Commentary: A US welcome in the world?
|
| Published on Saturday, April 28, 2007 |
Email To Friend Print Version |
By Sir Ronald Sanders
Barack Obama made an important foreign policy statement on April 23rd to the Chicago Council on Global affairs. It is a statement that most people in the world would welcome from someone seeking to become the most powerful person on earth – the President of the United States.
 |
Sir Ronald Sanders is a business
executive and former Caribbean
diplomat who publishes widely
on small states in the global
community. Reponses to:
ronaldsanders29@hotmail.com |
Many well-thinking Americans, including Republicans, who are very concerned about the policies of the present administration of President George W Bush, would empathise with the statement of the Democratic Senator from Illinois even though they wouldn’t support him for the Presidency.
Right now Senator Obama is giving Hilary Rodham Clinton a run for her money for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency, though it is doubtful that he will beat her.
Mr Obama is black and there continues to be that nagging question about whether America is ready for a black President.
The truth is that it is the colour of his skin, rather than the content of his speeches that might see Mr Obama sidelined eventually in the Presidential race.
Nonetheless, Mr Obama’s first foreign policy statement was outstanding, and, if he keeps it up with such convincing eloquence, it should force the other Presidential hopefuls to adopt policies that would shift America back to an internationalist position and away from the unilateralist, militaristic stance of the present government.
In three sentences, Mr Obama summed up what has happened to America because of President Bush’s ill-advised invasion of Iraq and the subsequent horrific events including the killings of thousands of innocent Iraqi’s, the deaths of hundreds of American service men and women, and the unpardonable televised hanging of Saddam Hussein after a trial that many felt was stage-managed by the US government.
Obama said, “We all know that these are not the best of times for America’s reputation in the world. We know what the war in Iraq has cost us in lives and treasure, in influence and respect. We have seen the consequences of a foreign policy based on a flawed ideology, and a belief that tough talk can replace real strength and vision.”
Indeed, because of the way that the US administration has gone about its ‘war on terror’, it has probably won more recruits to those who want vengeance on America than Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida would ever have been able to enlist.
Mr Obama is quite right that the US has lost influence and respect, and that loss has occurred even among those who want to be among America’s staunchest supporters.
He correctly stated that “the disappointment that so many around the world feel toward America is only a testament to the high expectations they hold for us”. And he declared: “We must meet those expectations again not because being respected is an end in itself but because the security of America and the wider world demands it”.
The America that people the world over respected was the America that produced the Marshall Plan to rebuild a wrecked Europe after the ravages of World War 11; the America that led the way in the formation of the United Nations to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, “to reaffirm faith in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small”, and affirmed that “armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest”.
That America has faded into the background, replaced by an image of an ugly juggernaut unwilling to pause to engage any other nation, however friendly, in dialogue and tolerant only of those whose support borders on obsequiousness.
It is that image that has done America most harm, playing into the hands of its detractors who have readily decried it as a bully. It has adversely affected American companies doing business in the world, and it has stymied the good intentions of US government officials who have been tainted by the wider impression of US government motives.
It was wonderful, therefore, to hear Senator Obama affirm: “We must neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission – we must lead the world by deed and example”.
And, he acknowledged that just as the world cannot meet the threats of this century without America, America cannot meet them alone. He recognised the value of multilateralism and of multilateral institutions in which the voices of other nations are taken into account.
He said: “Today it’s become fashionable to disparage the United Nations, the World Bank, and other international organizations. In fact, reform of these bodies is urgently needed if they are to keep pace with the fast-moving threats we face. Such real reform will not come, however, by dismissing the value of these institutions, or by bullying other countries to ratify changes we have drafted in isolation. Real reform will come because we convince others that they too have a stake in change – that such reforms will make their world, and not just ours, more secure”.
Dealing with the Bush administration’s much vaunted desire “to promote the spread of freedom”, Senator Obama made the telling point that “the true desire of all mankind is not only to live free lives, but lives marked by dignity and opportunity”.
And, he identified some of the requirements of freedom as “basic sustenance like food and clean water; medicine and shelter; building the capacity of the world’s weakest states and providing them what they need to reduce poverty, build healthy and educated communities, develop markets, and generate wealth”.
He promised that, as President, he would double American aid to $50 billion by 2012, pointing out that “for the last twenty years, US foreign aid funding has done little more than keep pace with inflation”. $50 billion a year in foreign aid is less than one-half of one percent of the US GDP and, as he concluded, it “doesn’t sound as costly when you consider that last year, the Pentagon spent nearly double that amount in Iraq alone”.
He might have added that after trumpeting in 2005 that they would boost development assistance to Africa alone by $50 billion, the G8 countries, which includes the US, have mustered only 10% of their pledge so far according to panel headed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Anan. They basked in the glow of the publicity then; today they are in the shadow of what the rock star, Bob Geldof, a chief campaigner for Africa, says is a “grotesque abdication of responsibility”.
Senator Obama’s statement will probably find little supportive response in the US except among the informed and thoughtful minority. But, the vision he paints of America in the world is one the world would welcome, and one that would benefit America’s interests. |
|
