Here comes act two
By Shamshad Ahmad
November 20, 2012
Barack Hussein Obama has been re-elected as US president for a second term. He indeed is a miracle man. Four years ago he made history as the son of an African immigrant from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas to become America’s first-ever black president. Storming the last citadel, Obama had entered the White House in what was seen as a centuries-old barrier cross. It was Martin Luther King Jr’s dream for a ‘colorblind’ America come true. This miracle could happen only in a country called America.
Then, within less than a year of his presidency, Obama made history by becoming a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate as the head of state of a superpower that had tirelessly been fighting wars since the Second World War. This was no less than a miracle because he received this honour with no “peace” credentials of his own till then. It was an unexpected honour and a big “surprise” for Obama himself. He became the third serving US president to have won the Nobel Peace Prize. The other two sitting American presidents receiving this honour were Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, for negotiating an end to the war between Russia and Japan, and Woodrow Wilson in 1919, for the Treaty of Versailles.
Interestingly, in Obama’s case, there was no peace dividend visible anywhere in the world that could be attributed to his efforts. He had not even initiated any peace plan much less announcing a withdrawal schedule for ending the decade-long Afghan war. It took him two years to do so and that too under pressure from Nato allies and from his own war weary people.
Despite all the inertia of his first term, he has won the second term with a convincing lead both in popular and electoral votes. Of course, becoming America’s first black president four years ago was an unrepeatable feat, but now winning four more years is history as well. He is only the fourth Democrat since 1900 to do so. Others who achieved this were Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Bill Clinton. What is even more creditable is that Obama made it in the hardest of circumstances.
No one since 1940 has won a re-election with unemployment at or above eight percent. Four years ago, he entered the White House with a terrible legacy of wars, global image erosion, shattered economy, depleted social security, healthcare crisis, and a decaying education system. In his first term, marked by hesitancy and inertia, he was mostly in the firing-line from the American right which contemptuously painted him as “Barack Hussein Obama, the Kenyan Marxist Muslim bent on destroying America.” Yet, the American people voted to let their 44th president finish what he had started.
For the rest of the world, there were lessons to be learnt on how democracy reigns supreme in America. It is only in this multi-ethnic land that a first generation non-white immigrant’s son can cross all barriers, if smart enough, to be the president of the most powerful nation in the world. One shouldn’t read too much in the post-election “secession” petitions by a handful of Obama resenters. What matters is that, after a fierce election battle, everybody quickly came around as one nation. Mitt Romney was gracious enough to concede victory to his opponent telling his supporters that “at a time like this, we can’t risk partisan bickering” and that “our leaders have to reach across the aisle to do the people’s work.”
President Obama was no less conciliatory. He hoped to meet Romney and discuss how they could work together. “We may have battled fiercely, he said, “but it’s only because we love this country deeply.” Obama assured his people, “whether I earned your vote or not, I have listened to you, I have learned from you and you have made me a better president.” This is the true spirit of democracy. We, in Pakistan, have never heard this metaphor in our own political verbiage. Sure, we have a long way to go to make democracy work in our country. But at least we should be learning what our systemic aberrations are and how others hold on to their national interests.
America’s challenges at the beginning of Obama’s second term are all too familiar: On the domestic front, the list is topped with issues of economy, employment, energy, education, tax reform and immigration reforms. The foremost priority has to be a budget deal on spending cuts and deficit reduction through changes in tax codes and social security entitlement benchmarks. Obama’s healthcare reform, which would have been repealed had Romney come to power will now be implemented as Obamacare legacy. Given the Republican control in the House of Representatives, Obama’s task ahead is not going to be easy but if he manages to bring the tax revenues and spending into balance, it might endear him to posterity.
On the foreign policy front, Obama has an equally challenging agenda on which he cannot afford to remain complacent. By now, he knows wars do not bring peace. Hopefully, he will resist any attempts to open new fronts and instead will look for peaceful arrangements through diplomacy and dialogue, not by force or coercion. He is likely to pursue a deal with Iran that verifiably limits its nuclear programme and avoids war; a deal in Afghanistan that averts civil war when the US forces leave in 2014; a deal with Putin for help with the political transition in Syria, and finally, a long-outstanding deal in the Middle East to create a Palestinian state with secure borders for Israel.
Obama has a watershed opportunity now. He has four years to build a legacy that none of his predecessors could even dream. Obviously, Washington has its own priorities as part of its global outreach, its larger Asian agenda and its ongoing Central Asia-focused ‘Great Game.’ But in the context of South Asia, the US must remain sensitive to Pakistan’s legitimate concerns and security interests. Any policies that create strategic imbalances in the region and fuel an arms race between the two nuclear-capable neighbours with an escalatory effect on their military budgets and arsenals are no service to the peoples of the region.
On the US-Pakistan relationship, Obama must take the initiative to end the cycle of suspicion and discord and forge a partnership that promotes the interests of both and is in accord with the aspirations of their peoples. It is time our two countries also moved beyond transactional engagements and focused more on strengthening their relationship by making it more substantive and meaningful through greater political, economic and strategic content. A paradigm shift is also needed in America’s global policies to address its negative perception as an “arrogant superpower” which, according to the famous two-times Pulitzer Prize winner historian, Arthur Schlesinger has “two sets of values, one for its internal policies and the other used in foreign affairs.”
President Obama must not forget “the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another” that his fellow Democrat predecessor, President Woodrow Wilson had spelt out in his famous 14-point congressional speech in January 1918. Woodrow Wilson’s ghost doesn’t have to come to remind him that to make “the world safe for every peace-loving nation which wishes to live its own life and determine its own institutions, it must be assured of justice and fair dealing, and that unless justice is done to others it will not be done to us.” Obama knows this line. He must now translate it into reality.
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