INSIGHT: BEYOND THE OBAMA MAGIC
By Bridget Kendall
BBC NEWS
989433.stm
2009/04/09 10:09:13 GMT
So Barack Obama is back home after his eight-day whirlwind odyssey –
his first proper foray overseas as US President.
Time for him to snatch a family holiday with his girls and prepare for
that new White House puppy there has been so much media chatter about.
Time for the rest of the world to mull over what has been learnt
about his presidential priorities and promises for tackling global
challenges.
There is no doubt that the contours of his foreign policy are taking
shape.
A scattergun of speeches, high on rhetoric and rich in crafted
messages, have targeted specific audiences.
And all, it seems, have been won over: enthusiastic Brits, excited
continentals, gratified Turks, and weary, gritty US troops, still
counting the days of their Iraq combat duty.
Humble tune
The range of his remarks has been impressive, the tone supple and
carefully calibrated. Apart from one evening press conference in
London where jet lag and a cold seemingly caught up with him, he was
fluent and inspirational.
He marked clear blue water between himself and his predecessor. He
admitted America had been wrong on some things and would change course
if it made new errors.
This was a refreshingly humble tune to the ear s of foreigners who were
infuriated by what they heard as a stubborn drumbeat of unilateralism
from the previous president.
He did not dodge the awkward questions. Even the touchy issue of
genocide which still enflames Turkish-Armenian relations was elegantly,
though indirectly, dealt with. Without upsetting his Turkish hosts
by repeating his campaign pledge for Armenia’s grievance to be
recognised, he delicately urged the two sides to focus instead on
their mutual future.
And yet.
Heady though his rhetoric may be, it cannot entirely conceal curious
inconsistencies and the shadow of future difficulties.
Take the perennially controversial question of America’s global
leadership.
"We have come to listen as well as lead… We may not always have
the best answer," he and his officials repeated endlessly.
Perhaps it was different behind closed doors, but in public his
folksy "town hall meetings" and press conferences were, above all,
an opportunity for him to do the talking. It was his audience who
did most of the listening.
Falling into step
His cadences reinforced the impression of a preacher, ready to inspire
and guide a wandering flock. "The challenge is great… so many have
lost so much," he intoned, an orator up high upon a podium – even if
he did deliberately deflate the balloon of his own authority now and
again with conversational humour. "I think we did OK," he replied at
one point about the G20 summit, with disarming simplicity.
The point is that Barack Obama still wants to proclaim the fact of
American exceptionalism.
"America is a critical actor on the world stage and we should not be
embarrassed about that," he declared.
But the further point is that, in his case, America’s allies are
still ready to fall in step behind him… for several reasons.
He likes to argue that it is because his unlikely ascendancy to the
presidency is an embodiment of his political message that anything
is possible.
But he is also quite simply a global celebrity, a political rock star –
the undisputed centre of attention at all the many summits he attended.
Recall only the exuberant shout of "Mr Obama" by Silvio Berlusconi
at the Queen’s photo shoot – so loud that it earned the Italian Prime
minister a royal reprimand.
Remember the cat-like grin on the face of Gordon Brown as he basked in
President Obama’s praise of his London summit-hosting skills and the
reassurance that Britain still somehow merits a "special relationship".
Mantle of leadership
And look closely at that picture of the Obamas posing for cameras
next to the French presidential pair in Strasbourg. Nicholas Sarkozy
stands on anxious tiptoe next to his willowy wife, but is utterly
dwarfed by the towering figures of Michelle and Barack Obama. It had
a symbolic resonance, as though European leaders preoccupied=2 0with
internal rivalries and their own self importance, lack the stature
to see President Obama’s further horizons.
And that, perhaps, is the third reason why President Obama can get
away with claiming that the US still deserves the mantle of global
leadership. His vision is bold and his mission, he tells us, is to
galvanize international collective action to solve not just problems
of the next four or eight years, but of future generations.
George W Bush fought a war on terror. Terrorism remains one of Barack
Obama’s scourges too, but so does global warming and a newly revived
nightmare of Armageddon from misplaced nuclear weapons.
No longer does the US President invoke a fight for freedom and
democracy as the cure for the world’s ills, as George W Bush
did. Barack Obama’s call is to liberate humankind from fear, of the
cataclysmic natural and man-made disasters that may overwhelm us if
we don’t act together.
