[The Toronto Star,
Canada]
Liberation, France
By Sounding So European, Obama Challenges Europe
"Black, young and intellectual, he is also so
European in his political approach that he presents a formidable challenge to
Europe. ... Unless Europe learns, as quickly as
possible, how to accelerate its unification and speak and act together, it
risks passing again into the shadow of an America to which intelligence has
returned."
*By Bernard Guetta
Translated L. McKenzie Zeiss
January 28, 2009
France
- Liberation - Original Article (French)
We aren't paying enough
attention. The magnitude and speed of the changes introduced by Barack Obama
are such that we are no longer aware of their depth nor their consequences - and
above all, that Europe will from now on have to deal with an American president
to whom even the biggest decisions are no big deal.
Despite three decades of
continuous liberalization of the planet's economies, there has been an American
model and a European model. The former rests on nothing more than the market
and the idea that what is good for the richest is even better for everyone
else. The other, "the socialist market economy," continues to provide
an economic role for Government, notably in protecting the most destitute. The
difference between them has always been evident, but in his inaugural address,
Barack Obama reduced it to just two sentences, the most left-leaning - the most
European in any case - that one could express on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
"The question we ask today," he said, "is not whether our government is too big or
too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a
decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. … [The
market’s] power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched," he
added in the same breath, "but this crisis has reminded us that without a
watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - that a nation cannot prosper
long when it favors only the prosperous."
Steadfastly, although too
timidly, Europe denounced George Bush’s reinvention of the bottomless hole, but
as soon as he became president, Barack Obama rejected "as false, the
choice between our safety and our ideals"; he announced the closure of Guantànamo and ordered the CIA's secret prisons closed as
well; he prohibited torture and provided for compliance with the Geneva
Conventions on prisoners of war. And while Europe has pulled several steps
ahead in the struggle against global warming, which had been one of its great
differences with the United States, this president declared just after taking
his oath of office that America could no longer ignore the effects of its consumption
of the world's resources and promised to
act, "not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new
foundation for growth."
Europe hadn’t relented in calling on Americans to take
up the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy before the drama definitively radicalized
the entire Arab-Muslim world – but Barack Obama didn't content himself with simply describing America
as "a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and
non-believers," instead directly addressing Islam to say that he wanted to
base relations on "mutual interest and mutual respect."
In the first hours of his presidency, he also named a
special envoy for the Middle East known for having vigorously denounced
colonization and terrorism [former Senator George Mitchell]. He has also called
the protagonists of this war, starting with Mahmoud Abbas,
Palestinian authority president and incarnation of the quest for a just and
definitive solution - two states coexisting side by side based on the 1967
borders.
Europe,
finally, pounded out that the Afghan crisis can not be resolved by armed force
alone. Meanwhile, before the Senate, the new Secretary of State, Hillary
Clinton, adopted as her own the opinion of General Petraeus, commander of
American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, in whose eyes the conflict requires "a
regional approach ... which includes Pakistan, India, the Central Asian states
and even China and Russia, along with perhaps, at some point, Iran."
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
Barack Obama has more than merely three
peculiarities. Black, young and intellectual, he is also so European in his
political approach that he presents a formidable challenge to Europe. The
carelessness, then the paralysis, of George Bush, naturally placed Europe, France at its
head, at the forefront of the Western world. It was much more conscious than
the United States of the new configuration of the world; far more attentive to
the new balance of power; far more worried about the new dangers, climatic and
strategic; far more committed to preserving social cohesion and, finally, far
more interested in calming the situation in Georgia or Gaza and in exploring
paths of compromise, wherever necessary.
Despite its divisions and its
institutional imbroglio, for the past eight years Europe has had to assert
itself in ways not seen since the Second World War. Unless Europe learns, as
quickly as possible, how to accelerate its unification and speak and act
together, it risks passing again into the shadow of an America to which
intelligence has returned.
*Bernard Guetta is a member of Libération's
board of trustees.
CLICK HERE FOR FRENCH
VERSION
[Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
January 30, 7:45pm]
