The New Leadership

Coming from two countries that are powers in their respective regions, but that have historically lacked political clout on the world stage, the proposal by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the Iranian nuclear issue is a welcome confirmation of the expansion of world leadership in this time of deep crisis.

As expected, American conservatives have launched an angry attack against the two leaders, labeling them useful idiots for the cause of Iran. However, the real goal is not to criticize two countries they consider peripheral, but to place the blame on Barack Obama. When Turks and Brazilians — wrote Charles Krauthammer in the “Washington Post” — dare to propose comprehensive policies, it’s because Obama’s foreign policy has created a power vacuum. Independent of the merits the Turkish-Brazilian proposal, the critique of the American right is arrogant and opportunistic. They might have hit home — without really meaning to — in that the current historical moment allows for greater openness on the world political scene.

In Europe, the welfare state has entered into a deep crisis that it cannot escape without eroding the assumptions and many of the benefits hard won by the people and turned into state policy by leftist governments after the Second World War. The current financial crisis threatens the welfare of men and ordinary women and calls into question the continuity of dignified retirement with generous pension to those who worked hard all their lives.

Also threatened is the existence of a universal health care system that, even with its flaws, far exceeds the discriminatory and inequitable American system, in which the rich can access all [available] services while millions of other people still lack health insurance to meet their most basic medical needs.

Today, faced with the emergence of new powers like China, India, Brazil, and Russia, the [European] continent will enter a phase of low economic growth and severely reduced political power along with a birth rate insufficient to sustain population [levels], even given higher expectations of longevity.

In the United States, meanwhile, 16 months into his presidency, Obama is moving firmly on the path to accelerate [a period of] social change in U.S. history comparable to that seen during the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt [in the late ’30s and early ’40s] and Lyndon B. Johnson in the ’60s. In one sense, Obama’s progressiveness is but an attempt to reverse the Reagan era of selfishness in which inequality increased, the rich became richer, and the poor poorer.

Viewed another way, one could say that what is happening today in the U.S. is an attempt to move a little toward the European model. The new social contract has included a state-funded economic stimulus plan to help the private sector pull out of economic recession, near-universal health insurance, a reconsideration of the national education system, financial support to expand scientific research, and a thorough review of laws and financial regulations that would prevent abuse by Wall Street bankers, now on the verge of being approved by Congress.

At the same time, Obama knows that the time when the United States can impose its will on the rest of the world is unquestionably over. He acknowledged that, in the new world order, there are other players who must be heard, even if their proposals contradict the current policies of the country that is still the wealthiest and most powerful in the world.

And this must be the sense in which the proposal by Brazil and Turkey, made without asking anyone’s permission, should be considered. We must see whether it is feasible and, if this is the case and if we can avoid a catastrophe, the expansion of global leadership would be welcome.