The enigma of victory

Obama needs to tap the same genius that Roosevelt did in the 1930s


As a media professional I can certify that the Obama-McCain presidential race was the most intensely scrutinsed US election in India. I am not sure why this was so. Perhaps our networks and newspapers did not have enough domestic news. But that’s unlikely. Many TV networks sent their top anchors to the US to cover the polls and aired the election day as closely as CNN or any American channel. All this would undoubtedly involve a massive commitment of time and money.



The reason is partly related to why the election was historic in the US—a black man was elected president for the first time in the history of that nation. That is important enough, but what was probably more was the circumstances in which the election has taken place. The world is in the midst of an economic crisis whose full contours are not yet fully visible. It could well be the worst in the last 100 years, it certainly is the worst in the last fifty. This is not just a crisis of liquidity or even solvency. It is one that has shaken the very foundations of global capitalism. But the message we got from Washington was that no one was in-charge, or that those who were were hopelessly inept. Time and again in the last eight years, the Bush Administration officials displayed overweening arrogance, and rank incompetence.

Context

But the crisis as such is deeper. Its beginnings lay in the surge in oil prices, high food prices and global inflation beginning from the start of 2008. The credit crisis actually came as a double whammy. The result has been in massive foreclosures of mortgages affecting millions of people in the US and, now, with the US and other major economies in recession, we are faced with the spectre of unemployment. In the past decade as Asian economies raced ahead, there was some vanity suggesting that they had decoupled from the US and European economies and could, when push came to shove, pull them out of trouble. There have been suggestions notably from the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the world has an opportunity to push the US aside and use the power of the Chinese and Indian economies to reshape the world economic order.
That scenario is merely wishful thinking. It has since become painfully apparent that we will all sink or swim together. For this reason the world looks to Washington for leadership and is visibly relieved that the new President-elect of the country, Barack Obama, has that key ingredient needed—the ability to generate hope. In this sense he can be compared more to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose “we have nothing to fear but fear” slogan was like a lifeline for the US in deep in depression caused by the Great Crash of 1929. More than his deeds, which came subsequently over the span of three administrations, it was FDR’s persona that helped keep the American soul together in the grim early 1930s.
Roosevelt’s New Deal not only catered for the unemployed, but acted to push for the recovery of the economy and reform the banking and economic system to prevent another recurrence of the crash. The regulatory system that was created in a range of areas such as stock markets, aviation, drugs, and housing have endured. He was responsible for creating the Social Security System in the US.

Reconstruction

Like Roosevelt, Obama has been thrust into a country whose need for reform does not stop at its devastated financial sector. He and his team must mend American banking and finance system, as well as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. He has promised to make the health care system the centerpiece of his social policy in a country, said to be the richest in the world, but where 16 per cent of the people do not have access to any kind of health insurance. Obama has to do all this in a country whose national debt stands at a staggering $ 10 trillion.
What Obama does for the United States has profound implications for the global economy given the economic power of the US. Just how the bad news from the US has impacted on us is evident from the travails of the business process outsourcing industry in India. Obama may have taken a stand against the industry in the past, but the issue now is not whether or not the industry is good or bad for the US or India, but whether it will survive at all.
Obama confronts even bigger challenges abroad. FDR became a war president in his third term in office when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. Obama begins as a war president from day one. The war in Iraq may be winding down, but the one in Afghanistan is in full bloom. That brings Obama close to an area of India’s strategic concern. Obama’s remarks on Kashmir seem to have set the cats among the pigeons. But there is no need to press the panic button. New Delhi is, after all, itself engaged deeply with Pakistan in trying to resolve the issue. In fact, US intervention could well work on India’s behalf in persuading the Pakistanis to accept a reasonable compromise.
Whatever the US may do, they are unlikely to derail the India-Pakistan process. Everyone knows that the only non-utopian solution to the Kashmir issue lies in recognizing the existing sovereignties in the state. If anything, the Talibani fires raging in Pakistan would be a disincentive for any large-scale meddling with the political status of J&K.
US leadership is also required in other world-order concerns such as climate change or non-proliferation. None of these are of concern to India specifically. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty could be one outcome, but if the US and China are willing to sign it, there is no reason why India should hold out.

India

Whatever be the situation, trom the geopolitical point of view, the balance of power has shifted in India’s favour since the last time around, in 1999, when the US got involved in the region by pulling Pakistan’s chestnuts out of the Kargil fire. The passage of the Indo-US nuclear deal, courtesy George W Bush, has actually strengthened India’s hand not just in relation to Pakistan but the United States itself.
In fact, the time has come for India to be much more focused on what it wants from the US and to go out and obtain it, without the kind of debilitating debate that we undertook over the Indo-US nuclear deal. India has a lot to offer the US, primarily its ability to assist the US in restoring normalcy in Afghanistan, preserving the stability of the South and Central Asian region and ensuring the security of the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean. India can play a role, too, in trying to dampen the conflict between the US and Iran. One of the biggest challenges that President Obama confronts will be in dealing with Teheran. As of now no one in Washington seems to have a policy that has a chance of succeeding. Primarily this had to do with the neoconservative sabotage master-minded by Vice-President Cheney’s office. The new administration can start with a clean slate and the situation within the country indicates that should Washington adopt a non-confrontationist posture, Tehran would reciprocate. This would go a long way in preventing a catastrophe that could be as ruinous for the US, India and the world, as the present economic crisis is proving.
Perhaps the most important thing that India, the world and even the United States is looking for in the new Obama Administration is competence. The neocons with their extravagant paranoid fantasies were also remarkably incompetent in executing the projects they began. Their Reaganite economic policy counterparts, too, turned out to be men of straw. We can only hope that an Obama is able to tap the kind of genius FDR was able to and take his country to greater heights.
The article appeared in Mail Today November 7, 2008

