Random Musings - On President Obama’s Influence Abroad

I lived in Italy from 2003-4, during President Bush’s first term and France from 2005-7, during his second term. The attitudes exhibited by Europeans toward Americans during those two periods were markedly different. I viewed it as a general assumption by foreigners that the first election was a fluke and the second election was an implicit endorsement by the American public of the Bush Administration’s policies. The American public was not painted with the same brush during the first four years, but we were all dismissed during the second. Since President Obama’s election, I have been in various European and Asian countries. The difference in attitudes and welcome is overwhelming.

I am not asking one to consider whether or not there is merit to foreign views of US elections. What is important is the amount and strength of goodwill by foreigners, particularly the foreign public, to our country and our country’s leadership. I sincerely appreciated how the European public viewed the American people and American leaders as distinct and separate entities, giving a tourist or expat consideration apart from one’s take on US government policy. I sometimes think that Americans paint foreigners with one broad brush, like the French during the Iraq War. (Caveat: There is little love lost between me and Parisians, but I like the French. However, I think I have standing to judge Parisians since I lived there for two years. Some may disagree, but I gave them a chance, which is different from the people in the States who dumped French products down drains during the ramp-up to the War. They were just driven by the media and propaganda.) That is unfair. I am traveling in a completely different world today. Everywhere I go, I get an observable bump in popularity due to President Obama’s recent election. I think this is for a single reason, a larger part of the world identifies with our leader now, making Americans as a whole more accessible.

In Cambodia, a tuk-tuk driver pointed to his arm and said, “Obama looks like me.” I never really thought the president had the same skin tone as Cambodians, but the man did, which makes the difference. President Obama has become an existential leader for the world. How many wars or conflicts have been fought between ethnic groups within or across a country’s boarders? In Cambodia, they recently ended over 30 years of civil war, part of which can be linked to US actions during the late 60s and early 70s. Whether it is strife between Hmong and Khmu ethnic groups, a Cambodian can look to the US, the most powerful nation in the world, and see that a populace, which fought a dirty, bloody civil rights battle in most of the population’s lifetime, will elect a leader based on ideas rather than ethnic identities. The effect has been tangible. I am reaping the benefits.

Foreign views on American government are not wrong or right, they just exist, and America operates within this international arena. This is not useful for purposes like winning the Olympic Games for Chicago (I believe that Rio was completely the right choice). Some might like to think of US interests as isolated of foreign public opinion, but I disagree. Sanctions on Iran need to be supported by the whole UN Security Council. If a government’s electorate views the US favorably, then it is at the government’s peril to work against the US. During the Iraq War, foreign governments could play to their populations hatred of US policy by scoring political points at the UN or at home. This does not help us, public opinion matters around the world because it creates the atmosphere in which policy becomes possible. It is said that politics is the art of the possible. Much more is possible on an international stage when US policy is presented by a favorable face. And the US is reaping tangible rewards with troop commitments by various NATO and non-NATO countries for Afghanistan.