For Europe and America, a Dual Citizen's
Choice: Obama
"The world loses as the
transatlantic link weakens. And what extremes we have reached in this regard
over recent years! … there's no doubt that the rejection of unilateralism that
characterizes Obama's discourse will allow for a strengthening of the
transatlantic bond. Europeans, and above all, the Americans, who never thought
they'd see their hyperpower status challenged so
soon, need that."
If Barack Obama
succeeds in becoming the first Black President - his biggest problem is
likely to be managing the incredible expectations that not only
Americans, but people around the world, have placed in him.
Please pardon my taste
for euphemisms: it hasn't always been easy recently to be American and proud of
being American. A disastrous intervention in Iraq, two Bush terms, unbridled
unilateralism - there are many reasons. With a German/Austrian father and
mother with Greek origins from New York, I have purposely “forgotten” my
American passport during some trips over the past few years.
To this
degradation of the image of the United States is an added phenomenon, the
importance of which we don’t yet realize. America today is no longer the
“dangerous nation” described by Robert Kagan. The global
financial crisis and its most astounding corollary, the questioning of economic
dogma that the country has championed and around which it had succeeded in
imposing a quasi-universal consensus, have succeeded in stripping it of this
title.
Contrary to my
fellow European citizens, the choice of my champion in this race for the White
House is a recent one. Though the historic nature of Obama’s candidacy is
obvious, that of John McCain (who is much more popular in Asia than in Europe)
also deserves to be taken seriously. The parallels with George Bush, who
figures often in this mixture, is distressing for anyone who follows American
politics at all.
The senator from
Arizona is the most open and sophisticated candidate that the Republicans have
offered for indirect universal suffrage since Dwight Eisenhower - even since
Teddy Roosevelt. John McCain fought like the devil to get Guantanamo closed. He
called for mass legalization of the millions of the country’s undocumented
immigrants and in so doing pitted himself against a majority of Republicans;
and he attacked the rules, sometimes scandalous, governing party financing.
For all these
reasons, and despite his choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate, undoubtedly
judicious up to a point but politically terrifying, the Democratic New Yorker
that I am (in short, a Democrat with a pesky habit of electing Republican
mayors), found an undeniable charm in McCain’s discourse throughout much of his
campaign.
But it's my link
to the other side of the Atlantic that will make me vote for Obama. The notion
that the world is better off when the United States and Europe are getting
along is inscribed in my DNA. The corollary to this philosophy is that the
world loses as the transatlantic link weakens. What extremes we have reached in
this regard over recent years! Since September 11, Americans have discovered
with growing incredulity the limits of their purely military power - without
the moral legitimacy conferred upon them by the support of the Europeans, which
is the sine qua non [indispensable element] for the support of the rest
of the planet.
KENYA'S MUSICAL ANTHEM TO BARACK OBAMA
Meanwhile,
Europeans too, have become aware of the limits, which are just as constraining
of soft power (an term coined by Joseph Nye of the Kennedy School at Harvard,
that deals with a country’s ability to indirectly win empathy and backing for
its political and cultural project) in a world that is sometimes more Hobbesian [only the strong survive ]
than they would like to admit.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
The “Obamania”
that has swept Europe is giving rise to immense expectations that are certain
to be disappointed. But there's no doubt that the rejection of unilateralism
that characterizes the Democratic candidate’s discourse will allow for a
strengthening of the transatlantic bond. Europeans, and above all, the
Americans, who never thought they'd see their hyperpower
status challenged so soon, need that.
But there's another
reason behind my vote that transcends the first and all the others. As Stefan
Zweig suggests throughout his marvelous memoires,
the 20th century didn’t really begin until the assassination of the Archduke
Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo [World War I ], just as it
indisputably ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Some, and I am among them,
think the 21st century began on September 11, 2001. That is a very Western, or
even particularly American, point of view. Above all, I voted for Barack Obama
because, if he is elected the 44th president of the United States, the 21st
century will begin for the entire world.
*Felix Marquardt is president of Marquardt &
Marquardt.
