In the days to come Mr Obama will be at the center of the world stage both at the UN General Assembly opening session and later at the G-20 conference in Pittsburgh. In the shadows, just outside the spotlight's glare in New York, the president will have one-on-one meetings with most of the heavyweights of global politics.
The president will be out to move the process of combating anthropogenic climate change. He will push financial reform. As if those weren't enough, the man will be attempting to once again lever the "Mideast peace process" off of top dead center. Then, of course, there are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the one over in most essential respects, and the other still up for grabs.
Looming over all the grand plans seeing the US heading the charge of the "international community" against the evils of financial instability, global climate alteration, environmental pollution, and ad infinitum will be the mushroom shaped shade of Iran and its quest for the "Mahdi Bomb." And, the "international community's" failure to address the fear it produces both in the region and elsewhere.
In the process of seeking to be Global Saviour, Mr Obama is operating under a substantial handicap. He is an idealistic, ideologically committed True Believer. He (and many surrounding him, including his Secretary of State) is firmly convinced that the long running era of nationalism is dead. And, that the world is better off for it.
He is not alone in this Holy Grail of faith. It is the shared intellectual heritage of many, but far from most, Americans and Western Europeans: The elites, the academics, the chattering classes, the pundits and some "progressive" politicians. The assemblage of those who know what is best for the rest of us are firmly wedded to the attractive but debatable bumper sticker slogan, "We are all passengers on space ship Earth."
While Mr Obama, Ms Clinton, Ms Rice, and a host of others clasp this faith with the fervor of a Baptist thrust into a whorehouse, its pervasiveness around the world is questionable at best.
The vast majority of the globe's presidents, prime ministers, kings, princes, and potentates in common with the hoi polloi generally still run on the idea of "my country first, foremost, and always." The ground truth is simply that nationalism as a source of international conduct is not dead. It is not on life support. It isn't decayed, feeble, tottering to the shelter of An Old Ideas Home.
The world is not ready for change if that change means or even hints at the abandonment of national self-interest, self-defined. The world is not ready for change if that means or even hints at the acceptance of sacrifice on the part of a people, a government, a nation for some abstract principle or remote, vaguely defined menace. The world is not ready for change if that means or even hints at the surrender of a single iota of national sovereignty or national autonomy to some higher level of government--particularly one which acts at the global level.
It is true that the countries of the European Union have slid some measure of historical sovereignty to the bureaucrats of Brussels, but that movement has come in large measure because the benefits to the hoi polloi have outweighed the losses, and the impairment of the member countries' governments to operate as sovereign states has not been overly burdensome. Nonetheless, it must be noted that the EU is not overly popular with many of the respective populations and is not so well embedded in history as to be immutable.
Also, it must be recalled when thinking of the EU as a supra-national government and seeing it as a potential paradigm for the world's future that Europe fought a two act internal war during the Twentieth Century at enormous cost in lives, treasure, and national self-confidence. It also deserves remembering that the EU emerged organically and evolved over time in response to changing conditions within the "family" as well as globally. Finally, it needs to be noted that all is far from sweetness and love within the EU and, when push comes to shove, each major country will meet its own needs first no matter what the cost to others.
Whether from the bastions of the EU or the benighted rest of the world, nationalism will be supreme at both the UN and the G-20. In each of these fora, the participants will seek to pursue to the greatest extent possible their own self-defined national interest.
Unless President Obama pursues US national interest with the same persistence, the same single minded determination with which the leaders and delegates from other countries such as Russia, China, Japan, and even paragons of the EU such as Germany, France, and the UK, the US will suffer. Of course, the pursuit of American national and strategic interest does not require the sort of high-handed arrogance which marked the Bush/Cheney administration, but it does require a firm understanding of what sort of world best meets the requirements of our national interests.
On the matter of anthropogenic climate change, if it is assumed (the word is chosen carefully) that human produced carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" are provably responsible for a significant percentage of the presumed (again the word is chosen carefully) increase in mean global temperatures, efforts to reduce their emission should not be done in a way which places the US at a further disadvantage compared to countries such as India and China. To place additional handicaps on American industry is not in the American national interest.
