Obama in Global Perspective

Joseph Gerson

Working as the Director of the Peace and Economic Security Program of the American Friends Service Committee in New England, my travels and trajectory allow me privileged contact with peace movement and NGO leaders and diplomats from many countries. Since the beginning of the year I have made repeated trips to Asia for meetings that focused on U.S.-Chinese relations, U.S. regional hegemony, nuclear weapons abolition, and deepening South Korean democracy, as well as traveling to Germany for an international conference on Afghanistan. One thing that these activists (the majority of whom are associated with their nations’ Left) and the diplomats have in common is a realpolitik frame of analysis, which, in the case of peace and democracy activists, is complemented by a rational idealism. While most appreciate that an Obama election could have significant impacts on U.S. political culture and domestic policies, their experience with U.S. imperialism, in Republican and Democratic administrations alike, means that they do not have great expectations of Obama and see only marginal differences between him and John McCain on foreign and military policy issues. The reporting that follows focuses on their expectations related to Afghanistan, the Middle East, and progress toward nuclear disarmament. Given the reticence of Chinese officials to comment about the U.S. election and the tradition of bipartisan implementation of U.S. Asia-Pacific hegemony, most recently reflected in the 2007 Armitage-Nye report, “Getting Asia Right for 2020,” my friends and interlocutors in Asia expect continuity regardless of who is elected in November.

I had opportunities to talk with representatives of the Revolutionary Afghan Women’s Association while in Germany and Japan. In both cases these were educated and thoughtful women, each of whose parents were murdered by Islamist fundamentalists. They make little distinction between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance war lords allied with the United States, both of whose forces routinely practice rape, murder, and the repression of women in a country where it is “revolutionary” to advocate the rights of women. They have been deeply troubled by Obama’s repeated calls for escalating the Afghan war. Believing that only the Afghan people can and should determine their nation’s future, as "Miryam" put it, they expect that, for the Afghan people, Obama will be even “worse” than Bush (1). As she said “We’ve seen the consequences of the War on Terrorism in Afghanistan, and he is working to intensify it.”

With President Bush and John McCain insisting that victory in Afghanistan is the “litmus test” for NATO, and with Obama’s call for more NATO troops to be sent to Afghanistan, withdrawal of European troops from this Central Asian war is becoming the unifying demand of the European peace movement. As one German activist wrote after Obama’s now famous rally beneath the Prussian victory statue, many who were there to cheer him on cringed when he called for more German troops to fight, kill, and die in Afghanistan.

In Asia and the Third World, where people have a profound understanding of race after centuries of European and U.S. domination, and among many “progressives” in Europe there is an understanding that the election of an African American U.S. president would be significant in ways that we cannot yet fully understand. One fifty-year veteran of the Japanese peace movement put it in this typically understated Japanese way: “Obama would be the first African American president in the United States, and that would be good. But what will his policies toward Israel and the Middle East be?”

Getting diplomats to speak frankly about their hopes, or where their nations’ interests lie, is like pulling hens’ teeth, so I asked a First Secretary, “What can an Egyptian diplomat tell me off the record about his expectations of an Obama presidency?” His response was appropriately realpolitik: “We look at the presidential election through the prism of foreign, not domestic, policy commitments. Look at the Middle East. To be honest, you can see slight differences. But, at the end of the day, Egyptians and Arabs don’t expect any major change in policy. Speaking at the AIPAC convention, Obama, McCain, and Clinton were tripping over one another to gain Jewish support. In fact, because of his lack of foreign policy experience, Obama will probably act tougher in order to prove that he has mettle.”

That said, an off the record exchange with an Iranian diplomat indicates that they are hopeful that an Obama victory could lead to negotiations that would regularize and potentially even normalize U.S.-Iranian relations. They are particularly encouraged by his choice of Joe Biden as his running mate, one of the few people in Washington they believe is deeply knowledgeable about developments in Iran and the possibilities for negotiating a comprehensive arrangement with Iraq. They believe that if the Bush Administration follows through on its trial balloon by officially proposing a U.S. staffed interest section in Tehran, it will make things much easier for Obama. Otherwise, it will be heavy sledding against deeply entrenched anti-Iranian interests in U.S. domestic politics.

The U.S. peace movement has communicated the differences between Obama and McCain over nuclear weapons policies to our European and Asian allies. Pressed by community based activists during the presidential primaries, and encouraged by the Shultz/Kissinger/Perry/Nunn op-ed appeals for the U.S. to end its nuclear double standard and to carry through its Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Article VI commitment to negotiate the elimination of their nuclear arsenals, both Obama and McCain, unlike Bush, have reiterated a U.S. commitment to a nuclear-weapons-free world, even if McCain has said, “It’s naïve to say that we will never use nuclear weapons.”

They know that even as Obama has pledged to “retain a strong [nuclear] deterrent,” he has said that “America seeks a world with no nuclear weapons,” and that he supports ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, negotiation of a fissile materials cut off treaty, and a de-alerting agreement with Russia to take missiles off hair-trigger alert.

In this regard, exchanges with senior officials of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation (the Hiroshima Peace Museum and its research and education arms) on the anniversary of the first A-bombings were hopeful and sobering. They recognize that “the outcome of the election will impact the NPT Review.” They believe that, if elected, Obama will need to move quickly if U.S. commitments to disarmament are to be credible come April 2010 and the existentially important NPT Review Conference. But hopes in Hiroshima for fundamental change are not high. As the U.S.-born chairman of the foundation put it, “Even if we elect Obama, we’re still in the war culture.”

In conclusion, consistent with Andrew Bacevich’s recent observations, the political figures, activists, and diplomats from Asia, Europe, and the Arab world whom I have been speaking with expect more continuity than change in U.S. foreign and military policies.

Joseph Gerson is the Director of Programs of the American Friends Service Committee in New England and is the author of Empire and the Bomb (2007), The Sun Never Sets (1991), and numerous other books and articles.