• English Site
• > World
• > United States

The World President

Great Expectations for Project Obama

By SPIEGEL Staff

Part 5: International Crises and Domestic Woes

Russia is furious over the missile shield the United States plans to build, with bases in the Czech Republic and Poland, to protect against attacks from Iran. Obama has not yet said whether he supports the plan. If it were his intention not to pursue the project, the Kremlin, by pressing ahead with its own missile deployment plans, is making it difficult for Obama to distance himself from Bush's missile shield program.

However, the Russian leadership is hardly wrong when it argues that Democrat Obama's stance on the other two conflicts Putin considers existential, Georgia and Ukraine, hardly differs from that of his predecessor. Obama has consistently said that both countries, products of the collapse of the Soviet empire, should be allowed to join NATO if they wish. Although there is no consensus within the political elite in the United States over Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan, there is widespread agreement over the right of Georgia and Ukraine to be accepted into the West's military alliance. A minority within the think tanks is gradually gaining traction as it raises the question of whether the further eastward expansion of NATO makes sense.

Does it? When Russia accepted Georgia's invitation to wage a war that it could easily win, superpower America had no alternative but to demonstrate its solidarity while doing nothing. The Europeans joined in the protest, but some of them, especially the Germans, found reason for skepticism. There is nothing wrong, they argue, with Georgia and Ukraine seeking the protection of NATO. But because the two countries do not belong in the alliance at this point, so went the argument, NATO should give them nothing but non-binding promises.

But the outgoing American administration and many foreign policy experts in the incoming administration are serious about paving the way for NATO membership for both countries. NATO foreign ministers are scheduled to meet in December, and Georgia and Ukraine will be on the agenda once again. President-elect Obama will likely comment on the meeting, thereby indicating whether he has since changed his views on Georgia and Ukraine.

He will not be able to refrain from commenting for much longer than that. He is currently the world president, a title that falls to him because America has a greater ability to change things in the world -- for better and for worse -- than other powers. The world president can decide where or how he wishes to throw his weight onto the scale. After eight years of closed-mindedness, Obama has a great surplus of trust, which he can use to his advantage.

Even America's allies do not expect him to come up with a grand design or a one-size-fits-all concept. But they do expect prudence and gravity. Obama will face many serious crises, and he is well advised to remain what he became in the campaign: a quick learner.

In addition to international crises, he will be confronted with America's own worries and the domestic problems of a country that is a strange mixture of cutting-edge progress in the first world and the bizarre backwardness of a Third World country. The United States is in the most severe crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, as the superpower sees its economic foundation beginning to crumble.

The people who voted for Obama on Nov. 4 included the beleaguered middle class, which has great expectations of him as the next president. White-collar workers have seen their salaries shrink, prices are rising and America, once an engine for jobs, has practically cancelled all production. About 2.5 million people have lost their jobs since January. More recently, the unemployment rate has risen dramatically to 6.5 percent, the highest level since 1994, and it seems likely to continue to rise.

Throughout America, the cradle of capitalism, aging industry is now fighting for survival. For an ordinary factory worker, America is now the land of limited opportunity. The country's Big Three automakers -- Ford, General Motors (GM) and Chrysler -- are now forced to accept government subsidies and new bank loans to be able to survive their billions in recurring losses.

GM alone lost $39 billion (€30 billion) last quarter. That's a greater figure than the profits German automaker Daimler earned in the last eight years. An ugly phrase has already begun appearing in newspapers: liquidity problem, a term indicating that banks have largely lost their faith in GM. Just a few decades ago, GM and America were synonymous with each other.

For reasons of data protection and privacy, your IP address will only be stored if you are a registered user of Facebook and you are currently logged in to the service. For more detailed information, please click on the "i" symbol.

Post to other social networks:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•