America's Morality Is Tainted

The New President of the U.S. Will Improve the Reputation of the Country

In a CBS interview the U.S. President-elect Barack Obama promised to withdraw troops from Iraq, and to properly handle the fight against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. He also said that he will close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. “I have said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture. And I’m gonna make sure that we don’t torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world,” stated Obama.

It’s true that America has big problems with its “moral stature” (to say nothing of “moral appearance”).

Just look at the figures by the Pew Research Center, an American opinion research company. For example, in France in 1999 (the year when George W. Bush was elected President of the United States) 62 percent of the population had a positive opinion of the U.S. In 2008, that percentage became 42. The same applies to Germany (78 percent and 31 percent), Britain (83 percent and 53 percent), Poland (86 percent and 68 percent), Turkey (52 percent and 12 percent), Argentina (50 percent and 22 percent), Japan (77 percent and 50 percent), and Mexico (68 percent and 47 percent).

Note that prior to the presidential election in the U.S., the whole world preferred Obama over McCain. Thus, merely electing Obama should partially offset the losses in positive image that America suffered in the years of Bush’s presidency. However, “should offset” does not mean that it will actually happen, or that the U.S. will soon be able to return to the position it had in 2000. Declarations of intent are like perishable products.

American troops in Iraq aren’t just one battalion in gas masks. Obama won’t withdraw them overnight. Moreover, the withdrawal of troops is a “product” intended to boost the opinion of internal American users, rather than the outside world. While Americans will be glad that “the boys are back home,” the rest of the world will be looking at the consequences of the White House leader’s decisions. These consequences are unpredictable. It’s likely that a civil war will break out in Iraq, and the whole world, of course, will remember who started this mess. The personalities of Bush and Obama will no longer play a decisive role in America’s image.

The prisons at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib have already damaged America’s reputation, and closing them will hardly fix it. The heart of the matter is not whether torture is happening today, now, at this time. It’s how representatives of the country, which wants to be considered the leader of the democratic world and defender of human rights, act (or, acted relatively recently) in a particular situation. This situation is not only particular, but also particularly historic.

Perhaps Obama will be able to dissolve the “Iraqi residue.” And if he does, it seems to me that it won’t be because of the way he handled Bush’s heritage. After all, along with the keys to the Oval Office, the U.S. President doesn’t receive the power to rewrite history or erase human memory. What’s done is done. What’s more important is what kind of lessons Obama learned from the previous administration, and how he will behave in the future in similar situations. America will be able to greatly strengthen its “moral stature” only by demonstrating a fundamentally new model of behavior in its handling of potential new conflicts.

It’s not even about rejecting military action. Not in adopting the principle “make peace, not war,” although it’s quite clear that war is in essence unpopular. The heart of the matter is how unpopular decisions will be presented to the public, what kind of PR strategies will be involved, what degree of consensus will be reached by the political players, and what kind of role this consensus will play in the U.S.

However, the President-elect acknowledged that America must improve its international image. And this is a good sign. In contrast, the leadership of our country never speaks this way about the image of Russia in the world. We always pretend that it doesn’t matter to us, although in actuality our every step is designed to produce a certain reaction abroad. Unlike Americans, we don’t conduct our own studies about Russia’s reputation abroad. Because we so often talk about a multi-polar world, and claim the status of one of those poles, it would be good for us to adopt this overseas practice.