Obama and the World: So Many Crises

One asks oneself sometimes, why the man still has such a positive attitude. The list of the major international crises that wait for Barack Obama is well known. But when they are listed, one still gets a little dizzy. An escalating war in Afghanistan, a complicated withdrawal from Iraq, an increasingly fragile Pakistan, which has an atomic bomb ready, and an increasingly fragile Iran that wants one.

The continuing conflict in the Middle East, a constantly changing al-Quaida, a notoriously resentful and therefore aggressive Russia, a China, that stands between world power dreams and the social acid test. Is something missing? In Darfur and in the Congo, there are continuing atrocities being committed, global warming is accelerating, the worldwide financial sector is still rigid with shock.

Supposedly no newly elected president has begun readying himself so early and thoroughly for his office as Barack Obama. His foreign policy team is in position. Hillary Clinton at the head of the State Department will immediately throw herself into the Middle East situation that the Bush Administration so wantonly neglected. The important threads of Iraqi and Afghani politics will come together under James Jones, the national security advisor. The new head of the CIA, Leon Panetta, must reform a disorganized secret service apparatus, which faces accusations of torture.

The new UN ambassador, Susan Rice, should not only be a new friendly face towards the United Nations in the Security Council, but will also swear in China and Russia on decisive action in the Sudan–with respect to the Darfur situation–and Iraq–with respect to atomic weapons. The former Clinton EPA chief, Carol Browner, will coordinate the energy policy in the White House and should bring the USA, in terms of international climate policy, to the place where the new President wants to see his country: at the forefront of the movement.

The new American foreign policy rule of three could be described as follows: damage control – for example through the closing of the prison in Guantánamo and a fundamental acknowledgement of the principles of Human Rights. Radical reversals in policy–especially in ecology–and a few question marks. It is still not totally clear if an Obama Administration will take as critical a tone with Israel as the Bush Administration did, if it will support an anti-missile system in Eastern Europe and continue the American efforts to bring Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO as quickly as possible.

With this we are already in the middle of a thicket of political crises. Obama’s potential, however, lies on a completely different plane. The worldwide leap of faith this man inspires relies on two things: on his biography as an “American World Citizen” and on his charisma. Especially in front of this background of known crises, the strength of charisma plays an enormously important role.

Obama’s charisma touches a civilian self-confidence that stands in stark contrast to the hyper machismo of George W. Bush. The latter symbolized a land that, after September 11, 2001, took on its worst traditions: the messianic, over inflated entitlement to be invulnerable and infallible, and, therefore, did not need to justify any actions—regardless as to whether it is war, a pre-emptive military strike or the use of torture.

Obama represents an America, which sees itself sedulously as the chosen land, but also at the same time recognizes the limits of its supremacy and, above all, its fallibility, without showing signs of weakness.

Because he has just come into power, he has the chance to set himself apart from the conflicts of the “war on terror” and jump over these political hurdles and arbitrate some big plays in foreign policy. He could seek direct negotiations with Iran as a sovereign gesture. He could, instead of focusing only on the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, finally call for a regional conference for Indian, Pakistani, and Iranian cooperation. He could strike the idiotic project of a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe as well as let the equally idiotic confrontational attitude of Moscow simply trickle off with the rebuke that the world currently has more important problems: namely the financial and economic crises as well as a changing climate.

Whether he can actually do this hangs not only on his political will, but also from the aura of a civilian sovereignty. This would, in the case of a renewed terrorist attack, immediately become target when a substantial part of the American public calls for military retaliation. This would also quickly fade, if he decides on a military escalation in Afghanistan and Pakistan – a worry that is not unsubstantiated seeing as his statements in the election and his plans to massively increase American troops there.

In the end, these are perhaps the deciding factors of Obama’s new foreign policy: the durability or fragility of his aura. And his ability, or inability, to bring unison to the interests of a weakening and humbled Superpower, which he, on his journey’s abroad, always conceptualized as a vision: a politic of a global common good. Naturally, of course, under American leadership.