FORAY | Sunday, January 18, 2009 | Email | Print | 
Obama, scion of change?
Tatiana Shaumian
This week Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, and the world will wait anxiously for him to make his mark on the vast array of crises left behind by his predecessor.
Hopes are cranked very high that Obama will act quickly to reverse the galloping economic crisis, end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, mediate the violence in Gaza and calm the turmoil in relations with Russia. But people are probably setting themselves up for a big disappointment.
Obama has surrounded himself with veterans of the former Bill Clinton administration, and these are apparently the people he is counting on to advise him in coming years. He has his reasons; after all, these are the leading lights of the Democratic Party, and they include some very impressive talent.
Also, the Clinton era is widely viewed as a Golden Age, when the US ran the world, enjoyed economic prosperity and was untroubled by any major foreign challenges. You can’t argue with success, so why not bring back that team?
However, it may be argued that most of the disasters that were brought to a climax by George W Bush actually have their roots in the Clinton era, and many of the people Obama is bringing into the White House are actually architects of failure.
For example, Clinton’s former Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, is often seen at Obama’s side and will apparently be given a major role in shaping his financial policies. But while in the White House, Rubin led the charge to deregulate the banking industry and opposed any controls on exotic financial instruments, such as derivatives, that ultimately contributed to the collapse of Wall Street.
After leaving politics, Rubin became an executive of the Citigroup — whose spectacular bankruptcy is in the news this week — and is on the record denying any danger of financial collapse as recently as a year ago.
Another top Clinton economic official, Lawrence Summers, was also a champion of the wild financial deregulation that has since brought the whole system crashing down.
It was announced last week that Summers will be director of Obama’s White House National Economic Council.
The question is, how can people who helped create the crisis, and reportedly profited immensely from it, be trusted to help find a way out of it?
Obama re-appointed Robert Gates as Defence Secretary, and will leave in place much of the same military brass who led the US through its fiasco in Iraq. But how does this square with his pledge to end the war?
As for Afghanistan, Obama has promised significant increases in the American troop presence there. On the subject of Iran, Obama’s rhetoric has been so similar to that of the outgoing Bush administration that it’s possible to wonder whether there will be any attempt to find a peaceful solution at all?
In fact, in one of his final interviews last week, Bush boasted that he fully expects Obama to ‘continue’ the main lines of his foreign policy.
Now we turn to the most obvious Clintonite to find a place in Obama’s entourage; the new Secretary of State, of course. Hillary Clinton, who was quickly confirmed in the job last week, will be a welcome change from the scolding, schoolmarmish and distinctly lightweight Condoleezza Rice.
Clinton has already signalled that she will be more open to diplomatic contacts with America’s adversaries, including Iran and Syria, than her predecessor. The Bill Clinton record in working to solve the Israel/Palestine dispute is definitely much better than Bush’s, and so there are reasons to hope for a more even-handed approach to the crisis in West-Asia.
But the Clinton era was also a time of arbitrary and unilateral American-led wars, such as the 78-day bombing of Serbia over the breakaway territory of Kosovo in 1999. There is no reason to expect a complete re-think of those disastrous methods under Obama, if Ms Clinton is to be his chief diplomat.
Nor is there much chance of improved relations with Russia. During the election campaign, Obama slammed Moscow just as hard as his Republican opponent, and shows little sign of changing his tune up until now.
So, let’s welcome President Obama to the White House, but put aside those hopes for serious global change.
--(Dr Shaumian is Director, Centre for IndianStudies in Moscow)
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