European reds have the blues

European progressives are looking with interest and some concern at the Obama transition. The selection of the next administration’s top players in the economic sphere, at the State Department (Hillary Clinton) and at the National Security Council seems to contradict the promises of change.
European social democrats who had depicted Barack Obama as one of their own, as a U.S. liberal “à la Franklin Roosevelt”, are not far from thinking that the next President will be closer to the European libéraux and liberal democrats. They have just discovered with awe that the blue color that characterises the Democratic Party is also, ominously, the colour of the European liberals…And they already have the blues.

European human rights organizations are less pessimistic. They still strongly believe that Barack Obama will bring real change. The departure of the Bush administration is in itself a progress for international human rights. And every one agrees that Barack Obama’s first measure should be to reverse Bush’s policies on enemy combatants, torture, CIA renditions or military tribunals. With the stroke of a pen, the next President could bring back the U.S. into the community of law-abiding democracies and boost its world image much more efficiently than by hiring a former advertising agency CEO.
The "human rights front" opens a large space for cooperation between the two sides of the Atlantic and beyond, at the NGO level and at the state level. The countries that believe in the rule of the law and in the need to make human rights a key component of their diplomacy are convinced that the new U.S. administration will boost their prospects.
A push by the U.S. to promote human rights would force the European Union to be more coherent in its own foreign relations. Its diplomats and businesspeople would be less able to argue that their "concessions" to ethical foreign policies undermine their capacity to clinch contracts in a context of deep economic uncertainties. In short a U.S./EU convergence on human rights diplomacy would stop China’s or Saudi Arabia’s playing Boeing against Airbus or BT againts ITT.

Prematurely disappointed
Who is going to frame the next administration’s foreign policies? The old hands of the Clinton administration or really new thinkers? Or will the old hands push new thinking? In a very interesting report “Managing Global Insecurity”: A Plan for Action, the Brookings Institution (with contributions from, in particular, John Podesta, who is leading Obama’s transition) provides a key element that if implemented by the next administration might open a promising era: the recognition that “the U.S. must demonstrate its commitment to a rule-based international system that rejects unilateralism and looks beyond military might”.
This approach is the ideal framework for a stronger human rights diplomacy. A key message in that context would be to appoint a strong human rights advocate as assistant secretary of State for human rights and leave him or her the sufficient margin to inspire policies and create new tools for a more effective "ethical foreign policy".
On the progressives’ side, the error would be to declare the Obama administration “disappointing” even before it has had the opportunity to really do something. The reaction should not be to “switch off” but to "switch in", by continuing the mobilization that started years ago in order to bring back decency and reason in the White House. The audacity of hope is now.