What can we do for Obama?

Change has come ! The slogan has been flowing like a seagull over the Atlantic.
Barack Obama’s victory has already made history. It is a tribute and a promise. It is a tribute to the millions of civil rights activists who have been fighting for freedom and justice since the early days of the United States. It is a promise for the tens of millions of Americans who voted for change.
Change in politics is not always a positive word. It can mean change for the worse, as some elections in Europe have recently demonstrated with the rise of far right parties. In the U.S. it is definitely a change for the better : the election to the White House of the first “person of colour” marks a historic watershed.
Now after the acknowlegdment of the past and of the long road that had to be travelled everyone is dreaming that it is also a promise of change for a better society and a better world.

What does it mean for us Europeans? Many things. It will test our own capacity to express the new realities of a more complex and more diverse world. It will force us to reflect on our own will to integrate and propel to the top the citizens in our midst that come from foreign countries or from minorities. It will compel us to think again about the way to practise politics and to bring in it not only programmes but also values and aspirations. It will remind politicians that the best road for success might be to ask people to do something for their country, to be responsible and committed to the common good, instead of pandering to the voters' narrowly defined interests, or worse, to excite their most selfish or aggressive instincts.

What can we do in Europe to help the new U.S. administration to address the huge challenges that are altready there ("the urgency of now", as Obama has said) and the ones that are standing in the horizon? That is a key question even if the instruments in our hands seem inadequate or weak.
Some Europeans might be waiting for Barack Obama to stumble or to disappoint. That would be mean and wrong. Europe and the rest of the world has a direct interest in the success of the future U.S. administration to respond to the economic crisis, the wars in the Middle East and the other major and very often "non-conventional" threats.
It is time to see the transatlantic relation as more than just NATO, trade or corporate exchanges. The “free world” as Timothy Garton Ash calls Euro-America has the responsibility to frame ambitious strategies that take the lead in confronting the major “nightmares”(in Obama’s adviser Anthony Lake’s words) of the world: terrorism, environmental degradation, global poverty, nuclear proliferation, the rise of transnational crime, etc.
In our globalized world Europeans, and in particular progressive and liberal Europeans , cannot be bystanders. They must imagine new ways to reinforce the transatlantic links in order to reinforce the world's capacity to protect our societies against economic devastation, environmental implosion and a return to authoritarianism.