Obama: Between Leadership and Cooperation

The United Nations will have the opportunity to welcome prominent world leaders on the final day of the poverty summit. U.S. President Barack Obama, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and newly elected British Prime Minister David Cameron will address the delegates and lobby strongly for achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

The international community committed itself to these goals in the year 2000. They hope to halve poverty and hunger, fight disease, and promote education and environmental protection around the globe by the year 2015.

But realizing these goals already seems illusory. General Secretary Ban Ki-moon has estimated that an additional financial commitment of around $100 billion by the year 2015 would be necessary. With this background, aid organizations have criticized the pre-negotiated document as being too vague to achieve the stated goals.

Nobel Laureate Barack Obama will hardly be able to contribute to any breakthrough. He faces the challenge of emphasizing America’s leadership role while simultaneously championing multilateralism. He will therefore probably demand that the goals be met and will lobby for the reconstruction of Haiti and Pakistan; he will note the importance of international cooperation at the United Nations.

But for Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, the most important tasks are not on the speaker’s podium. The Israeli government threatens to let the Middle East peace negotiations fail. For the more stringent measures that Washington feels are necessary to counter Iran and North Korea, Obama needs the backing of those Security Council members apt to veto such measures; he must also deal with Turkey and Brazil, who see themselves as having legitimate interests in the negotiations. The allies want to be consulted on anything dealing with Afghanistan.

Finally, there’s the squabble over currency with China. An undervalued yuan helps China’s exports (to the United States, for example), while impeding imports from other countries. The United States accuses Beijing of not supporting a more aggressive approach to revaluing its currency. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that China had not done everything necessary on that issue and expressed confidence that the subject would come up in the U.N. session. But it’s questionable whether China would voluntarily choose to help the United States to its own detriment.

In reference to Obama’s position, CNN correspondent Elise Labott wrote, “he will have to acknowledge a changing world.” She also noted, “To live up to his UNGA [United Nations General Assembly] promise of true “multilateralism,” the U.S. president will have to make way for these emerging nations who want their time at the podium to mean something too.”