Our Obama, Not Yours
Yesterday was an historic day for Americans and for the world. As countless intrepid foreign correspondents have reported over the past few months, it was not just Americans, but millions of people from the capitals of Europe to remote African villages, who waited with bated breath to see the election of Barack Obama as 44th President of the United States. It was indeed a tremendous day, and I am grateful to have been around just to watch.
But I am also scared. No — not because the infamous e-mail forwards convinced me that Obama is secretly a terrorist sympathizer, a closet Muslim fundamentalist, or a socialist. Like the over 60 million Americans who voted him into office yesterday, I am quite sure Barack Obama is an American, through and through. Obama, I am convinced, will be an American President in the best (and worst) tradition of our great leaders of the past. While I expect him to do many great things, and to say many more wonderful things, I don’t expect him to do anything far out of line from what other great American Presidents have done and will do. But I’m very, very worried that Obama’s millions (perhaps hundreds of millions) of fans around the planet don’t get that.
You see, there is something fundamentally different about international Obama-mania from anything I’ve seen in America’s modern history. There have been internationally popular American Presidents in the past, to be sure. But never before have so many, across such a wide swath of the globe, identified so closely with a single American leader. That identification, in my view, is about much more than the concrete benefits foreign countries might expect from a Democratic Presidency. It is certainly more than just relief over the guaranteed exit of President Bush (after all, a President-elect McCain or Clinton would have promised the same result). In fact, my sense is that many of the millions of Obama fans around the globe see him as their candidate, and now their President. Obama (by dint of what? His skin color? His birth? His message?) belongs not just to America, but to the world, or so the adoring crowds seem to feel. Yesterday was not just the Obama’s victory, or the Democrats’ victory, or America’s victory, they believe-it was the world’s victory.
And that’s where the trouble starts.
See, Obama is in reality about to become President of the United States, not of the world. His most awesome responsibility in the White House-his obligation by law, in fact-will be to protect and defend the Constitution and the people of the United States. Doubtless, Obama and his advisors will pursue this mission in a way the world will find less objectionable than the policies of George W. Bush. But they may be surprised to learn that Obama’s America is still America, and America’s interests, strengths and inevitable weaknesses are not going to change very dramatically.
But surely, you say, President Obama will reverse all of President Bush’s destructive policies, bringing hope to Americans and foreigners, and restoring our moral leadership in the world. He seems very likely to do that, but the limit on Obama’s ability to win and keep the global masses’ adoration is that as President he will still need the support of Americans, and it quite frequently happens that our interests and the rest of the world’s interests don’t line up very well.
I have neither the space nor the inclination here to pour too much rain on the world’s parade, so I’ll simply say that in policy areas from counter-terrorism to trade, the President always faces choices among competing interests and costs. The simple fact is that President Obama will have to choose America’s interests at the expense of global public opinion in many instances, and I worry that some expectations around the world are unprepared for that reality.
On the up side, there are doubtless many in the world who for a long time have been tired of resenting America. After all, other than a handful of rogue states and terrorists, it doesn’t gain most countries and most people very much to declare the world’s superpower a bad guy. Whatever else he does, Obama will certainly provide a critical opportunity for mending fences for those who desire to do so. But what he won’t do is deliver on misguided expectations that America is somehow a different country because it has elected a different President. It may be difficult for fans in Kenya, Indonesia or Russia to accept that Obama is our man, not their man. In fact a lot of people-Americans included-are going to have to square their expectations with reality.
Related posts:
“To leave America for the Americans” was a glorious advice from James Monroe and I think America has lost its spirit.
“Our Obama, Not Yours” seems to me to be a blind remark looking back at the last Century. U.S. foreign policy has heavily affected most of the World’s countries, not only by spreading wars (called “democracy”) and death but also secretly directing the governments of a huge number of countries.
So, I think everyone all over the World has the same hope you have: Obama be U.S. president, work hard to take care of your citizens but leave the rest of the World in peace.
Comment on November 5, 2008 @ 7:14 pm
Matthew Rojansky writes, “The simple fact is that President Obama will have to choose America’s interests at the expense of global public opinion in many instances, and I worry that some expectations around the world are unprepared for that reality.”
Mr. Rojansky is of course correct technically. The US President serves the US. However, I would like to gently remind Mr. Rojanksy that the US leads the world one way or the other, and as such has to be accountable to that same constituency it leads. It would be imperative that Americans seize Obama goodwill gained for the US internationally, rather than retreat into the language of ‘us’ and ‘them’ implied by Mr. Rojansky’s title here, “our Obama, not yours.”
Part of the problem with the US discourse over time has been the inability of its elite to imagine the world as one of its citizens. (Therefore, what follows is not a personal critique of Mr. Rojansky.) This exceptionalism has led to serious weaknesses in policy with the sum total of these errors now adding up to a colossal challenge. (To be sure, there have been brilliant moments: Senator Lugar’s game changing support for regime change in South Africa and the Philippines provided those precious moments of the US as a global citizen. But these have been far too rare, suggesting the need for more worldly and erudite leadership.)
That is why Obama is essential for these times: he understood the “fierce urgency of now” when he stepped up to lead. It is thus important not to shackle this visionary to parochial concerns of ‘national interests’ or frame the discussion in terms of reducing global expectations. Rather what prominent ‘think tanks’ have to do now is to take the Obama vision on board and look beyond the immediate borders to understand the implications of US leadership of the world. US intellectuals should celebrate the arrival of a global Obama by educating themselves to understand the world not in terms of narrowly defined ‘national interests’ rather in more realistically derived ‘global interests.’ A single policy success in this global arena would yeild world support that Americans have no appreciation for so far.
To be sure the training provided in US universities will be hard to overcome for US trained policy elites. However, without such a paradigm shift to move from ‘US interests’ to ‘global interests’ you will surely squander the goodwill from the world, just as the same goodwill was squandered after 9/11, when every nation in the world felt they were Americans too. That we cannot afford, but who will change the thinking in the ‘think tanks’ of Washington?
Jayantha Jayman, Ph.D. (LSE), M.A. (Toronto), B.A. (Denison)
Assistant Professor (Research)
Institute of Global Cultural Studies
Binghamton University
New York
Comment on November 7, 2008 @ 11:39 am
Professor Jayman,
Thank you for your very thoughtful comment. I’d agree with the basic premise that there are many areas where smarter US leadership can achieve positive outcomes for this country and the rest of the world, insofar as those are in many cases the same, or largely overlapping.
The challenges are on issues that entail inherent trade-offs between immutable US priorities and the interests of other states in the international system. To name just a few examples: The relative contributions of developed and developing states to carbon emissions cutbacks, the precise mechanisms of nuclear arms reductions, and of course the challenge of detecting and eliminating non-state threats to the United States without violating the sovereignty of other states or other important international legal principles.
Certainly it’s possible to steer a better course through these rocky shoals than the Bush administration has in the past 8 years, but there is no solution that will leave every party satisfied. My specific concern in the above piece is that there is a non-negligible sentiment in many countries–and one that you echo to some degree in your comment–that Obama represents a departure from the “American interests” perspective on US foreign policy. I simply don’t think that will prove correct, and for that reason I worry that a great many potential friends of America stand to be very disappointed.
Matt Rojansky
Comment on November 7, 2008 @ 2:12 pm
For a great comprehensive run-down of global responses to the Obama victory, check out the US Center on Citizen Diplomacy’s post-election page:
http://uscenterforcitizendiplomacy.org/us-center-programs/US-Center-Timely-Topics/election/index1.php
Comment on November 18, 2008 @ 1:32 pm