Jahangir's World Times First Comprehensive Magazine for students/teachers of competitive exams and general readers as well.
In foreign policy, 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.
President Barack Obama has been reelected for a second term with a comfortable lead. 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 entered the White House in what was seen as 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 Nobel Peace Laureate as president of a super power that had been tirelessly fighting wars since after the Second World War. This was no less than a miracle because he received this honour with no ‘peace’ credentials of his own yet. It was an unexpected honor and a big ‘surprise’ for Obama himself. Having entered the White House as a miracle man, he suddenly became the third serving US president to have won the Nobel Peace Prize.
The other two sitting American presidents also receiving this honour were Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, for negotiating an end to a 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 Afghan peace plan much less announcing of a withdrawal schedule for ending the decade-long war. It took him two years to do so and that too under pressure from NATO allies and from his own war wary people.
With almost a blank scorecard in his first term, Obama bounced back like the comic book super hero, the Spider-Man. He won well ahead not only in the popular vote but also took almost all of the key battleground states without any recount or rancor. It was one of the most bitterly contested and expensive U.S. elections in recent history. In almost a neck-to-neck battle, Mitt Romney gave the sitting president a tough fight.
But what made the difference this time was what American analysts saw as an increasing change in the very nature of the US electorate, with white voters accounting for a smaller share of the votes cast than ever before. Besides increasing number of women and under-30 youth who generally favour Democratic platform, almost one third of American voters today are non-white, representing a threefold increase over the past four decades.
While Romney did have a clear edge in the white vote, Obama’s majority largely came as in 2008 from the non-white groups especially the African-American and Hispanics that now make up the new America and vote Democrat. It was a more measured victory than four years ago, when Obama claimed 365 electoral votes to McCain’s 173. This time, Obama’s electoral vote count was 332 as against Romney’s 206. But at the end of the election night, it was immaterial who or how many states voted for Obama or for his challenger, or whether colour, gender or age influenced any part of the popular vote.
No one since 1940 has won re-election with unemployment at or above 8%. 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 decaying education system. In his first term, 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, on the election night, American people voted to let their 44th president finish what he had started.
For the rest of the world, there were lessons to learn on how democracy reigns supreme in America. It is only in this multi-ethnic land that a first generation non-white immigrant’s son, if smart enough, can cross all barriers 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. That is also part of American democracy. What matters is that after a fierce election battle, everybody quickly came round 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 for now at least we should be learning lessons on what our own systemic aberrations are and how others hold on to their national interests.
America’s common 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 would have been repealed had Romney come to power but now it will 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, he might endear him to posterity.
In foreign policy, 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 program and avoids war; a deal in Afghanistan that averts civil war when U.S. forces leave in 2014; a deal with Putin’s help for a 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 now has four years to build a legacy of his own. Obviously, Washington has an overbearing global agenda with its own priorities as part of its geopolitical outreach, strategic goals and economic interests including its ongoing Central Asia-focused ‘Great Game.’
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. Peace in this volatile region will remain elusive as long as India-Pakistan issues are unaddressed.
On US-Pakistan relationship, he must take the initiative to end the cycle of suspicion and discord and forge a partnership based on mutuality of interests. It is time our two countries moved beyond transactional engagements and focused more on strengthening their relationship by making it more substantive and more meaningful through greater political, economic and strategic content.
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.
