cooperation.
The economic aims that Mrs. Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan had set through free world trade and a liberalised financial system, and its accompanying economic order, has also more or less failed to meet the requirements of the modern world. The current disparity between the prosperity of a small minority of people and dire poverty of very large numbers of people with darker skin colours will have to be taken into account.
Along with that, there is the need for giving a close, hard look at the UN. The US governments, particularly Reagan's and the two stints of Bush, have manipulated the UN in the way that the League of Nations had been by the great powers in the 1930s.
This sort of thing cannot be allowed to go on. And the UN has to be suitably reformed so that it can usefully coordinate with and complement the new economic and financial orders. America is no longer the sole superpower it was for a briefly after 1991. It has to be one among a growing number of equals, and many non-equals that need to change from being nonentities to something like entities that should be taken into account.
It is too early to predict the chances of success and failures of Obama. How he will solve the questions of war and peace remains to be seen. Similarly, how much genuine concern with social justice the new American government will show in shaping the world's political and economic orders has to be awaited.
Can Obama lead even the west on this question? Who can forget the fate of the Willy Brandt-coordinated group of elder statesmen in 1970s that had produced "A Program for Survival (of the west)?" The Reagan and Thatcher governments took no serious notice of it, and the world went on becoming even more unequal and poor until today's globalisation completed what the Reagan and post-Reagan governments began. A reform is needed. Is Obama equal to it?
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