Russia, Medvedev, Obama

In his Berlin speech, Barack Obama talked about cooperation with Russia. He fingerpointed the Cold War mentality and spirit that still pervades US-Russia relationships.

A few weeks before Obama's visit, the new Russian President exposed in Berlin his vision of a new, post-NATO security framework in Europe where Russia would be a full player. I mention about the same idea in my book "After Bush" to be published in France in September, because I strongly believe that NATO enlargement was a major mistake. Instead, the reinvention of an altogether new security and political architecture would have facilitated a new start with post-Soviet Russia. The possible argument that the Soviet, KGB legacy of Russia would somehow justify a silent Cold War after the Cold War, humiliating a weakened Russia, was non sense. Obviously, Russian leaders raised in the Soviet Union would not abandon their Soviet culture overnight but act in ways that would carry the legacy of the Soviet past eventhough the USSR was dead. This was all a strategic mistake, as the mistrust deeply engrained in relations between Russia and the West shows - tensions about Georgia, Ukraine, and missile defense illustrate that point too well.

So Russian leaders, including the youthful new President (same age as Obama), do aspire to reassert the role of Russia on the international stage, and as the US daily press says today, to adjust the post-Cold War security and political arrangements, now that oil windfalls give them so more muscle.

The responsibility is largely shared, although the prime guilt always belong to the winner - the West. The Monitor puts is very well : "today's growing rift between Moscow and the West is not based on irreconcilable ideological or geopolitical hostility. The main problem, they say, stems from the West's failure to work with Russia to re-imagine global security architecture following the USSR's collapse".

Shall one hope therefore that a President Obama and his Russian counterpart will succeed in creating a new dynamic in Russian-US relations ? Obama certainly is in a better position that John McCain on that major foreign policy issue.

Obama's European tour

Barack Obama delivered a much-awaited speech before the Column of Victory in berlin yesterday - nia wise decision, the German Chancellor dismissed the idea to have the speech given under the Brandeburg Gate, which is too high a symbol where only Presidents have addressed the Berlin people, JFK and Ronald Reagan.

The European press did not help Obama when it reminded the opinion of the youthful JFK's "Ich bin ein Berliner" of all memories, because that raised expectations tremendously in a country whose opinion is massively in favour of Obama.

Obama's visit in Germany was disappointing and that was to be expected. The situation is no way as dramatic as it was in 1961 when the berlin Wall was being built by the Soviets and the city divided, and so Obama could have hardly matched the emotion despite its widely recognized eloquence - which he proved time and again. As it turned out, his speech did not read such golden line as JFK's or Reagan's "Mr Gorbachev tear down this wall" that still resonates in German ears.

Obama's speech was eloquent nonetheless, evoking freedom and the great history of Euro-American relations over the past sixty years. There was a Reaganian accent to it, of optimism, confidence, and faith in freedom. It was, in short, an plainly American speech. The second part was somewhat a full bag of good intentions with a tag on it reading Obama the juvenile, however.

And indeed the specifics were short. Vagueness is acceptable, but then a catch-phrase must make for it. Or else a bold proposal. None of that was in for the Euros.

As a matter of fact, Obama is campaigning for US President and only Americans will decide who succeeds "W" in January. So Obama could not alienate some US voters by looking too Europhile or too multilateralist when it is America that is doing the job in Iraq and in Afhanistan for the most part. In the end, some Americans may think that Obama is too different after all and that he should seek making friends at home rather than hanging with Old Europeans.

Similarly, calls for more European efforts in the war on terror would not have gone down very well, and so the future Democratic candidate remained somewhat elliptic on that. Giving rise to fierce reactions from Euros unhappy about calls for more defnse spending and more troops would have clouded Obama's reputation-in the making on foreign affairs.

All in all, the mission is accomplished. Obama's profile was raised by his tour in the Middle East and Europe, but the German speech will not be remembered for long.

Reform, Prosperity, Peace

I was close! In an essay on America to be published in September, I write that what best summarizes the challenges of this year's election is Security, Prosperity, Liberty. McCain's new slogan is Reform, Prosperity, Peace.

It comes down to the same thing, you will agree, and I am kind of proud of myself for having captured the essence of the race, now the Republicans' rallying mojo... More seriously, McCain's slogan reveals how critical this election will be for the US. America has to reinvent the American project at home (a new social contact) and abroad (renew its global leadership), as I have already mentioned and as I explain in my essay.