As such, the move is unjustifiable no matter what the alleged benefits might be for countries in Africa or within the small island nation category. Mr Obama and others in his administration must remember that their sole reason for existence as a government is to protect and advance the interests of Americans and the American nation. If others in other countries benefit as well, that is pure frosting on the cake.
Historically and contemporaneously, no government has willingly put its own country, its own citizenry, at risk in order that others might gain advantage. If "changing the world"means lessening the present and future prospects of Americans and the US, it is both politically unacceptable and self-injurious to those who do so.
The same is true with respect to reordering the global financial system. The limit to largess, the boundary of sacrifice for the US is established by a palpable degeneration of the American economy. While there is room for change, for improvement in the financial affairs of the globe, it must be an improvement which does not impair the US or the majority of its citizens. This does not imply that merely because the US has the world's largest economy or when the US markets sneeze much of the world catches pneumonia that global financial policies should be dictated by the US but rather that the inclusion of other advanced and developing economies in the decision making process must be done in a way which does not shackle the American economy convoy to the speed of the slowest ship.
Bi-lateral relations whether with allies such as the UK or Israel or with adversaries such as China and Russia must be viewed through the lens of American self-interest. To that end it is necessary to establish what is actually at stake for American interests in the Mideast, or in the Persian Gulf, or Asia.
To the credit of the Obama administration some halting efforts have been made to establish the actual stakes in play for the US in the Mideast. Unfortunately, in the process the nature and character of Islam as a motivator for intransigence, for hostility, have been underrated.
China has been seen far too much as a source of cash than a rival for regional and global authority. The Obama administration and the "progressives" in Congress have been too willing to view China as a cash cow to be milked for the benefit of beloved domestic programs to properly evaluate it as a present and future threat to our national and strategic interests. The most precious commodity in international relations is influence--and as the diplomatic center of gravity in the Pacific Rim shifts ever eastward, the US fritters away that prized possession.
Russia sees itself--must see itself for internal and historical reasons--as a Great Power. The US must treat Russia as just that regardless of considerations (or facts) to the contrary. Nearly two centuries Tocqueville foresaw that the emerging Great Powers were Russia and the US. He was right then. He is right today. The US needs a collaborative relation with Russia--but only on the basis of national self-interests. That is the only basis understood by the Kremlin, and unless we play the nationalist game, the Putins and Medvedevs of Russia will eat us for breakfast.
Mr Obama has expressed a yearning for a world free of nuclear weapons. That is a fine ideal. It is the sort of thing that livens faculty gatherings, church conflabs, and meetings of the high minded, lofty thinking sort. It is also an unachievable goal in the present world--or that of the foreseeable future.
Even the far lesser goal of inhibiting nuclear proliferation is nearly impossible to reach. As the recent events in Pakistan, North Korea, Syria, and Iran make manifest, there is no credible international structure which can inhibit nuclear proliferation with certainty. The existence of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the International Atomic Energy Agency in no way hinders the procurement of a nuclear weapons capability if a country is willing to invest the time, energy, and money into the project.
No matter what arrangements may exist on paper, in treaties, in the most sacred covenants between nations; no matter what international institutions may be created to monitor nuclear research and development; countries with the dedication and moxie necessary will be able to produce nuclear weapons. The best that can be hoped for is the retardation of the rapidity with which a nuclear capacity can be achieved--and often that will require the sort of robust self-help approach which Israel has demonstrated a couple of times.
The challenge for President Obama in part is to pursue American national and strategic interests in ways which do not alarm others, do not precipitate the sort of hostility which the approach of George W. Bush did. The other part of the challenge, the one which is inherently very difficult for the True Believer, is not to overlook the supremacy of national interest in global politics.
It has been easy, disturbingly easy, for Mr Obama to demonstrate that he is not George W. Bush. He has already met the first, smaller part of the challenge. He has not yet shown that he understands the reality that the majority of the world's leaders and people do not share the vision of the post-nationalist world so beloved by himself and others in his coterie.
Next week, both in New York and Pittsburgh, both in the spotlight and in the shadows, Mr Obama has the opportunity to show that he is the American president. That he pursues American interests first, foremost, and always. That he has a realistic grip on the needs of the US in the world today. That he is able to balance properly the overriding interests of the US with the desires of the rest of the world.
If the President can meet the second, larger, part of the challenge, he may not "change the world" but there is a fair chance he will make it better.
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