Obama Promises the World a Renewed America
A crowd gathered in Kisumu, Kenya, on Tuesday for musical performances in honor of the inauguration of President Obama.
Speaking directly to the millions who crowded around televisions across the world as much as to Americans, Mr. Obama said the United States was “ready to lead once more” despite the ravages of protracted wars and a depleted economy.
But he coupled that with a vision of an America that exercises its power with a sense of justice, humility and restraint, and an America that, while believing its values still light the world, pledges to promote them through cooperation and understanding as much as military might.
With a steel never so pronounced in his campaign, he challenged America’s adversaries — and, recently, some of its oldest friends — who have spied an America diminished by economic distress and war, and heralded a new world order in which America would give up much of its power.
That hesitant, regretful America was nowhere to be seen in Mr. Obama’s address, which called on Americans to rally against “a nagging fear” that decline is inevitable. While offering a “new way forward to the Muslim world,” and warning dictators that they are “on the wrong side of history,” he sounded not unlike George W. Bush in his challenges to those who spread terror and destruction. “You cannot outlast us; we will defeat you,” he said.
Some abroad bridled and some were reassured by the recurring foreign policy motif of Mr. Obama’s address — his resolve that the United States, as it rebuilds at home, will not give up its long-established role as the leader of the free world. And while many hailed the change of tone, others were uncertain that real change was coming, given the realities of American politics and the world that has not altered with the transition in Washington.
In Cairo and Lebanon, while some hailed Mr. Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world, most remained skeptical about his ability to change the basic direction of American policy and what many Arabs regard as a strong bias toward Israel. For many, the war in Gaza, which caused tremendous anger throughout the Arab world, overshadowed the inauguration; Mr. Obama did not refer to it in his address.
“Why should I be optimistic about what he said?” said Hassan Abdel Rahman, 25, a salesman in a flower shop in Cairo. “If there was reason to be optimistic, then we would have felt it during the war on Gaza, and if he was just, then he would have said something then — but he said nothing!”
Some old adversaries suggested that they would keep an open mind. “We salute the people of the United States,” said Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, emphasizing that he hoped that Mr. Obama’s presidency would “mark a change in the relations of the United States with the countries of the third world.”
In some capitals, Mr. Obama’s renewed claim to foreign leadership and the prospect of an American president with the kind of aura not seen since John F. Kennedy have provoked stirrings of jealousy, even animosity. In Russia and France, notably, there have been high-level calls that Mr. Obama accept that America’s days as the dominant superpower are over, especially in the face of the retreat from the free-market capitalism the United States has championed.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei V. Lavrov, published an essay last month saying, in language that was almost pitying, that Russia had “returned to the world stage” and would not accept the United States any longer as an imperial power. “America has to recognize the reality of a ‘post-American’ world,” he said.
More surprising, perhaps, has been the changed tone of France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who took office in 2007 with a reputation as France’s most pro-American president in memory but has tempered that as he has sought to establish himself as Europe’s most powerful voice. “I have always been in favor of a very close alliance with the United States of America,” Mr. Sarkozy said two weeks ago. “But let us make things clear: in the 21st century, there is no longer one nation that can tell what must be done or what one must think.”
The tone of Mr. Obama’s address, especially his emphasis on greater cooperation, and his vow to combat poverty, climate change and nuclear threats, scarcely presaged a new era of American bullying. But even with a radical new tone, he may find the partners he seeks may be reluctant to share burdens that have until now been America’s main responsibility to bear.
“We have entered a period of historical transition in which the United States will become first among equals, rather than simply top dog, hyperpower and unquestioned hegemon,” said Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European studies at Oxford. “But for Europeans, it may be a case of being careful what you wish for, because the Obama administration is likely to say, ‘Good, then put your money where your mouth is, and in the first place, put more troops in Afghanistan.’ ”
In the days leading up to the inauguration, many politicians, academics, opinion leaders and others spoke to correspondents of The New York Times around the world about Mr. Obama in terms verging on euphoria. But they also sounded warnings that the expectations were too high and that the world might discover that Mr. Obama is hemmed in by some of the unyielding realities that had frustrated his predecessor, compounded now by the worldwide recession and what it has done to diminish America’s reputation as a model of free-market prosperity.
“Obviously, there is a risk that we will expect too much of this president — that we will learn that however hugely talented he is, he isn’t a global miracle worker,” said Christopher Patten, a former European commissioner for foreign affairs who is now chancellor of Oxford.
Moves that Mr. Obama has signaled, like a plan to close the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and to align the United States with international law on the use of torture, are certain to be greeted with relief and celebration around the world. But on Iran’s suspected bid to acquire nuclear weapons, on his pledge to step up the allied military commitment in Afghanistan, on climate change and a host of other issues, he may find personal popularity one thing, achieving his goals through partnership and negotiation quite another.
As he prepared to leave office, Mr. Bush admonished Mr. Obama to remember that a president’s first priority is to keep America safe, a challenge the new president addressed.
But his pledges to “leave Iraq to its people” and push for a “hard-earned peace” in Afghanistan may yet jar with reality, military analysts have warned. His plan to increase American and allied troop strength in Afghanistan has met with a chilling riposte from Osama bin Laden, who, by eluding capture since 9/11, has embodied the limits of Mr. Bush’s “great war on terror.”
Last week, Mr. bin Laden, Al Qaeda’s leader, challenged Mr. Obama in an audio message. Referring to Afghanistan and Iraq, he said Mr. Obama was “like one who swallows a double-edged dagger — whichever way he moves it, it will wound him.” Iraq could be just as tricky, confronting Mr. Obama, should trends toward less violence there reverse, with a challenge to his campaign commitment to a 16-month troop withdrawal timetable.
Jorge Montaño, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States, said that Mr. Bush had been too focused on Afghanistan and Iraq to notice that Latin America was drifting away from the United States, and that Mr. Obama might prove little different. “Right now, the people of the United States are worried about their credit cards, their mortgages,” he said. “These will be Obama’s priorities, and this region will have to wait.”
But as Mr. Obama took office, practical calculations were largely set aside. Commentaries praising him found much more to admire than the fact that he is the first African-American president, significant though that is in a world whose population of 6.5 billion is overwhelmingly nonwhite.
Even before his solemn and measured address, Mr. Obama had drawn widespread plaudits for his character and judgment. “Obama acts like a kind of antacid to the American stomach,” Andrew Sullivan, a columnist for The Sunday Times of London, wrote last weekend, one of a raft of adulatory articles in Europe’s major newspapers. Rather than seeing the world in black and white terms, he wrote, Mr. Obama “sees it as a series of interconnected conflicts that can be managed by pragmatic solutions, combined with a little rhetorical fairy dust and willingness to offer respect where Bush provided merely contempt.”
“This is not a panacea,” he added. “But it is not nothing either.”
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