After 100 Days: Obama Is Ours

The new president convinces with his openness towards the world, his level-headedness and courage.

The past one hundred days I regularly pinched my arm. The Obama government negotiated on a high level with Syria, Iran and even via Egypt with moderate Hamas members. A first real opening with the Castro regime in Cuba was accomplished. During an impressive speech in Turkey, Obama gave the signal for a new dialogue with Islam. The president sure started forcefully.

Bush did not fit in our world. In the eight months before Sept. 11, 2001, he presented himself as a rural president with tax cuts for the richest Americans as a high priority. highest.

On foreign issues, he pulled out of international treaties in record time. The communist Soviet Union was not a communist country for more than a decade. But the U.S. presented itself as the new Roman Empire. Unparalleled in power, at least in the traditional military form.

After Sept. 11, emperor George sent the powerful war machine to Afghanistan and Iraq. “Quickly in and out” was the motto and, like in Afghanistan, he sent relatively few soldiers. What arrogance!

Then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice said that American soldiers were not meant to take children by the hand to school. “Rebuilding tasks can be executed by our European friends.”

The current president looks at the world quite differently. Obama understands that we live in a transitional era. Our world does not have a clearly structured order anymore, unlike during the Cold War. In the latest issue of Foreign Policy, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson writes about the dangers of our time. About how simplistic it was to concentrate all evil on the devilish axis of Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Ferguson sees a much larger “axis of disorder” in which many countries can be included, such as Somalia, Darfur and Afghanistan.

Conflicts increase in number and size because economic deterioration, ethnic disintegration and the downfall of the American superpower coincide. Washington can still initiate developments, but not control them everywhere on earth.

It is a relief that Obama adapts to the geopolitical situation at such high speed. He forges ties with allies but also approaches enemy regimes. In a ‘fraction of a second’, other NATO countries supported his new Afghanistan strategy.

Obama’s foreign spokesperson Hillary Clinton already indicated in her first memo that from now, besides the military “hard power,” the “soft power” of engineers, teachers and nurses will be important. The latter will be the decisive factor in obtaining success in fragile states.

With regard to the economy, the consensus was only recently that politicians could not do much about it. The real economic decisions are made and executed by businesses. But Obama took responsibility when the economy collapsed on all fronts and everyone pulled away from it. He did not wait even a single day to pump $800 billion into the economy.

The government deficit keeps growing because of this, but Obama has already offered a new defense strategy as well. From now on, the U.S. will not buy all kinds of out-of-date, very expensive weapons systems. This will ultimately have a positive effect on the American budget.

In short, Obama has made quite an impression and has shown courage. Continually says, also in the United States, that every large social problem in whatever country demands a border-crossing solution.

Of course the big question is how Obama responds in case of a first, real crisis. He makes a cool, wise impression. He is able to bring people together and listens to the world, in the style of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. He does not turn out to be a progressive Woodrow Wilson or Jimmy Carter, but more pragmatic with idealistic characteristics.

A typical Obama question is whether something works in practice. What is morally right according to our unique civilization? Reagan and George W. Bush continuously presented America as shining city upon a hill in the midst of a dark world.

From an ethnic and religious perspective, we are a heterogeneous world. Obama belongs with us. In three months time, Washington has become much closer. That is a formidable accomplishment.