The Pendulum
Wednesday, November 12, 2008/ Page 11
Opinions
Obama must live up to international expectations
Morgan Little
Columnist
Tear-soaked faces,
celebratory shouts, decorated
crowds running down streets
in the earhest hours of the
morning — scenes reminiscent
of World Cup championships
and World Series celebrations
appeared in nearly every major
city. The announcement of
President-elect Barack Obama’s
victory prompted an almost
religious fervor.
This was not just in America,
where 46 percent of the
populace is still bitterly simmering. At Britain’s Sky
News, the news director had to instruct his staff not
to cheer while they announced the election results.
Kenya declared a national holiday in Obama’s honor.
Germany’s excitement for Obama, evidenced
during the summer by a 200,000-strong crowd at his
speech in Berlin, has inspired a sentiment that has
washed over much of the world. Perhaps America
is OK again. Maybe it's not spiraling into the gutter
after all.
But then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
ignored Obama’s victory during his state address,
refusing to interrupt his proposal of longer
presidential terms and further militarization of
Russia’s western borders.
“Obama must know that the change that he
talks about is not simply a superficial changing of
colors or tactics,” said Ali Larijani, Iran’s parliament
speaker. “What is expected is a change in strategy.”
The massive worldwide support for Obama has
led to impossible expectations. A BBC poll found that
he was favored by a four-to-one margin against Sen.
John McCain across 22 countries.
The celebrity metaphor has been beaten to
death, but it’s essentially true. Obama has become
the lightning rod for the world’s political hopes
and prayers. Like an overly-hyped summer action
flick, no matter what his accomplishments may be,
it’ll be incredibly difficult to deliver on all of the
expectations.
In reality, expectations for Obama’s foreign
policy must be curtailed. Not as an indictment of his
policies or abilities, but as a reflection of the terrible
state that American foreign policy is in.
The reason Medvedev drew his line in the sand
right after Obama won, challenging the United States’
missile defense shield and hinting at Vladamir
Putin’s return, is that he knows Obama can’t do
anything to stop him. Larijani later echoed his
country’s defiance to abandon its nuclear programs.
They both know how fragile and thinly stretched
America’s influence has become, and they’ll
be exploiting that just as much under Obama’s
administration as they have with President George W.
Bush.
Before Obama can truly begin to solve the
problems of terrorism, international trade and
human rights violations, he must jump over the
hurdles that Bush has put in his path. The vast
majority of American troops have to be pulled
out of Iraq. Not only do the Iraqi people and Iraqi
government want them out, but the occupation
ties one hand behind this country's back. The vast
expense only deepens the economic rut we’re in, and
it prevents the military from taking full advantage
of the speed and flexibility on which it likes to pride
itself.
Russia can invade Georgia because it knows
America lacks the military capacity to prevent it
from doing so. Iran and North Korea aren’t afraid of
American air strikes because the planes are occupied
elsewhere. As diplomatic as Obama may be, he has
expressed little hesitancy to use the military as a last
resort in such matters.
Iraq will probably be the first foreign policy
matter Obama tackles, but there’s a long line of
issues behind it.
Will his efforts to broaden international
involvement in Afghanistan be met with cheers
or jeers? Can he spearhead the effort to create a
successor to the Kyoto Treaty? Will his economic
protectionism impede relations with export-reliant
Asian countries?
Obama now has four years to show in whose
footsteps he’ll follow: President Bill Clinton’s or
President Jimmy Carter’s.
Obama must avoid a second cold war
Russia already challenging new president-elect
Derek Kiszely
Columnist
Ever since the primaries
Barack Obama has tried to
portray himself as the next
John F. Kennedy. Both men
were relatively young, seeking
to break a major cultural
barrier in reaching the White
House, and both possessed
unsurpassed eloquence.
But the similarities don’t
stop there.
Both JFK and Obama
struggled with a perceived
lack of experience. Obama’s
own vice president-elect, Joe
Biden, guaranteed that Obama’s lack of foreign-
policy experience would provoke America's enemies
to create an international crisis within the first six
months of his presidency, to “test the mettle” of
Obama, “just like they did John F. Kennedy.”
The historical comparison to Kennedy is
appropriate. As Biden noted, Obama is “brilliant,”
like Kennedy, yet also completely untested on
the global stage. Kennedy met face-to-face with
America's enemies,'and Obama has pledged to do
the same.
The question then is: Did Kennedy’s approach
work?
Kennedy’s meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, the
premier of the Soviet Union, turned out to be, in his
own words, an “unmitigated disaster.”
Khrushchev and his aides left the “no
preconditions” negotiation with an impression that
Kennedy was “too intelligent and too weak” and
seemed “very inexperienced, even immature.”
The result? An increasingly assertive Soviet
foreign policy that led to the construction of the
Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis. In other
words, well-meaning talks, interpreted as weakness
by our enemies, resulted in crisis.
Obama is exactly like Kennedy in this regard,
and some aspiring latter-day Nikita Khrushchev
will no doubt test our new commander in chief by
threatening our interests around the globe.
