A harbinger of change - Dawn 22 Jan

[Emotions]

A harbinger of change




By Shahab Usto


WITH Barack Obama taking oath as US president, Martin Luther King’s dream has been realised and led to the hope for change in the hearts of many Americans regardless of their creed and colour.

But will an Obama presidency actually bring about a global change, particularly for Pakistan which is bearing the consequences of terrorism, social conflict and political instability — a contribution, in large measure, of Mr Obama’s predecessor?

Considering the built-in inescapability of US politics that drives every US president to cater to democratic ideals as well as yield to imperial quest, no one can say for sure if Obama will be the harbinger of change at home or abroad. However, if the long electoral trail was a measure then he has certainly emerged as a man with a new vision, imbuing the hope in hearts that this time it might be different.

Why was he elected, a man of mix ethnic parentage, coming from an ordinary background, possessing an African surname and a Muslim middle name and raised by a single mother in far-off Asia? The answer probably lies in his ability to decipher the discord between the old US and the new world.

While during the campaign his Republican opponent John McCain held up obsolete neo-liberal ideals, Obama projected his youth as a metaphor of the new America. Using cell phones, the Internet and credit cards to enlist voters and to bag many, many millions in donation, he deftly proved his modernism.

Then he made full use of statistical data. Aware that one per cent of super rich Americans owned 40 per cent of the national wealth, he proposed a redistribution of wealth. Knowing that average wages had remained stagnant since 2001, he offered tax cuts for low-income groups. Above all, he opposed the war in Iraq because it meant thousands of body bags and a deficit of over $1trillion.

Likewise, while McCain stuck to sophistry, Obama used Aristotelian syllogism. Astutely, he first equated Bush’s failed policies with McCain’s propositions — if Bush was wrong so would be McCain. Then, he deduced: if both Bush and McCain were wrong, then he was right.

That worked wonders. America not only ignored the many honours that McCain had earned as a marine officer, a POW in Vietnam and a US senator, but also forgave Obama’s embarrassingly short public-service record. But Obama did not stop. He attacked the very edifice of the failed Anglo-Saxon capitalist model. Developed by a British economist, Von Hayek, the model advocated ‘small government’ and fewer taxes. Later, during the Reagan-Thatcher era, the model was perfected by the neo-liberals and the neo-cons to dominate the global economy and to police the world using Anglo-American war machines.

With the demise of the USSR, this duo glorified the model as both the pallbearer of Marxism and the flag-bearer of the US-led global capitalist boom. For the next 30 years the world saw a new wave of US-led proxy wars.

However, when the financial meltdown and the failure in Iraq war debunked the model, no presidential candidate was ready to bury it. Obama refused to come in the way of history’s ‘creative destruction’. He had long known that the age of US economic supremacy was over and all that was left now was to secure US primacy in the multipolar global economy. In fact, Fareed Zakaria, a celebrated columnist, predicated his support on Obama’s suitability to handle the ‘declining America’.

Thus, during the electoral odyssey, Obama manifested carefully sequenced crafts of his leadership character — ideas, articulation, charm, courage and humility — and won over the electorate to his promise of change.

However, now that he has entered the White House, the Americans and the world ask: what next? Among the people caught in the web of violence or servility — Palestinians, Kashmiris, Iranians, Afghans, Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis — Pakistanis are also wondering what the new incumbent of the US presidential office has in mind. They are concerned because the US has historically supported military, hereditary or autocratic rulers in Muslim states.

Also in Pakistan, all the coupsters — Ayub, Yahya, Zia, Musharraf — received political legitimacy and financial support from the US in lieu of their services for protecting US interests in the region. From 1954 to date, the military regimes received $17bn from the US but civilian governments received only $3.4bn. The current civilian government too has so far failed to receive any substantial US financial support, though it supports the US-led war on terror.

In any case, Pakistan occupies a key place in Obama’s foreign policy on many counts. One, Obama intends to wind up the war in Iraq and focus on Afghanistan and Fata. Two, a hot competition is going on between the US-led West and the Sino-Russian combine over the control of resource-rich Central Asia. Three, the US is determined to stop Iran from going nuclear.

Pakistan a nuclear state possessing a vast military force and an experienced intelligence apparatus and with a role critical to the present crisis cannot be overlooked by President Obama. It’s heartening that he has pledged an increase in Pakistan’s non-military aid and openly supported a resolution of the Kashmir dispute at a time when the Indo-US romance is blooming.

Yet, the proof of pudding is in the eating. The US must translate these promises into action. It is possible it will do so when Pakistan’s political and military leaderships close ranks to forge a common approach vis-à-vis the US. Past military-led pacts with the US were one-sided and beneficial to the US. This time the civilian government must make a new deal with the US based on the mutuality of interests.

And such a deal is possible. If Egypt and Jordan can receive billions of dollars over the decades from the US just to “live in peace” with Israel, why can’t Pakistan get long-term US commitments on its security and financial stability when it is bleeding from the war on terror?