It is not ungracious at this point, however, to examine the context in which he will operate and to speculate a little. It remains to be seen what Obama will do – or will be able to do.
We hope that he can find a better Federal Reserve chairman than Alan Greenspan who presided over the extraordinary period of consumer credit, cheap money, reckless lending, worthless derivatives and government borrowing that must now be paid for. We wish him well in this. It is the foreign policy implications of rescuing the US economy that is of concern to the rest of the world. Obama was not elected as a result of opposition to the Bush administration’s foreign policy. He was elected as a Democrat primarily because of the pain felt by the electorate from the failure of the US financial system under Bush and the Republicans.
The US electorate has come to oppose the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It appears however, that this is not through any perception that these occupations are wrong in principle, but because they are costly, US soldiers are dying and the US is not winning. The reasons for this perceptual failure are complex. Firstly, the US population is systematically misinformed by its government and media about the reasons for these wars and the facts on the ground about them.
A more subtle reason is cultural. The US has a culture that believes itself to be free of the international rules of behaviour that it expects other countries to follow. Such freedom permits the US to execute an interventionist mission to oppose tyranny and bring freedom and democracy to the world’s oppressed people. The US, therefore, does not accept the authority of the International Court of Justice and considers that the Nuremburg Principles, Geneva Conventions, as well as respect for other countries’ sovereignty in general, do not apply to its own actions. The US mission is unique in history. Its rationale is an inversion of that of other interventionist and occupying countries such as Britain, Spain, Rome or Greece which made no pretext about exploiting other nations, with cultural transfer a matter of indifference or convenience. Americans believe that their overt intervention in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan and covert intervention by the CIA in many others such as Iran and Venezuela are motivated by love of humanity. Why they believe this is another matter, but I suggest that it is not a simple myth propagated by a cynical elite for exploitation of the population. The elite is certainly cynical but it also believes in the mission. The only comparable belief was communism. This is the experiment that is America.
Barak Obama has been elected, as others have been before him, because he has convinced America that he is entirely American and is committed to his country’s interests. In that case, he may be expected to believe in the American mission which coincides with America’s conception of its best interests. If so, there is no reason to suppose that he will have foreign policies substantially different from those of his predecessors. There is evidence to suggest this. He has said that he will end the Iraq war, but has also said that the war in Afghanistan is the “right” war. He has pledged support for Israel which, like America, is expansionist, interventionist and occupies other countries’ territory. Indeed, Israel is founded on Palestinian land. It is not yet clear, therefore, what comprises his belief system.
Even if Obama has the vision to abandon the US’s interventionism and create, in other countries’ terms, a constructive, humanitarian foreign policy to benefit the underprivileged of the world, his party would probably oppose it. Congress and the Senate both have Democrat majorities but made no attempt whatever to impede President Bush’s wars, much less impeach him for them. Both parties enthusiastically supported sanctions against Iran for an unproven nuclear weapons programme and demonized Russia for supporting South Ossetia against Georgia’s US-backed invasion. The Democrats might not permit him to deviate from these positions, with the exception of his stated position of leaving Iraq, as the war is unpopular in any event. Even this might not be possible since it is difficult to see the US leaving Iraq completely without its Middle Eastern policy of the last 50 years unravelling. Certainly, the construction of permanent military bases there indicates that there has been no intention to leave.
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President Obama will be dependent on the information and advice given to him. Since the time when President Eisenhower warned against the military-industrial complex as a potential problem, it has fed and grown on public funds with a life of its own to the extent that it might be impossible to scale back. The Iraq war, for example, not only enriches politically influential individuals but also provides employment for many ordinary workers. The loss of these jobs would have important political effects for individual members of Congress and the Sentate. The scale of the US’s overall military spending is appropriate to its perceived global mission rather than defence of the US itself. It may be expected that there would be strong resistance to reducing this drain on the economy, unproductive though it is, due to the loss of both career opportunities and civilian jobs supported by military expenditure.
Presidential advisers have their personal and sectoral interests at heart rather than the best interests of the American people, much less the rest of the world. This is particularly true of the powerful Zionist lobby. The information and briefings that President Obama receives will always be biased. How he deals with them will depend on his personal world view, about which we know nothing. To be realistic, beyond the euphoria of seeing this charismatic man supplant what is probably the worst US administration in its history, what we have seen to date has been a marketing exercise to achieve his election.
Obama looks good. America and the world need someone who looks like this but we shall see what he can do. There are some critical test cases by which he will be judged, among them, his policies on Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, NATO and Israel/Palestine. I hope I’m wrong, but I confess that I am not hopeful. I wish I could be. Anthony Blair looked good too when elected, but there was rot in his heart. The American case is different, to be sure, but it’s the American mission that worries me. Perhaps I would be more optimistic for Barack Obama if it had not been for Colin Powell who seemed to be the articulate, liberal, fair-minded soldier and a potential presidential candidate – until he made his United Nations speech. Complete rubbish. If I could give President Obama a few words of advice they would be: “Remember Colin Powell.”
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