My idea of John McCain is vindicated by this kind of things. On top of my list of US Presidents is Theodore Roosevelt. TR did reconcile national cohesion through State regulation of capitalism and the projection of ascending American power, which ought to combine restraint with self-assertion. TR invented progressivism in the US, which did put him at odds with the GOP - he eventually founded his own Bull Moose party. His social and economic ideas were to be developed on a full scale by FDR, a Democrat...

Théodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
26th US President from 1901 to 1909


Franklin Delanoe Roosevelt (1882-1944)
32nd US President from 1933 to 1945

McCain often refers to TR. Like him, he is a maverick, and many Conservative militants dislike him for his non conventional thinking on social and value issues. McCain has co-sponsored bills with Democrats, including on such sensitive issues as immigration.

In short, his very Rooseveltian slogan sums up America's need for a leader standing above party lines, able to listen to others. Someone that would not be dead certain as W.

As Jonathan Martin points out on CBS News, McCain invented his slogan on the spot, as he was responding to questions, and later made it official. Bush would not have had such wit Martin says in substance.

"It's difficult to imagine President Bush making up something on the fly and then having his campaign make it the centerpiece of the campaign. They likely would have hatched a carefully thought-out and tested message and then had the candidate deliver it. But McCain truly does speak for his own campaign, and when he comes up with a quick and nifty line they just go with it."

Of course, and that's why this election is extra-ordinary, Obama is also an answer to America's aspiration to a man above traditional politics. However, although "Change We can Believe In" is quite respectable, it is not as strong as McCain's French-sounding Reform, Prosperity, Peace...

Obama: Reinventing the American Dream

Barack Obama adressed a crowd in Flint, MI, yesterday, in an important speech about the heart of America’s problem : the economy, Social security, education, research and competitiveness. The Senator from Illinois was home in the Great Lake State of Michigan, at the heart of the Rust belt. His speech spanned all aspects of the social and economic challenge facing America, and did away with the hypocrisy heard on the campaign trail. « I believe in free trade » he said. Obama had criticized the North American free trade agreement, Nafta, jockeying for the blue-collar vote with a populist-sounding Hillary who forgot that Bill Clinton had supported and signed Nafta, converting the Democratic Party to free-trade…

Freed from the constraints of the primaries, Obama spoke his mind, telling the truth while being cautious not to overlook the disquiet amo the middle class : the goal is winning in November.
Obama talked about renewing U.S. competitiveness and put that challenge into a historical perspective, refering to the Founding Fathers who created the American market, Lincoln and the transcontinental railroad, FDR and the Tennessee Valley Authority, JFK and the New Frontier and the first man on the moon. Here was the speech about « reinvention » I have mentioned. America faces a challenge that seldom repeats in its history: reinventing a new social contract, a national cohesion around a new American project of adapting to globalization.
Obama acknowledges that technological innovation is the main drinving force behind changes affecting manufacturing America. The sometimes populist slogans of the campaign have been toned down. « Technology has changed the way we live and the way the world does business ».
He keeps the small government direction set by Bill Clinton : « … success will depend not on our government but on the dynamism, determination and innovation of the American people ».
Obama talks about education, tax breaks for the young and not corporations, investments in research and infrastructures. He refers to Teddy Roosevelt, the Republican President who invented progressivism and a John McCain heroe!

In short, the Michigan speech lays on the table America’s social and economic equation. Obama showed his progressist inspiration. I believe he can convince Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike. His speech is an illustration of Americans’ need to recover confidence in their country around a new, common future. I am certain that in 2008 the best candidate will be he who will be best at putting forward a just vision conciliating the legacy of both Theodore et Franklin Roosevelt.
Europeans essentially talk about foreign policy and Iraq. Surely these issues will be big in this election. They will likely play in favour of John McCain, who I think stands a pretty good chance of becoming the newt U.S. President. However Obama’s speech provides the key to America’s domestic challenge, the growing angst of the middle class.

Whether he wins or loses in November, Obama’s success will have rested on just that : having seized and embodied the need to renew the American Dream.

John, Barack and the Beach Boys

Obama is popular abroad. That comes as no surprise.

The Pew research center says that Obama's positive image abroad is cheering up mood about America, which Obama's campaign site has not missed, as it shows an ABC brief about it.

Last Tuesday the US Air Force may have accidentally killed a dozen Pakistani soldiers during a raid on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border against the Taliban, stirring anger among the Pakistani opinion against America and its war on terror. This kind of operation howevere is precisely the kind of intervention Obama has called for, rightly pointing out that Pakistan is a more serious theater than Iran and that action should be taken even without the concent of Islamabad. Afghanistan-Pakistan poses a much greater threat to world peace indeed, I believe, than Tehran.

