Burden of hope

WITH Barack Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday, arguably the most ignominious chapter in the US presidency has, thankfully, come to an end. After eight years of George W Bush at the White House — a period that has been symbolised by brazen violations of the US constitution and a mockery of the rule of law at home and internationally, not to mention that it was one of the most reticent, inflexible and doctrinaire administrations in many years — change has indeed come to Washington. But the new president inherits the Oval Office at the most challenging of times. When Barack Obama started his campaign for the highest office in the early days of 2007, America was already in the midst of two difficult wars. By the time he was elected president in November 2008, the US economy had completely tanked as well, bringing with it record unemployment. Between his election and his inauguration, Israel unleashed the most brutal massacre on the people of Gaza, not only cancelling but reversing any progress that had been made in the past decade and a half in finding a final and acceptable solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It goes without saying that this new president will not be able to enjoy a honeymoon period; he has not been afforded one. The Obama administration will have to start handling, from day one, multiple crises at the same time. It will be a daunting challenge, but it also offers the new president an amazing opportunity to lead his country and the world in a radically different direction.
Even with all that is going on around the world, Obama’s first priority will have to be to revive the US economy. The people voted for him in the midst of great economic uncertainty because they felt that he was the best person to lead America out of its current economic and financial crisis. In the short-term, the Obama administration will have to figure out the best way to spend the remaining half of the $700 billion bailout package which was approved by congress at the end of last year. In addition, the administration will have to figure out an effective stimulus package, which may be worth close to a trillion dollars and include a significant middle-class tax break, to jumpstart the economy. The new president has put together an impressive economic team to help him through this tricky period, as he first tries to prevent the bottom from falling through altogether and then tries to build the economy back up.
President Obama, in the medium-term, will have to find ways to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. On the campaign trail, Obama had talked up his plan to spend $150 billion over the next ten years on alternative energy to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil, and had said that his plan would create millions of new, ‘green’ jobs. Whether he will still be able to find the money to do that, given the reality following the economic collapse, is yet unclear. However, since the energy issue was a top priority for Obama during the campaign, chances are that his administration will put particular emphasis on finding the money to invest in this sector. The Obama administration is also likely to invest heavily on infrastructure, rebuilding America’s ageing roads and bridges, as a way to put large numbers of people back to work. Ultimately, however, the Obama administration will have to find ways to improve the competitiveness of the American workforce to slow down the surge of American jobs being sent overseas. There is little hope of reversing that trend in the short to medium-term, but this may be possible, to an extent, in the long-term.
On the home front, Obama’s other challenge will be to deliver on universal health insurance in America. Bill Clinton had won the presidency in 1992 on the back of his promise to provide universal health insurance, only for his attempt to fail so spectacularly that it almost doomed his presidency. The Obama administration will have to heed the lessons of that failed attempt, and equally importantly, will have to build a bipartisan coalition in congress to pass new legislation to ensure healthcare for all Americans. Once again, whether he will have the money to do this in the near-term is uncertain, but the Obama presidency provides a real chance for America to finally have universal health insurance.
If the new president’s domestic problems are challenging, his problems overseas are worse. Much of the gains made by American troops in Afghanistan in the early days of the ill-advised ‘war on terror’, when they managed to remove the Taliban government and put in place the US-friendly regime of Hamid Karzai, have been lost in the intervening years, thanks to the shift in focus to Iraq. Taliban are now in the ascendancy in Afghanistan and control vast areas of land which had been freed from their control. At the same time, there has been little progress towards a political solution in Iraq, even though the US-led ‘surge’ did lead to a decrease in violence in the country. Obama, who was against the US-led invasion of Iraq from the very beginning, had promised during the campaign to take all US forces out of the country within 16 months of his entering the White House. But given the fragile security situation in the country, whether he will be able to stick to the time-frame and avoid letting the country descend into complete chaos is anyone’s guess.
Regardless of what his military top-brass advises him to do, Obama ought to go with his first instinct and draw down troop levels in Iraq quickly and responsibly. After all, for as long as Iraq remains under US occupation, the chances of a political solution are extremely slim. In Afghanistan, Obama’s plan includes sending additional brigades to push back Taliban once again from areas where they have regained control. That may work as a short-term strategy, just as the ‘surge’ appeared to work in Iraq, but will not provide a long-term solution. For that, the United States under Obama needs to provide significant development assistance to Afghanistan over a period of years to rebuild the country and its economy so that the people of the country themselves build a resistance towards obscurantist forces like Taliban which only want to take the country back to the Middle Ages.
Whether in Iraq or in Afghanistan, one hopes that the Obama administration will realise that there is no military solution to the problems. That is what the Bush administration never tried to understand, and that is what got the United States into the messes that it is in. Obama as commander-in-chief will have to take a new approach to the problems of Afghanistan and Iraq, and by extension, will have to take a new approach to fighting international terrorism altogether. It will have to realise that the best way to do so is to do it together with the international community, in keeping with national and international laws, and by showing the strictest adherence to the rule of law and commitment to human rights. Shutting down the detention camp in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba immediately and stopping altogether all forms of torture of ‘enemy combatants’ will not only be a good start but would demonstrate to the international community that Obama’s America will be vastly different from Bush’s America.
President Obama will also be expected to delve right into the Arab-Israeli conflict to try to do what so many of his predecessors have failed to do: find a permanent solution acceptable to both sides the Palestinians and the Israelis. President Bush was the first American president to openly advocate a two-state solution, which appeared to be a major step forward at first, but did nothing during his eight years in office to make it a reality. Instead, the Bush administration provided near blanket support to Israel all throughout, which gave Israel the confidence to carry out the brutal and systematic massacre of Gaza that it had done in the last few weeks. If Obama is to have any hope of succeeding where so many US presidents have failed, he will have to begin by proving that he is an honest broker, unlike his immediate predecessor. If he can do that, there is a possibility that he will be able to restore peace in the short-term and move towards a more permanent settlement in the long-term. There are rumours that the Obama administration will appoint former senator George Mitchell as Middle East envoy to negotiate between the Palestinians and the Israelis. If true, this will immediately signify that the Obama administration is willing to engage with the parties at a far deeper level than the Bush administration was ever ready to do. This will be a step in the right direction, and the choice of Mitchell — who had significant success in brokering a peace deal in Northern Ireland and also worked on the Arab-Israeli conflict under President Clinton — suggests that Obama is serious about finding a lasting solution, rather than providing mere lip service to a two-state strategy.
So great are the new president’s immediate challenges that it is difficult to see how he will give attention to so many of the other major problems that he will face in the Oval Office. This president will not only be expected to revive a failing economy and end wars, he will also be expected to slow down climate change, keep America safe from terrorism, provide health insurance, improve education standards, and deal with a myriad problems from energy to immigration to crime. He will have to challenge America to reach new heights, while at the same time managing expectations from his administration. Barack Obama is now in a position of great privilege, but he also has the most unenviable of jobs. One this is for sure though, given the immediate challenges that he faces, how he handles his first few months in the Oval Office is almost certain to make or break his presidency.