Opening Reflection

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It is one of the weaknesses of the geopolitical perspective that it de-emphasizes the role of ideology and attendant cognitive dispositions as actors in history and shapers of policy. It is my intention in this forum to view geopolitics through the prism of ideas, which makes my enterprise a somewhat derived reflection, as geopolitics itself is the attempt to see world events through the prism of geography, with special attention to the ways in which geography shapes history and places constraints upon human action. The objectivity that the geopolitical perspective makes possible is truly salutary, but this perspective, if it is not to lead to nonsense, must be supplemented by an account of events that does not exclude the ideology that motivates human actors in history. That will be my task.

So I begin this account as the US has just settled upon a president-elect. For anyone not blinded by ideological blinkers, the result of the election has been obvious for a month. The commentariat and the punditocracy likes nothing better than to bash the commentary and punditry of the pollsters, but, truth be told, the polls are usually right. Certainly polling methodology has dramatically improved since Truman defeated Dewey contrary to expectations. Since that dramatic reversal, every US politician on the losing side of the polls holds out hope for a dramatic upset, but it almost never happens.

Many of those who have voted for Barack Obama believe that he represents a dramatic change for the better. Many of those who voted against him believe that he represents a dramatic change for the worse. Of course, there will be no dramatic changes and no revolutionary policy initiatives. It is sheer naïveté to believe that there will be dramatic or revolutionary changes. The new president’s foreign policy advisers are all Democratic party stalwarts, and the Financial Times called his economic advisers “centrist.” For those who aren’t aware of this, “centrist” is a political code word that signals continuity. And the Obama administration will demonstrate a significant level of continuity with the Bush administration, as the Bush administration preserved continuity with the Clinton administration, and so on and so forth.

That being said, the international outpouring of goodwill in the wake of Obama’s election is unprecedented. European family members have sent congratulatory e-mails to members of my family here in the US. A comment on the BBC from Amman claimed that children were greeting each other with “Happy Obama day”, and Kenya has declared a public holiday in view of the fact that a son of their soil will be the next US president. Nothing like this would have happened had McCain been elected, and this unprecedented outpouring of goodwill is something that could not be bought for any price. While policy continuity might ultimately issue in disappointment sharpened by unrealistic expectations for change, this reservoir of goodwill is a powerful ally for the Obama administration. Probably no administration in my lifetime will come into office with such a level of goodwill around the world, and if this goodwill is not squandered, it can be a powerful tool of what Joseph Nye has called “soft power”.

If the presence of a new face alters the world’s perception of perennial US policies for the better, then that is all to the good. The leaders of the world’s nation-states are as committed to the calculus of interests as are American leaders of all political persuasions. They will not expect transformational change, and they will not get transformational change. They will get a new face on perennial US interests. Whether or not they like the new face will not influence the calculus of their interests, which are as perennial as US interests. The populations of other nation-states, in contradistinction to their leaders, may well expect transformational change, but unlike the hard-headed realists who fought their way into office by the ballot box or the gun or the smoke-filled back room, these peoples will be influenced by their level of emotional approval or disapproval for the new face of the US president, and, as the outpouring of goodwill attests, their liking will give both their leaders and the new US president room to maneuver. Obama will have the benefit of the doubt, and this can be parlayed into significant opportunity.

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