But a few niggling loose ends mean there are a few contradictions here.
Firstly, yes, the apocalyptic vision may be different. But examine
policy on a day-to-day level, and the dividing line between the old
Bush and new Obama administration look decidedly smudgy. For all
Obama’s talk of change, the general direction of American foreign
policy is surely rather familiar.
In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the exit strategies rest on training
up the local army and police to do the security job themselves.
On Middle East Peace, the aim remains to get the Israelis and
Palestinians to talk about a two-state solution, with no indication
yet that the White House might rethink its refusal to talk to Hamas
or Hezbollah militants.
On Iran the policy is still carrot and stick, though the carrot has
been sweetened slightly by the inclusion of Americans in the official
negotiating team.
And even President Obama’s much vaunted reset button in relations with
Russia has broken no real new ground yet- either on missile shields
or Nato expansion. An offer to sit down with Russia to discuss new
cuts in nuclear arsenals is exactly where Presidents Bush and Putin
started out – and look how that love affair ended.
Secondly, how does one join up the dots between Obama the visionary,
whose goal is to rid the world of nuclear weapons and other threats,
and Obama the pragmatist, who sees the way to do this is to use US
leadership to "guide a process of orderly integration"?
If his philosophy is to engage with global leaders across the board,
how far is he prepared to go? Is he still willing to confront nations
about human rights abuses or other worrying behaviour?
Or has the bigger strategic goal of repairing relations with Russia
and China eclipsed the human rights agenda, so that from now on issues
like Russia’s still incomplete withdrawal from Georgian territory,
or China’s treatment of protestors20in Tibet will be put firmly on
the backburner?
Is Obamaland a return to realpolitik and an end to alliances built
on values?
And there is a third area of apparent contradiction.
On the one hand President Obama sends a message of flexibility,
an appreciation of complexity. But he sometimes comes across as a
leader who, when pushed, will put his foot down.
In Strasbourg, addressing young Europeans, Barack Obama declared
that the fight to keep al-Qaeda at bay did not need to lead to
a compromising of moral values. This was why he was closing the
Guantanamo Bay detention centre, he said, and outlawing the use of
torture in interrogations.
In Prague he argued that the rules to prevent transgressions against
nuclear agreements must be binding, and "violations must be punished."
In Ankara, indicating his support for the Turkish government’s fight
against the Kurdish militant movement PKK, he announced "there is
not excuse for terror against any nation."
It sounds so principled and categorical: an American President prepared
to send tough messages and take decisive action.
" Not all nations want to be guided into a ‘process of orderly
integration’ "
And he has already shown there is a hint of a streak of ruthlessness
in him.
Take his determination to keep going with US airstrikes on suspected
al-Qaeda hide outs in Pakistan’s border areas, despite the risk of
civilian=2 0deaths and government protests.
Take his readiness at home to contemplate bankruptcy for giants of
the US car industry.
And take the steel in his voice when he addressed European leaders
about his expectation that they would step up to the plate to do
their bit when it came to more resources for Afghanistan.
At the moment he can do no wrong, but once the honeymoon is over
and Obamamania subsides, there is plenty of room here for tensions
and resentments.
But the final twist is that the Obama vision of a world that is
willing to pull together, and the Obama method of using the weapon
of rhetoric and persuasion to win over converts, has already run into
the brick wall of reality.
Not all leaders are susceptible to the Obama magic. Not all nations
want to be guided into a "process of orderly integration".
Only hours before his nuclear speech in Prague, the North Koreans
made that abundantly clear. They defied American and global appeals
and went ahead with their rocket test launch, threatening to raise
the stakes still further if UN sanctions were tightened.
And in response, it turns out that not much has changed at the UN
Security Council either. President Obama may speak winningly and
the handshakes from last week’s summits may paint a rosy picture of
collaboration, but Russia and China have not budged from their recent
reluctance to endorse more UN sanctions.
Business as us ual.
An early reminder that it will take more than fine speeches to reshape
the world. And once the low hanging fruit of easy diplomatic gains
have been plucked, the course of American foreign policy may be just
as rocky as it has ever been.
You can listen to the BBC World Service’s The Forum with Bridget
Kendall