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Obama II: a more interventionist agenda by Paolo Magri
“What would be reasonable to expect from the second term of Obama, after two decades of wishful thinking? Caution and realism are a must. Despite the public pronouncements and the agenda, however, a significant step toward change in the international projection of the Obama II administration is not to be excluded.” The priorities? The Middle East, China, and institutions of global governance.
Over the past twenty years, the hope of obtaining an effective response to the growing demand for global governance has been fed by two illusions. The first illusion led us to believe that the collapse of the Soviet Union would lay the foundations for a new order, less expensive and imperfect than the one guaranteed by the bi-polar system of the Cold War. A hierarchical order, with the United States, the hegemonic but “benign” power at the center, and whose solitude in command could be balanced by the multilateral and regional organizations (UN and EU in particular), at long last out of the hibernation of the Eighties. An order which, precisely because it is “benign” and “multilateral,” could even be allowed to violate the sovereignty of the individual states in order to guarantee global order: to export the free market, security, peace (for humanitarian reasons), and even justice (with the birth of the International Criminal Court). Wishful thinking. G.W. Bush, with his mistakes and the “war on terror,” reminded us that the hegemonic power was not necessarily benign; the revival of international organizations immediately showed signs of slowing down; with the financial crisis of 2008, the capitalist economic model – emerging triumphant from the Cold War and diligently exported – entered into crisis in the very country that had elected it as its creed. The second illusion occurred with the election of Barack Obama, when America was still engaged in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hit hard by the financial crisis. The illusion was that the discontinuity that the new President represented (generational, political, racial) would guarantee a recovery of the image and prestige of the “benign power” and make his significant contribution to global governance pos-
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sible. Agreements on financial regulation, on measures to tackle the economic crisis in the advanced economies, on trade, and on the environment would, in essence, have benefited from America’s new “engagement” (radically different as to means and styles) in world affairs. Obama had no shortage of narrative rhetoric (“outstretched hand,” “reset,” the emphasis on “dialog among equals”) or tools, starting with the newly formed G20, more inclusive and attentive to the new equilibrium that has emerged in the last decade. The “Yes We Can” President was even awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on this basis, receiving the first “preventive” Nobel in the history of the Norwegian prize. Despite the Nobel, despite the millions of miles traveled by Hillary Clinton, the capture of Bin Laden, the withdrawal from Iraq, and the (announced) withdrawal from Afghanistan, the foreign policy inherited from Obama’s first term was a long series of “unfinished missions” (dialog with China and Russia, the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Iran’s nuclear program), the “forgotten continents” (Africa, Europe, Latin America), and blocked global negotiations (trade, environment, financial regulation). Of course, it was not solely the responsibility of the U.S. President, but it is undeniable that Obama’s emphasis on domestic priorities (the crisis, employment, debt, deficit) has inspired an extremely pragmatic and cautious approach to foreign policy that, while the expression of a positive awareness of the need to revise America’s role in a new multipolar context, did not seem able to ensure a more orderly and stable “governed” world. The most explicit translation of this cautious pragmatism – the Libyan “lead from behind,” which then evolved into “wait from behind” in Mali – presupposes a willing-