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.

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Is a European Obama possible?

The question has been roaming around since Barack Obama became the Democratic Party nominee. The expectations are high among minority groups in most European countries. On Friday night after a theatre play in a café located in Saint-Josse, the most mutlicultural Brussels neighborhood, one comedian from Ivory Coast said: "Now that Obama has won I will dare to stick my photograph to my résumé!"
The question is irrelevant in many European countries, especially in the new member states (Poland, Romania, etc.) since these countries have no significant African population and their acceptance o the "other" is at times problematic. But what about Old Europe where millions of citizens of African origin already live and work. In Britain, for instance. To get a sense of these hopes, read the following BBC story
http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7717149.stm

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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.

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Obama, a historic opportunity

We have reached the key moment of the election day and it will be a transformational moment for transatlantic politics. After 8 years of divisions and recriminations between the US and Europe but also within Europe an Obama victory will not only reopen a phase of consultations and respect. It will also open a new era because Obama means a break in global politics and because the world has changed a lot and will change a lot over the next 4 years.It does not mean that the change will be profound and immediate. Democratic politics is more about an accumulation of small steps than a radical shift. Obama is a cautious politician and he knows that in the current context of financial turbulences and human insecurity it will be essential to be cool.

It does not mean either that the relationship will be easy. Some conservative European governments would have preferred (at least until Sarah Palin’s nomination) John McCain, either because he is a “known quantity” in Atlantic circles or because they fear that Obama will put Europe on the defensive in terms of world soft power and of political symbols of modernity.
Leftwing groups in Europe will be divided too. The ultra-left has been heavily insisting that Obama will not change anything, that he is just a nicer-looking U.S. imperialist. Their fear is that it will be a lot more difficult to caricature the U.S. with a coloured man at the white House. Bush was such an easy target.
The social-democrats will be disappointed unless Barack Obama, like F.D. Roosevelt, is forced to save “capitalism against the capitalists’recklessness”” (which is the New dealers’ and social democrats’major contribution to the history of social justice) and adopts strong policies drawn from the conventional “liberal” agenda.
However Obama is anchored in the center of the U.S. “reasonable Establishment” and at this stage he is closer to Dominique Strauss-Kahn than to European trade unionists. Although the test of his “liberalism” will be his deep conviction that America needs more justice and fairness he will have to be innovative rather than repeating old recipes that, although well-intentioned, might not apply to the current crisis.
There is a window of opportunity, though, for a more progressive Atlantic agenda. The economic context pushes for initiatives that are at the same time daring and cautious. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan call for judgment and fortitude.
Foreign policy however will be a symbolic area where a new U.S. administration will be able, if it really so desires, to make a difference quickly. A few days ago the leading U.S. human rights organisation Human Rights Watch ( http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/10/29/usdom20099_txt.htm )published its “agenda for the new administration”, highlighting “four crucial initiatives that the new president should take shortly after assuming office”.
Ensure that U.S. counterterrorism efforts comply with international human rights and humanitarian law.
Make human rights a central pillar of.U.S. foreign policy
Rejoin the international human rights community
Demonstrate leadership on human rights issues at home.

In other words, close down Guantanamo, stop using and justifying torture, go back to the traditions of Eleanor Roosevelt and of so many other leading U.S. politicians, intellectuals and activists that were an inspiration for the rest of the world in the field of human dignity.

This human rights agenda should be addressed to the European Union as well, helping to build a new transatlantic consensus based on the respect and promotion of human rights. The ball will fall in Europe’s garden soon and it will be the responsibility of European progressives, liberals and “enlightened” conservatives (like Angela Merkel) to pick it up and aim it straight at Europe’s “useful or friendly dictators” (Uzbekistan, Gabon, Tunisia, etc), the Fortress Europe die-hards and the neo-populists (Berlusconi) and real fascists (Austria’s extreme right).
Let us hope that a Barack Obama victory will force everyone in the U.S. and Europe to rethink the foundations of democratic power. Ethics, respect for human rights, should not be seen as constraints on democracies, as the Bush-Cheney administration saw it, but as the best levers of reasonable and inspirational leadership.

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