Would Obama the unilateralist president still be as popular among Muslim Arabs? I think so, for public opinion in the Arab world is well aware that fundamentalism will bring no solution to their economic and social disarray, especially if at the same time they hear the US President paying more than lip service when addressing Palestine. I believe Obama's popularity is a major asset for America in that part of the world and that his election can bring about significant change in US-Arab relations.

As for unilateralism, which Europeans criticize so much, well it will still be with us, even with Obama. The difference is that put to good use, it may not hurt efforts to restore American leadership and make Washington's use of force acceptable.

All in all, the end matters more that the means. In 2001, US Allies supported the Bush administration's intervention in Afghanistan. For the first ever, NATO had actually declared article 5, by which the Alliance is autorized to defend a member under attack.

So perhaps John McCain was wrong on just one thing when he imitated the Beach Boys, singing "bomb bomb bomb Iran", it's the end of the song. Replace Iran with Taliban and the Arizona Senator would have got it right!

Bush in Paris

President Bush addressed the OECD today in Paris, a highlight of his stopover in France as part of a Europe tour.

The purpose of the trip is as vague as the speech itself. If it was about a farewell, the American predicament and Bush's appalling popularity abroad, as much as at home, did not justify it, for no country in the world will regret the war president. Sicne my last visit, Laura (his spouse) has written a book, my dad jumped from a plane (for his 80th birthday) and I have grown more grey hair, the President joked. And few thousands American boys have died in a stupid war, which represents a major strategic blunder ni over 40 years.

A short and uninspiring address, filled with all the imaginable commonplaces about the Marshall Plan and the Transatlantic community. Iran remains the bête noire and freedom the luminous path of merica's role in the world. Bush remniidned the audience that the election of Pope John-Paul II and Reagan and Thatcher's elections did contribute to the demise of communist evil. Nice words. However what striked me was the huge gap with the incumbent President in terms of restraint, analysis, knowledge of others and the ability to maintain relations and remain well informed about the adversary - all rules ignored by this Administration.

How will this legacy bear on John McCain? McCain plays the "tough guy" in order to weaken Obama's pretensions as commander in chief. But Afghanistan-Pakistan already emerge as a key issue often referred to by the Obama team.

In Paris, Bush had no word for Pakistan. He only mentioned the vague threat of missiles from the Middle East as a way to make the case for missile defense. A self-proclaimed faith in "freedom" hardly compensated for such lack of analysis. Nothing more on development, a fertile ground for terrorism. That may have dispel the notion that the President paid so little attention to the social predicament of the Middle East and have come to realize, albeit too late, that ideology is often a figue-leaf for deeper, structural issues. We were at the OECD after all...

The next President will have to deal with social issues brought forward by globalization

The Trade Reform, Accountability, Development, and Employment (Trade) Act introduced to Congress with the union support shows that globalization will remain a key issue in the debate and in American politics in 2009.

Training, competitiveness, fair trade and the environment, all questions related to America’s adapation to a changing economy will remain paramount for some time to come. What will be the trade policy of the next US Administration ?

Whether Democratic or Republican, it will have to take seriously the Democratic Congress’s willingness to bend US trade policy towardlabor and environmental clauses. This is a powerful trend that will be exacerbated by the global increase in food products. In short, the new bill is revealing about the salience of social issues the next President will have to deal with.

McCain and Obama knwo about it, as both address green issues in contrast to President Bush.

Why Hillary will not be on the Democratic ticket

Hillary did not declare Obama the party candidate in her speech about the primaries outcome. A strange way to move forward that casts doubts on her genuine support in the coming months and an ambiguity that suggests the price she might get for her rallying the Obama ship is the VP spot.
But even from France, it seems dubious that Hillary will be on the ticket, for several reasons:

• as I wrote on June 3 (Hillary 2012), she does not need it to exist politically and her interest may well mie in Obama’s defeat in November, so she can assert herself as the inevitable candidate for 2012.


• the battle for the nomination makes it awkward to team up in the immediate aftermath of a long, neck and neck struggle.


• Bill’presence will make the situation uncomfortable for Obama


• the Clinton fatigue and epidermic resentment vis-à-vis the Clintons will not play in Dems favor. A young Black man and a Clinton: too much


• Obama needs a more conventional, experienced running mate with strong credentials in foreign policy such as Sen. Joe Biden or Jim Webb, Reagan’s former Navy Secretary and now a Southern Democratic Senator.

