Editorial

Uneasy lies Obama’s head

Never have so many expectations piled upon the head of one man. There can scarcely be a single nation on the planet that has not already sketched its vision of what Obamaworld will be like. And there can scarcely be a single one that is not going to be disappointed, at least to some degree. Just as African-Americans expect the former editor of the Harvard Law Review to identify with their lives in the Mississippi Delta, so policy-makers and officials from Beijing to Buenos Aires expect dramatic changes from an Obama White House. The senator from Ohio has been careful not to be too specific about many of his policy directions with the exception of the future of the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is certainly an intelligent approach to the developing international situation and almost certainly a partial necessity since the world economic outlook is shifting faster than most can keep abreast of.

 It's a fair bet that President Obama will be more a Republican in terms of foreign and military strategy than most people realise—he will be shifted by briefings from the military elite—and more of a Democrat in domestic and economic policy than many expect—the economic plight of the United States will play to the Democrats' 'America first' and protectionist instincts. Though the president to be may not yet realise it, the salvation of the United States on the economic front lies in Asia and many of the forthcoming decisions he has to make will impact and involve nations outside the U.S.' natural comfort zone. Washington desperately needs to engage with the economies of Asia -- from India to China -- on a much more equal basis if it is to make itself anew and escape its present predicament. 

 But first President Obama faces a task much more formidable than anything that he will have to face in Central and East Asia: persuading the American people that they can no longer enjoy their old debt-fuelled lifestyle, or at least that they must approach it with something a little more akin to realism. Americans might well have trouble believing it but the fact is that their lifestyles have been underwritten to the tune of $1 trillion a year for much of the last decade, funds that have been generated in some of the poorest countries in the world. Those funds have allowed them to import vast quantities of consumer goods and buy homes at low interest rates. It is a party that can no longer go on—Americans and citizens of other western nations must learn to live within their means and save more towards their futures and that of their country. The difficulty is that almost every indication that the American government has given the people is that the party can go on with just a few bailouts here and new regulations there. No American media outlets seem capable of telling the citizenry that capitalism, as they have known it throughout their lives, will henceforth be radically different.

 American industry has to adjust, and fast, to the new reality. The biggest indicator so far that this is not happening comes from Detroit where the Big Three car manufacturers are determined that $25 billion will see them through to continue in the old ways. For more than 30 years it has been apparent that Detroit needed to build more fuel-efficient and innovative cars. It failed to heed the warnings and now rising petrol prices have caught up with it. With the lion's share of manufacturing for the American market being done in China, Washington needs to understand that the time for seeing Beijing as an adversary is now long past. The United States is going to need the help of almost every nation with which it interacts to get it through a crisis which threatens the entire world's economic structure. Much more than in those early post-9/11 days--we are all in it together—but Washington and President Obama must recognise that the most profound change needs to come in the way America behaves at home.

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