Modest Victories

The meeting that Obama crashed last Friday in the Bella Center in Copenhagen will cause quite a stir. So much so that it will go down in history as one of those moments in which everything is staked on an unexpected initiative. If the American president had continued waiting for Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who had not appeared at the appointment they had made, or if he had canceled the appointment instead of bursting into the room where Wen was meeting with representatives of Brazil, India and South Africa, he probably would have found himself presented with an agreement cooked up entirely by China and the other three emerging nations, which would have left him in a very bad place and might have even dynamited the process of revising the Kyoto Protocol.

It is understandable that the Copenhagen Accord is not well-liked, but no one can argue with what was one of the American president’s most difficult and personal successes, which, upon his return to Washington, can be combined with the imminent passing of his health care system reform after picking up the 60th vote in the Senate. Before the year is out, Obama will have in his pocket his first two victories. Until last weekend, he was playing simultaneous [games] of chess, with all games still in play, according to the brilliant image described by Henry Kissinger. Now he has won two games.

We know very well what his critics will say: These are Pyrrhic victories. Above all, [this will be said] from the left. On the right, especially those who deny climate change and those who prefer that the state not interfere in the organization of the health care system, they will probably say the opposite. Both groups should know that the only possible victories in the new multi-polar world, with powers that are limited and necessarily negotiable, are of this kind: Victories that are modest, fragile, even temporary; the maintenance of which will later require single-mindedness. There are no other victories. The alternative to these victories is nothing, the status quo.

With respect to climate change, Obama’s success consists only of the fact that he avoided defeat. The consequences of a conference that did not produce any results would have been incalculable. Those who assert that five-party negotiations behind closed doors have nullified the U.N.’s multi-lateral system are right, but imagine if nothing had come out of Copenhagen on Saturday. The formula for salvation, that agreement that is only a non-binding declaration because there is no real consensus, still brings on board the two principal polluters, China and the United States, knowing that the third greatest polluter, the European Union, will definitely come on board.

Obama’s modest victories contrast with the discreet defeats of the two stars in the international firmament. The spirited Nicolas Sarkozy did all he could to score some points, including opening a bilateral negotiation with Brazil, but had to content himself with climbing onto the Obama bandwagon without complaining. Angela Merkel has been nicknamed “Minister of Climate,” but in the Copenhagen negotiations she also ended up in the ditch. We will see how the Europeans deal with the failure and if they are able to recover from this thumping.

If Obama’s victory is modest, China’s is as strident as its media coverage is discreet (orders count for something there, and there is party discipline). China holds responsibility for the dangerous end of the summit, which was at the point of shipwreck. China has been very comfortable up until now, crouched behind the countries of the Third World as if it were one of them, shooting zingers at the industrialized countries.

The Chinese were quite happy with Bush because they did not have to come out to play this match. In the absence of Bush, they have had to let the poorer countries demand impossible reductions from the richer ones: China does not want any quantifiable reductions, especially not under its direct political control. But it also does not want to come across as unilateralist; China wants to maintain its image of solidarity with the developing world.

The only one who could get the Chinese onto the dance floor was Obama, although they had to be dragged out. They probably would have preferred the summit to fail completely but they did not want to take on this responsibility or international image, which would make them into a less than tranquil and peaceful superpower, with a bit of imperial arrogance. Hence, they have made concessions, which buy them some time and room to begin a negotiation, but to which they are still not completely committed.