But Obama Fights with Tokyo

Obama lines up America in the front row in the aid for Japan, scourged by tsunamis and nuclear accidents — but without giving up on his project to jump-start the nation’s nuclear power industry. Since he was woken up at 4 a.m. on Saturday by the chief of staff Daley with the first news on the tsunami, the president has been addressing the crisis in Japan.

Obama has a dual purpose: to put America at the helm of the international coalition for aid support and to prevent that explosions of Fukushima damage his energy policy. To prove the support toward the wounded ally, Obama said he has a “broken heart,” remembered that “I have such a close personal friendship and connection to the Japanese people — in part because I grew up in Hawaii where I was very familiar with Japanese culture,” and sent units of the U.S. Navy, dozens of helicopters and hundreds of marines to take part in a humanitarian operation that a White House spokesman describes as “a synthesis between the flooding of New Orleans, the carnage of Haiti and the earthquake in Chile.” But above all, Obama has authorized the mobilization of the Nuclear Task Force to avoid the worst at the reactor in Fukushima: Sending a team of super-experts, supported by the latest man-made technology, aims to avoid a fusion that reminds the Japanese of the Hiroshima nightmare and the Americans of the ghost of a cloud of radiation over the Pacific skies. The White House is making use of the secrets of its nuclear science to support an ally in need and at the same time to testify to its public opinion that, just like after the violent earthquakes occurred in Haiti and Chile, Obama wants America in the role of leader.

But this doesn’t mean relinquishing the belief that nuclear power is a crucial piece of the energy revolution needed to free the country from its dependence on oil imported from abroad. To the Democratic Party leaders, who are pressing the White House to obtain a suspension of the commitments undertaken in 2010 to build in Georgia the first new nuclear plant in 30 years, Obama replies letting them know that “our systems are safe,” stressing that nuclear power is useful “to depend less on harmful gases in the future” and thus to protect the climate. This choice also implies that Obama wants to give America a role of leadership in the energy revolution.

Accustomed to the tough fights of Chicago’s politics, expecting in 10 months a difficult campaign for re-election and facing a crisis in Libya that highlights the risk of depending on oil from dictators, the president, who comes from Hawaii and chose Tokyo as the site for his speech to Asia on the partnership of the 21st century, sees in the post-tsunami an opportunity to confirm the leading role of America in the multilateral world. He is betting on the ability of the technicians of the “National Resources Commission” to avert a nuclear catastrophe.