Obamas modern realism is awakening the ghost of old world imperialism

20 July 2009

First person by Talal Nizameddin

Talal Nizameddin

Barack Obama, the first black President in the history of the United States, continues to enjoy the adoration of the liberal elite among his compatriots. Less decisively but also importantly his foreign policy based on disengagement from conflict zones, including most famously Iraq, has struck a chord with the American masses, who have become uncomfortable with seemingly endless wars in alien cities with unpronounceable names.

There is a romantic notion of Obama as the outsider, the anti-hero, who challenged America's white-dominated establishment and won. Obama's personal qualities and life achievements have indeed been admirable but to believe the simplistic portrait of the American leader as the underdog does little justice in explaining the US political system in terms of its history and the visible changes in its society over the last 30 years.

The mythology surrounding Obama has potentially dangerous repercussions for US interests and more generally the stability of the world order in the short to medium term. It distorts our understanding of the foreign policy Obama's administration has adopted and currently pursues. Assuming that Obama will be elected for a second term, his failure to act correctly now could probably lead to a nuclear-war catastrophe scenario either in the Korean peninsula or the Middle East on his watch. In eight months of Obama we have seen a reversal of decades of official US-declared goals of promoting democracy, human rights and freedoms around the world. Obama has honestly stated that he is extending the hand of friendship to the world's tyrannical regimes. In fact, he announced this in his inauguration speech and he has thus far delivered on his promise.

China was chosen by Obama as the first destination of his presidential trips, despite a not-too-distant crushing of Tibetan dissent. A brutal and current suppression of an uprising among China's northwestern Turkic peoples has also left little impact on Obama's attitude to world affairs. In Iran, Obama's response to a massive revolt by ordinary disenchanted citizens was quite remarkable. He did not acknowledge the rage of the nation's youth at having their voices silenced after flawed elections, or the despair of women demanding more personal rights in work, study, marriage, divorce and travel.

There was no respect for the older and wiser Persian souls, fearful of where their belligerent regime was taking them. Instead, Obama only saw that Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came from the same barrel, as if that was enough to absolve the United States and the international institutions it dominates, including the United Nations, of any moral or political responsibility.

This anomaly takes us back to my original point concerning Obama's popularity. There are three main and very obvious reasons for this. The first was that this predecessor, George Bush, was intensely hated and his policies were judged, rather hastily in some cases, to have failed. All Obama had to do was to say that he would do the opposite of what was done by the Bush administration and his election victory was virtually guaranteed. The second reason for Obama's success is superficial but unavoidably true he is young, attractive and black. His predecessor was the son of a former President of the United States who had been head of the CIA. The obvious conclusion here was that Obama was the white knight with black skin who fought the dragon of political corruption and nepotism. Obama's political success thus became linked to rescuing the reputation of American's liberal forces and its image in the world. There is no doubt that Obama's election victory helped to achieve this.

The third reason for Obama's popularity has been due to his own political skills by saying and repeating what most people want to hear. His predecessor was the merchant of doom and gloom, creating enemies, warning of terrorist dangers, and schemes of mass destruction by evil tyrants. Obama has instead given us a rosy picture of the world, where there are no bad people and no threats. There was only misunderstanding caused by the foolishness of past policies. Now, Obama has come to clear up these simple misunderstandings with dialogue and so create a better and friendlier world.

This is the soft side of Obama that liberals love so much. However, American liberals have lulled themselves into a frenzy of self-deception by ignoring the fact that Obama was the product of an American system that since the 1970s had been actively promoting minorities, particularly blacks, to participate in its political establishment, and by no means was he in spite of it. Years of legalized positive discrimination was part of a social and political will that created the likes of Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and finally Obama. Such figures were obviously men and women who possessed great talent as individuals but credit is due to a system created opportunities for them to succeed.

This point needed mentioning not to revive the debate on American race relations but to emphasize that Obama is the legitimate son of America's political establishment and a legal heir to its corridors of power. Thus America's liberals have fallen into another trap of denial by overlooking that Obama is and always was a consummate politician. Pragmatism and realism are his flesh and blood and like any ambitious politician, power is his oxygen. In fairness to Obama, since his inauguration speech he has never pretended to be an idealist, although his comrades-in-arms during his youth point out that he was quite so when practicing politics on the street, perhaps expediently.

The reward for Obama's dubious realism is to gain credibility among America's elite as well as counterparts in Europe and beyond. Supporters of Obama argue that his realism is acknowledgement of America's power limits. Washington would no longer look at the world with an arrogant eye. The new approach recognized that the United States could not play the role of world policeman. Instead, Obama's approach was based on the notion of finding viable existing partners to do politics with, however abhorrent they may be. In this equation, those struggling against injustice are not viable political partners but more of a nuisance that complicate his simple world view.

The US policies and philosophy represented by Obama suffers from several structural flaws based on fragile presumptions that have been perilously ignored due to the euphoria that surrounded the rise of Obama. The first presumption is that these viable regimes are indeed viable and politically stable and that agreements with them would be long-lasting. History has taught us that oppressive regimes collapse easily when confronted by economic, military, political or ethno-religious challenges. The last cataclysmic example was the demise of the Soviet Union. We currently see dangerous signals in Iran and China of molten lava beneath the surface. Failure by both these regimes to respond wisely could lead to shocking surprises and new scenarios, leaving Washington completely unprepared.

The second presumption is that these unpleasant regimes are honest and reliable partners. While countries such as Syria may appear to fulfil conditions today, based on necessity, there is no evidence to suggest that they would not continue to undermine the United States in other ways and that they would not wait for more favorable conditions to restore their regional hegemony. The example of Syria is fitting because within a decade, between 1989 and 1999, it transformed itself from a weak, isolated state witnessing the collapse of its Soviet patron, to a regional superpower and darling of the Clinton administration in Washington. All the while Damascus was entrenching itself in Lebanon and helping to strengthen various militant non-state actors including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah to expand its regional influence.

The third and most damaging presumption of Obama's policies is that they are popular. While America's liberal elite applauds Obama, his policies are by no means populist, or people-centered but are in fact a disguise for a new-imperialism that seeks to propagate US power through indirect rule, much in the same way the British did in the 19th century, by relying on often oppressive and unpopular local rulers. Why impose tyrants when local ready-made ones already exist on the ground? This is the cornerstone of Obama's realism but it in fact does great harm to America's prestige, reputation and standing in the world if we are to believe that the future is for more people power, not less, as the new approach implies.

Talal Nizameddin is an analyst and professor at the American University of Beirut.

Copyright The Daily Star 2009.