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18.03.08
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Is Obama Good For Russia?
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Comment by Vladimir Frolov
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Senator Barack Obama has a real chance to become the next president of the United States. He would become the first black president in American history – a powerful factor in the unfolding Obama movement.
Not only does Sen. Obama lead Sen. Hillary Clinton by more than a hundred delegates in this year’s extraordinarily competitive battle for the Democratic presidential nomination (a lead that for Clinton appears to be increasingly difficult to overcome), he is also well positioned to win the general election in the fall by beating the Republican nominee Sen. John McCain.
In most national polls, Obama is ahead of McCain by an estimated five to seven percent (50 to 43 percent according to the latest Pew Research Poll). While McCain receives 91 percent of the Republican vote, this year there might not be enough Republicans in the country to get him elected.
As Charlie Cook of the National Journal reported, 38 percent of those interviewed by Pew called themselves Democrats, compared with 24 percent who identified themselves as Republicans. When undeclared voters are factored in, Democrats go up to 55 percent, while Republicans rise to 34 percent. The presidency, it seems, is McCain’s to lose.
Obama-mania is in full swing. In the United States, enormous crowds show up for Obama campaign rallies. High-level political endorsements are flowing, including from the still powerful Kennedy clan. The American media is providing mostly uncritical coverage of Obama, subjecting his political platform to little scrutiny.
Even in Russia the Obama craze is booming. An unofficial Russian-language Obama campaign web site – www.barackobama.ru – delivers upbeat coverage of the senator’s campaign. In the “Moscow primary” of American expats, Obama thrashed Clinton.
Some Russian pundits, including Duma deputies Sergey Markov and Konstantin Kosachev, have been quick to say that Obama might be the best candidate for Russia. “Barack Obama looks like the candidate that can be expected to take the greatest strides toward Russia, since unlike McCain, he’s not infected with any Cold War phobias, and unlike Clinton, he won’t be tied down by the old habits of his advisors,” Kosachev wrote in Kommersant on Feb. 7.
But there isn’t enough evidence to support this judgment. In fact, a more pertinent question not only for Moscow, but for the rest of world, is “who is Obama?” We know about this man about as much as Americans knew about Vladimir Putin in 1999.
We know that he is a graduate of the Harvard Law School, and had been a state senator in Illinois for a number of years before a stroke of luck brought him to the U.S. Senate in 2004 (he did not face tough competition against a powerful incumbent). And we know that he made a flowery speech at the Democratic convention in 2004, published two bestselling memoirs, and got on the cover of Time magazine, after which the American public went into a swoon over Obama, with some fans comparing him to John Kennedy.
He has built his presidential bid on the platform of bringing “real change” to Washington, promising to break the partisan gridlock that paralyzed the U.S. political system. He claims to be assembling a broad popular movement to restore American people’s confidence in their elected government, and regain respect and admiration for America abroad.
Using a page from Ronald Reagan’s “It’s morning again in America,” Obama’s campaign logo features a picture of a bright sun dawning upon the American flag. And his campaign slogan is “Change we can believe in.”
Obama lavishly promises change, but can he deliver it? There is little in his public record to suggest that he is prepared to fight the difficult battles necessary to transform the American politics and American foreign policy.
During his years in the Illinois Senate, Obama earned a reputation for skipping tough votes. Whenever a controversial vote was scheduled, like the one on gun control in December 1999, Obama was gone vacationing in Hawaii.
His brief career in the Senate shows no interest on his part in fighting battles across party lines to get legislation passed. He seems to be deliberately avoiding issues and bills that would earn him powerful enemies, or offend key constituencies that he would need to win in his political future. In fact, one gets the impression the Obama was already running for President when he arrived in the U.S. Senate in 2005. He seems to be obsessed with raw political ambition and people’s admiration for his persona. As David Ignatius of the Washington Post wrote, “The trait people remember best about Obama, in addition to his intellect, is his ambition.”
Obama’s domestic agenda is anything but “transformational.” He puts forward goodie-bag proposals that offend no key constituency, but eschew tough choices. He describes quite vaguely how and at what cost he intends to achieve his key objectives – providing health coverage for every American or enacting an "energy plan" that would invest $150 billion in 10 years to create a "green energy sector."
As Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post wrote, Obama “Has run on the vague promise of ‘change,’ but on issue after issue -- immigration, the economy, global warming -- he has offered boilerplate policies that evade the underlying causes of the stalemates. He seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation's major problems when, so far, he isn't.”
Much of Obama-mania stems from his opposition to the war in Iraq. Indeed, Obama was quite prophetic about it. In a speech at an anti-war rally in Chicago on October 2, 2002, Obama said: "I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences."
However, his position on the war has shifted depending on how the American public was reacting to events there, from supporting “staying as long as necessary” since “simply pulling out would destabilize Iraq” in 2004, to calling for phased withdrawals in 2006 and voting against funding American forces in Iraq in 2007. In my opinion, this is called political pandering.
What does Obama have to say about Russia? Not much. His campaign has promised me Obama’s fact sheet on Russia. Perhaps, we will learn more from it.
So far, Obama’s interest in Russia seems to be largely reduced to controlling its nuclear weapons. Obama is an apprentice of Sen. Richard Lugar. He even made a trip to Russia’s nuclear and missile facilities with Lugar in August 2005 (they were both mistakenly detained by Russian security officials in Perm prompting a minor international scandal) and coauthored a nuclear weapons security bill.
This is what Obama had to say about Russia in his Foreign Affairs piece in August 2007: “Although we must not shy away from pushing for more democracy and accountability in Russia, we must work with the country in areas of common interest -- above all, in making sure that nuclear weapons and material are secure. We must also work with Russia to update and scale back our dangerously outdated Cold War nuclear postures and de-emphasize the role of nuclear weapons.”
Obama endorsed the Shultz-Perry plan for profound nuclear reduction and promises to push for ratification of the CTBT, as well as negotiate a global nuclear missile materials cut-off agreement. This is an agenda that many in the Kremlin might welcome, particularly if Obama kills the missile defense deployments in Eastern Europe. But it is a narrow agenda, and Obama seems to be seeking to broaden it by boldly discussing Russia’s internal developments – a direction where he will be forcefully pushed back.
Obama’s official statement on the Russian presidential election is an effort both to pander to the Russia-bashing constituency in Washington (this is how you say, these days, that you are mature on foreign policy) and to extend an olive branch to Dmitry Medvedev’s administration.
Obama criticized Russia’s presidential election by stating that the vote was not fully free and fair because of the absence of free media and a crackdown on political parties and opposition.
“Against the backdrop of Russia's more recent experiment with democracy, this election was a tragic step backwards,” reads Obama’s campaign statement. “Medvedev won easily in part because a very popular Putin selected him, but also in part because genuine opposition candidates were not allowed on the ballot, Kremlin-loyal television networks flooded the airwaves with positive coverage of Medvedev, and the entire state apparatus was mobilized to produce votes for Putin's candidate. The election was the least competitive in Russia's post-communist history.”
The “olive branch” is contained in the following paragraph.
“The United States, however, will need to work with President Medvedev on a range of issues of common concern, such as preventing weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of terrorists, addressing Iran's nuclear ambitions, reducing our nuclear arsenals, and securing stable supplies of oil and gas from Russia. But engagement with President Medvedev and his government must not lead us to turn a blind eye to democratic erosion inside Russia. On the campaign trail, Medvedev himself hinted that he wanted to strengthen the rule of law, independent media, and Russia's embrace of political freedom. All true friends of the Russian people should encourage him to keep his word."
Obama seems to be publicly prodding Medvedev to prove his liberal credentials and pass American muster. With regard to today’s Russia, this is nearsighted diplomacy that can only backfire, as outgoing President Vladimir Putin has already emphasized.
For many Americans, Obama, for all intents and purposes, is a “candidate of hope.” But we know from our experience that different people have different hopes for politicians they elect to run their country and some, most likely to be the majority, are likely to see their hopes dashed after the inauguration.
But this is America’s internal matter. For us, what is missing is convincing evidence that Obama would be good for Russia. |
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