Paris – Europeans are coming to terms with the fact that President Obama is not a miracle worker, and with the reality that everything he does is not magic.
Oh, yes, most Europeans are still happy Obama is president. They remain fascinated by him and grateful for the direction of his policies.
A French diplomatic veteran ticked off all the good news: Obama’s pledge to close Guantanamo, the ban on torture, the continued withdrawal from Iraq, his reaching out to Iran and North Korea, engagement on the Israeli-Palestinian problem, the quest for nuclear disarmament, the effort to “reset” relations with Russia.
And there is America’s new stance on global warming, on display in Copenhagen. This repositioning matters not just to elites but also to a rank-and-file Green movement emerging as an alternative on the center-left to social democratic parties, notably in France and Germany.
But these are the days of European second thoughts: Obama is still interesting, he’s still not George W. Bush, but what can he show for his efforts? His Israeli-Palestinian initiative has gone nowhere. The fruits of his new overtures to Iran, Russia and North Korea are far from obvious. Where is the climate change legislation that was supposed to get through Congress?
And why did Obama skip the anniversary celebrations of the Berlin Wall’s fall? OK, Europeans say, we understand he sees that the future lies in Asia, but did he have to rub it in? And can’t he find at least one European leader to bond with?
In the midst of such complaints and questions, I sat with a group of Americans and Europeans to listen to a live broadcast of Obama’s Oslo speech before the opening of a conference organized by the French Institute of International Relations. For me, the address was Obama’s answer to his critics, both American and European.
To begin with, the president reminded us why he had seized the imaginations of so many in the first place. The speech was commonly described as a defense of “just war,” and it was — a rigorous, unblinking argument for why violence and the threat of violence can be necessary on behalf of the right and the good.
But even more, the speech revived a school of foreign-policy thinking that allied realism with idealism. Obama’s address was suffused with a candor about the imperfections of human nature taught by Reinhold Niebuhr, his favorite theologian, and also with an insistence that human rights and social justice are not simply desirable in themselves but necessary for stability.
His lengthy tribute to heroes in struggles for freedom and his argument that “peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please” warmed human rights activists and even some neoconservatives.
But this was paired with the assertion that diplomacy, even with brutal regimes, needs to be seen as part of an effort to “balance isolation and engagement, pressure and incentives, so that human rights and dignity are advanced over time.” And it showed just how much Obama respects the realist tradition that to make his point, he was willing to praise Richard Nixon for his opening to China.
But Obama’s realism encompasses social justice, and he nodded to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms. “True peace is not just freedom from fear,” Obama said, directly channeling FDR, “but freedom from want.”
And last came his religiously inspired insistence that the idea of “love” is neither romantic nor naive, but provides the “spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls” and helps us not to despair in the face of history’s ambiguities. It was especially moving that in supposedly secular Europe, the “spark of the divine” is what won Obama his applause.
It turns out that there is an Obama doctrine based on a quest for moral balance. Its central insistence is that it’s possible to be tough-minded and idealistic, to adhere to a realism rooted in values.
One speech will not resolve Europe’s minor bout of Obama malaise. A comedown was inevitable, said one of my interlocutors, since “he seemed to promise the impossible, and because he was so eloquent, we believed him.” And Obama still has many defenders, including former Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, who said Europeans should help him, not criticize him.
Every realist understands the importance of execution, and the president has work to do on the diplomatic practice of Obamaism. But the theory is sound, and the promise is still there.
(c) 2009, Washington Post Writers Group
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today during our fundraiser. We have 8 days to add 460 new monthly donors. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.