Obama, a historic moment

Barack Obama’s victory in the primaries is a historic moment. Not only because he is the first Black who will head a presidential ticket, but also because his candidacy is powerful.

Undoubtedly, under “normal” circumstances Obama would not have made it. It is the polarising presidency of George W. Bush and the Iraq quagmire that made Obama eligible.

The American press commented at length on the frontlines that the Clinton-Obama battle for the Democratic nomination had highlighted : youth, high incomes earners, Blacks, independents for Obama; women, blue collars and more Conservative Democrats favoring Hillary Clinton.
However what appears most evident about support for Obama voters’ willingness to turn the page while the Clintons bring no fresh air in a country tired of the partisan Washington politics.

That is why Obama could be elected. Between now and November, an irrational momentum could give way to an unstoppable train in favor of Obama. He may all of sudden appear as the right man at the right time and place. By the mere election of the Illinois Senator, America would send a powerful signal to the rest of the world.

I believe America will pick John McCain because the conservative cycle American entered into back thirty years ago is still in play. Besides, reluctance to vote for an inexperienced, Black man will hang over the ballot box.
The magic of presidential politics COULD make Obama the next US President, but reality SHOULD have McCain sitting in the Oval Office in January 2009.

The Clash of Prosperity: the US vs. China

The protectionist mood that weighs on the American campaign has Democratic candidates hitting at free trade and NAFTA, the North America Free Trade Agreement negotiated by GHW Bush and inked by Bill Clinton.

The rust belt is suffering from global competition and more still from technological innovation and the productivity gains that go with it, as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke points out. Growing social discontent leads candidates to take stances running against their own convictions, claiming that America should better protect itself and renegotiate trade deals.

John McCain does not bother with such declaring himself in favor of free trade, the bedrock of US foreign economic policy since WWII.

Let’s forget the campaign trail for a moment and look into US-China economic relations.

The economy will be a key issue in the debate, bringing forward the concerns of the middle-class about foreign competition, outsourcing and the resulting job losses.
However one question is worth asking: how serious is the Chinese economic threat on the long run? Is America’s capacity to respond to a changing environment? Is the American economy unable to adapt, US industry unable to modernize, US labor unable to maintain their know-how edge, all at the price of job reconversion?

You should read the article below, published in 2007 in the Wall Street Journal. It sheds an interesting light to what I call the clash of prosperity between the US and China. See below.

The shortcomings of China’s economic transition shall not be underestimated, from training to the imbalances of the financial system. Not that the economic emergence of China and its impact on the industrial economies are to be called into question, but the clash of prosperity it generates may not be so devastating. It is sometimes said to signal the end of the rich countries. Interdependence is the name of the game.

The goal of the SED, Strategic Economic Dialogue led by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, is to allay tensions between China and the US, particularly on currency and IPR issues. SED results are mitigated as they confront Chinese priorities of domestic order and social peace. A disruption in China’s transformation into a market economy would be disastrous, and so the key question is to manage the interdependence has resulted.

I do not believe in the fading away of America’s economic strength.
In the US as in other industrial economies, social safety nets represent a major issue for the future. However China’s economic imbalances, adaptation to the emergence of Asia’s economies, and the size of the US market should allay fears of an unstoppable disindustrialization in the US.

How will the campaign address these issues? What will McCain and Obama say about the clash of prosperity between China and America?

Reinventing America : how about a McCain-Obama ticket?

The Moderate Voice, a US blog created by Joe Gandelman, posted a translated version of an article I wrote in May for the French economic daily Les Echos.

It points to the converging path towards progressivism that both McCain and Obama are following.

The article can be read here.

Hillary 2012?

The Democratic Party has decided: delegates from Michigan will be given half a vote and be split between the two candidates; eventhough Obama withdrew his name from the ballots as the Michigan party had violated DNC rules.

Hillary Clinton had won 55% of the vote, 73 votes out of 128 according to the Christian Science Monitor.

What is at stake here, since Obama is now sure to be the nominee unless a psychopath shoots him dead?
2012?

If Obama loses to McCain in November, which I believe will be the case, Hillary will be comforted as the natural choice of the party, pretending she should have been chosen as she was best placed to beat the Republicans.
One may already guess what her political argument for the 2012 primaries will be: I and only I can take back the White House.

After McCain, the Billary show again?