The Independent Uncensored News Views And Analysis

Venezuela’s volatile President Hugo Chavez liked to call former US president George W. Bush the Diablo, Spanish for “the devil”, but at last month’s Summit of the Americas, one of Latin America’s most radical leaders had a book instead of an insult to hand current US President Barack Obama.

Obama received a firm handshake and a paperback version of historian Eduardo Galeano’s 1971 book, “The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent”, complete with an inscription from Chavez: “To Obama, with affection.” And Galeano certainly owes a thank you to Chavez – sales of the book have skyrocketed in the past few weeks, jumping from 54,295th to number two on the site of online bookseller Amazon just days after the summit, according to the BBC.

No policy changes have yet resulted from this brief and highly publicised encounter, though it has attracted plenty of attention, both positive and negative. Also turning heads are Obama’s other recent interactions with governments and regimes hitherto considered “enemies” to the US, including Cuba and Iran.

In Cuba, the Obama administration is taking cautious steps toward ending the standoff between the two countries that began shortly after Fidel Castro’s revolution 50 years ago. Last month, on April 13, 2009, Obama administration Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announced, “the President has directed the Secretaries of State, Treasury and Commerce to carry out the actions necessary to lift all restrictions on the ability of individuals to visit family members in Cuba, and to send them remittances.” While the complete removal of the long-standing US embargo on the country is not yet on the table, many observers see these actions as a positive step forward for US-Cuban relations.

President Obama has also commissioned a re-examination of policy on Iran, another longtime adversary of the US.

The offering of these olive branches, cautious and conditional as they may be, mark a decisive about-face from Bush foreign policy, which seemed allergic to compromise and which divided the world into good and evil – those “with us”, and those “against us”. During his presidential campaign, Obama had promised a “new era of American leadership”, and he is now hopping from continent to continent making good on this promise. The administration asserts that this new leadership involves “tough and direct diplomacy without preconditions with all nations, friend and foe,” starting in some of the trickiest corners of the world.

But will Obama’s approach work? As of now, it is unclear what the specific outcomes of Obama’s actions will be. In Cuba, for example, while leader Raul Castro said is he open for talks with the US, he would likely have to demonstrate considerable progress on improving the Cuba’s record on human rights and democratic governance before Obama administration and US Congress would even consider lifting the 47-year old economic embargo.

In Iran, progress on the diplomatic front looks even more challenging. Following Obama’s overtures to the Iranian regime, though Ahmadinejad suggested there would be a “new offer” regarding the nuclear program, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took a harder stance.

Meanwhile, Obama has taken a pounding from critics at home who feel his diplomatic strategy is too soft for dealing with battle-hardened dictators and autocratic regimes.

But what such critics seem to miss is the power of perception, namely the perception of the US by the rest of the world. Those who hated Bush and his bulldozing diplomatic tendencies see Obama as a breath of fresh air, as a new starting point, as a potential partner rather than an imperialistic bully. The failures of Bush’s War on Terror, and the economic shambles in which he left his country and the world made many lose faith in the legitimacy of the United States as the world’s superpower. It is this legitimacy that Obama is slowly rebuilding, one olive branch at a time.

Despite its financial woes, USA is still the economic superpower of the world, and will be for the foreseeable future, trillion dollar deficits notwithstanding. The US has the largest economy in the world, accounting for around one quarter of the world’s GDP. Its economy is three times the size of Japan’s, the world’s second largest economy (China falls close behind). And despite the tarnished image of the US that Bush left behind, it is already clear that Obama is restoring and polishing America’s political legitimacy. Across the globe, Bush critics, skeptics, and enemies alike (not to mention allies) seem generally willing to give Obama a chance to redeem the stumbling superpower, or at least willing to accept the President’s diplomatic massaging – what some have even termed “geotherapy”.

Nevertheless, there remain problematic regimes like that of Kim Jong-Il in North Korea, for whom an extended olive branch may be taken only to be turned around and used to poke Obama in the eye. Meanwhile, the US is being kept busy trying to extinguish the fires that have popped up around the world –piracy off the coast of Somalia, drug wars in Mexico, not to mention Iraq and Afghanistan.

Comments (6)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment Preview