Well, it didn’t take six months, as Joe Biden
predicted. It didn’t even take six days.
In a provocative speech from the Kremlin,
Russian President Medvedev threatened to mobilize
Russian missiles along the Polish border to
“neutralize” the U.S. missile shield in Poland, if it
goes ahead according to plan.
The timing of Medvedev’s speech was no
coincidence. He could have made the speech on any
day in November. Instead he chose Nov. 5 — the day
after the U.S. presidential election — speaking just
hours after Obama's historic victory.
Medvedev is clearly trying to improve Russia’s
bargaining position in potential talks with the
Obama administration on missile defense. His
wording suggests Russia would reverse the decision
if the United States scraps its missile defense plans.
But why should America give in to Russia's
demands?
The U.S. missile defense shield will protect much
of Europe against long-range missile attacks from
“rogue” nations, such as Iran.
But Moscow, for whatever reasons, sees it as a
direct threat.
The Kremlin says the system will upset the
regional security balance and could be used against
itself.
Interestingly enough, Polish officials see Russia
as a bigger threat to their security than Iran, and the
Polish government believes only the United States
can guarantee its security.
Vladimir Putin, the prime minister of Russia,
has tried strong-arming former Soviet republics
into falling back into Moscow's satellite system.
In August, while most Americans were too busy
watching the Olympics to notice, Russia invaded
Georgia, a democratic ally of the United States.
Americans should have realized by now the
nature of Vladimir Putin and his efforts to create a
new Russian Empire.
And so, even though the missile shield is
officially intended to only defend against an Iranian
attack, it should go ahead as planned, in spite of
Russia's resistence — or perhaps because of Russia’s
resistence — just in case.
Unfortunately, President-elect Barack Obama
has made “no commitment” to the missile defense
program in Eastern Europe.
Obama said earlier this year that the system
would require much more testing to ensure it would
work properly. But additional tests could delay the
program for years, and by then it could be too late.
During the primaries, Obama said that he would
“cut investments in unproven missile defense
systems,” even though in recent tests in the Pacific
and elsewhere the system has shown itself to be a
formidable potential shield against enemy attack.
Obama has also pledged to “slow our
development of future combat systems” and seek
“deep cuts" in our own arsenal of nuclear weapons,
unilaterally disabling our nuclear deterrent as
Russia is engaging in massive military buildups.
Former U.N. .Ambassador John Bolton said
that "leaders around the world see Obama as
soft, untested and weak" and they will “react
accordingly.”
Biden knows that our enemies see Barack Obama
as a more accommodating, and weaker, foe.
Russia carefully watched as Obama disparaged
missile-defense research and deployment during the
primaries.
They want to see whether they can intimidate
Obama into retreat, even after eastern European
nations like Poland have already signed onto a
partnership with the United States for these missile-
defense stations.
In response to seeing a supposed weakling in the
White House, will Russia do something drastic in
Eastern Europe, like invade Ukraine or bomb Poland?
Russia wants its empire back. And it isn’t going
to wait.
Taylor Doe
Columnist
Equal rights: Step
forward or step back?
Incredible new feats
were accomplished in
the continuing fight for
equality with this year’s
election of the first black
president. But we were also
reminded once again that
we still have a way to go in
the struggle for equality.
In Florida, Arizona and
California, initiatives to
ban gay marriage were on
the ballot and were passed
by those states’ respective voters.
The most controversial of these initiatives
was California’s Proposition 8, which sought
to define marriage as a union between one
man and one woman. Supporters argue
that allowing for gay marriage undermines
the value of marriage. Opponents of this
proposal challenge that religious groups
should not be allowed to impose their
definitions of morality on the state.
In simple terms, Proposition 8 seeks to
strip homosexuals of the right to marriage
that has already been ruled constitutionally
protected by the highest court in California.
Proposition 8 passed with only 52.4
percent of the vote. This shows a clear
trend towards acceptance of gay marriage
when compared to the 61 percent who
voted for Proposition 22 in 2000. Laws of
this magnitude should not be put into law
without a supermajority, such as the Florida
gay marriage ban, which was required to
pass with a supermajority of at least 60
percent.
The special interest groups who fought
for Proposition 8’s passage did so with a
campaign of lies and smears, relying on
tactics of fear to mislead California voters.
The "Yes on 8" group ran television ads that
showed a young girl coming home from
school, telling her mother she had learned
she could marry a princess that day. Nowhere
in Proposition 8 is education mentioned, and
furthermore, California law prohibits children
from being taught about health or family
issues at school against their parents' will.
Women were denied the right to vote
for years. There was a time in this country
when the law would have forbidden Barack
Obama’s white mother to marry his
black father. We’ve come to recognize the
irrational prejudice that led to the creation
of such discriminatory laws and made
efforts to correct these mistakes.
The fight must continue as it has for so
many different people in the history of the
United States, with faith that, in the end,
equality will be the prevailing law of the
land.