The Leader of Challenges

It has been a year since Barack Obama won a decisive victory in the U.S. presidential election and generated enthusiasm not only in America, but around the globe. A year is, of course, not a very long time in the political sphere. It’s almost nothing. But the past year, with all of its major events, stands out. Firstly, because rarely in contemporary U.S. history has an election been fraught with so many hopes and dreams. And secondly, it is precisely this choice that began to overturn the world’s notion of America and America’s notion of the world. This is something both Obama’s admirers and Obama’s detractors admit.

How many remember a similar time at the beginning of November nine years ago? That was when George W. Bush won the election after an unconvincing judiciary intervention. He went on to demonstrate a change in “leadership mentality” of the lone superpower. At that time the questions that were asked were: Where would America direct its foreign policy arsenal? What would become of the transatlantic relationship and what would happen if the U.S. concentrated mainly on the oil and Asian markets? Add to those questions the ones that emerged later relating to Bush’s antimissile plans, the gaping geopolitical crater in the deserts of Iraq, the Afghanistan drama, the relationships with Russia and China, the Iranian nuclear ambitions, the Middle East puzzle… Four years after that some questions had already been answered. America and Europe then had to come to terms with the limits of their capabilities and await diplomatic help. The differences between the first and the second Bush terms became most visible a year ago when Barack Obama won the election amid a raging financial crisis, which swept away the old financial order and turned international politics into a sort of emergency room for urgent economic recovery aid.

Nevertheless, Obama was burdened with high expectations because he was greeted as the antipode and “wise alternative” to Bush. If George W. Bush had been challenged by international terrorism, Barack Obama was being challenged by the financial cataclysm reminiscent of the Great Depression. This is an important realization, not only because the nature of these challenges is different, but because they changed the course of history. There has been plenty of history in a year’s time. To cut a long story short, Obama has set the trend for a style of foreign policy that is anything but a projection of self-confidence by the lone superpower. In the quaint language of diplomacy, this is called a “multilateral approach,” otherwise well known as strategic reassurance. This approach can be seen in many of Obama’s decisions – from those on Guantanamo Bay to the change in attitude towards the Iranian nuclear policy to the decision, which had grave consequences for Central Europe, to give up on Bush’s antimissile defense system.

To that, one inevitably has to add the fact that Obama turned to the United Nations, made a serious attempt to reset the U.S. relationship with Russia and opened up to the Muslim world like no American president before him. Who still talks about the so-called clash of civilizations nowadays? Who imagined that Obama would win the Nobel Peace Prize? You can add to this the proposal to get rid of nuclear weapons. All this has been called the “open window” of opportunities.

His critics, of course, are of a different opinion. They say that Obama has decidedly compromised America’s leadership in relation to Russia and China. Moreover, that he has not spoken out about the most liberal principle of human rights. They find justification for these criticisms in his decline to meet the Dalai Lama or that he did not visit Poland for the tributes on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the start of World War II, or that he would not be in Berlin for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It was, incidentally, in Berlin that President John F. Kennedy once uttered in German the famous phrase Ich bin ein Berliner (“I am a citizen of Berlin”). Later, looking at the Brandenburg gate, Ronald Reagan addressed Gorbachev with the words: “Mr. President, tear down this wall.” The relationship continues today. Earlier this year, Angela Merkel visited the U.S. to express gratitude for the assistance given to Germany for decades, assistance which allowed her country to rebuild after World War II and to put an end to being split: “I know, and the German people know, how much we owe you, my American friends. We will never forget. Personally I will never forget,” she declared in front of both chambers of Congress on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

After eight years of Bush followed by a year of Obama, Europe ought to restore its confidence as America’s most important partner. It ought to because only an ailing mind could conceive of someone like Bush winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Europe ought to regain that confidence, but…Barack Obama left some unanswered questions about the transatlantic relationship. His decision to withdraw Bush’s plans for an antimissile defense shield caused a dilemma for Poland and the Czech Republic who felt that their place in America’s strategic plans has been lost. Or take another example, the latest drama between America and Germany caused by Opel. Just as Merkel was travelling to the U.S., General Motors announced that it has decided not to sell Opel. Some excitable analysts qualified this refusal to sell by General Motors as a catastrophe in German-American relations worthy of George W. Bush. Flapping with negative excitement they declared that it was impossible for Barack Obama not to have been informed of General Motors’ decision. Incidentally, the huge automobile corporation received billion-dollar assistance from the Obama administration.

These are just two examples that show that the nervous system of American-European relations is not so stable. It could easily be affected by a “diplomatic flu” with no cure. A year is, of course, not a very long time in the political sphere. It’s almost nothing… And strategic reassurances have always been accompanied by… anxiety.