Global Hope About Obama May Clash With Reality

By Amitabh Pal, November 6, 2008

People the world over are marking Barack Obama’s victory as an end to the eight-year-long Bush nightmare. But their sky-high expectations may clash with the reality of Obama’s foreign policy.

Let’s start with the Middle East. The singular act that has exemplified the Bush Administration’s arrogance and fecklessness has been its invasion of Iraq. No doubt, Obama has had a good position on the war, opposing it at the outset and calling for the phased withdrawal of troops. In fact, his stance helped get him the nomination over Hillary Clinton. But the Obama team has partly fudged, stating on its website that “a residual force will remain in Iraq and in the region to conduct targeted counter-terrorism missions against al Qaeda in Iraq and to protect American diplomatic and civilian personnel.” What exactly does that mean? The devil lies in the details. If a significant number of U.S. troops are left behind, it will be hard for the Obama Administration to dispel the impression that it is continuing the occupation of Iraq.

Arabs are also hoping for a change in policy toward Israel/Palestine but they may be in for disappointment on that front, too. Infamously, in a June speech before AIPAC, the premier pro-Israel lobbying group, Obama went event further than the Bush Administration, saying that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” (As a recognition of the touchy nature of the subject, the U.S. Embassy is located in Tel Aviv.) Was this just genuflecting to his hosts or a harbinger of a change of policy? For the sake of peace in the Middle East, let us hope that Obama was just being a pandering pol, and he did subsequently backtrack.

Moving on to another area of the world, Africa (and not just Kenya) is exuberant over Obama’s win. Initially, Obama called for a doubling of foreign aid, a measure that would have been of immense help to the region. But now that Wall Street has taken the country to the cleaners, Obama’s people are reneging on that promise, too. “The one thing we might have to slow down is a commitment we made to double foreign assistance. We'll probably have to slow that down,” Joe Biden said in the vice presidential debate. And then there’s the whole question of how the Obama Administration will handle the militarization of the continent that the Bush Administration is initiating with the setting up of a separate command for Africa, AFRICOM.

Toward Latin America also, Obama’s foreign policy may mark quite a continuation with Bush. Obama has denounced Hugo Chavez as a “demagogue” and has derided the “stale vision” of Evo Morales in Bolivia and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. And as Tim Shorrock pointed out in our pages, Obama has indicated that he will maintain the harsh economic embargo on Cuba, even if he has expressed a willingness to meet with the Cuban leadership “without preconditions” and to lift restrictions on travel and remittances to the country.

And on global economic policy, an issue that has profound consequences due to the worldwide economic meltdown, Obama’s approach may be almost indistinguishable from Bush’s. Obama has as key advisers people like Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin. During their stints at the Clinton Administration, both of them used the IMF and the World Bank to arm-twist countries around the world to float their currencies and open up their financial sector to foreign (read U.S.) companies. When Joseph Stiglitz, the then-chief economist at the World Bank, criticized the IMF, Summers reportedly got him fired. And now the grapevine is that Summers will likely be Treasury Secretary. (It would be great if Obama instead chooses Stiglitz, who is also advising him.)

After the long, dark years of the Bush presidency, any change in foreign policy will seem very enlightened. But President Obama’s approach to the rest of the world may not be the night and day difference from President Bush’s that people around the planet are hoping it will be.