No clear winner on Tsunami Tuesday

Tsunami Tuesday is over, and the picture of the US electoral scene after what was virtually a national referendum on who should represent their party for the presidential election later this year is mixed. The Republican frontrunner is clear — maverick Senator John McCain —whose candidacy came back from the dead to sweep aside challengers and confound the influential socially conservative wing of his party.
But he has not yet delivered the knock-out blow to his rivals Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. The situation in the Democratic camp is still hazy. If Hillary Clinton won voter and delegate rich New York, California, Massachusetts and New Jersey, Barack Obama swept up 13 of the 24 states that had their primaries on Tuesday. Both remain locked in a battle that may clarify by March 4 when the next big lot of primaries takes place, or actually go on to the party convention in Denver in August, for the final decision.

Convoluted

It is important to remember that this is not an election, but a nomination process. It is also run by the Republican and Democratic party state organisations and has all manner of rules that would bewilder an outsider. Thus, the Democratic national party has stripped Florida of all its delegates for having an early primary. The Republicans have halved their number for the same reason. California is even more complicated. First, both the Democrats and Republicans allow voters unaffiliated to either party to vote in the primary. Second, they allow them to cast absentee ballots by mail. As a result, some 4.1 million Californians had already cast their vote before February 5. These voters may have skewed the contest in favour of Clinton because the polls in the run-up to the Tsunami Tuesday showed Obama catching up. Even more complicated is the manner in which California distributes its delegates. 370 of the 441 delegates are allocated proportionally to presidential candidates; 241 of the 370 on basis of the votes cast in each of the state’s 53 Congressional constituencies. Then, 129 delegates are allotted to candidates based on the vote across the state. On May 18, the remaining 71 delegates will be selected from among party leaders and elected representatives.
Whatever be the outcome of the primaries in terms of the percentage of votes picked up, what matters is the number of delegates they have — as of now, the winning Democratic nominee needs 2025 out of a total of 4049 delegates and the Republican, 1191 of 2380. Tsunami Tuesday may have decided the way that 50 per cent or so delegates will vote, but none of the candidates are anywhere near their respective magic figures. As of now, Clinton leads the Democrats with 845 delegates, and Obama has 765 and on the Republican side we have McCain with 613, Romney 269, and Huckabee 190. As we have explained, so arcane are the Democratic rules in distributing delegates, that the true outcome of the primaries will take some time to emerge. The California vote may be in, but its delegates are yet to be allotted. But since the popular vote is available, the candidates will use the “bragging rights”— Hillary in Massachusetts and Obama in Missouri — to push on further for the next goal, the party presidential nomination.
The immediate consequence of Tsunami Tuesday will be that McCain has time on his side to rebuild his campaign and, more important, his rocky relationship with the conservative factions in his party. And while he will have time to consolidate his position, the Democrats could be slugging it out for some more months to come. The recent primaries show that they are now divided on race and gender lines and whoever wins will have to put in that much of a task of healing the rift. But the danger is that the fight could become so bitter that it could give McCain the needed opening when the actual presidential campaign gets under way in September.

India

But first McCain needs to not only clinch the nomination, but also heal the rift with the strong social conservative wing of his party. Just how he will square the circle on issues like abortion and immigration reform, where he has liberal views, with those of the conservatives is not clear. But in the end the latter have the choice of lumping it, or watching an even bigger enemy win the race — Hillary Clinton. Some fire-eaters say that they would rather see that happen than allow the GOP to lose its soul by having a McCain presidency.
As in many other countries of the world, there is an asymmetrically huge interest in India on the outcome of US electoral processes and polls. What do the current front runners signify for India ? A major issue of concern is the American non-proliferation policy and the place it occupies in America’s strategic calculations. While McCain, Clinton and Obama are broadly supportive of the Hyde Act that enabled the India-US Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, no one is taking a radical position, either for or against us. The Left will be glad to know that India does not occupy an important position in the strategic worldview of any of the leaders of the race at this time. Even Clinton who is co-chair of the Senate India caucus is cautious about committing support for a permanent seat for the country in the UN Security Council. Indeed, her stated commitment to pushing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty will pose major problems for the hawks in New Delhi who want to negotiate their way into the treaty instead of being told what to do. Obama has also promised the same and he goes a step further in backing the “verifiable global ban on the production of new nuclear weapons material.” We wonder how this would sound to those, many former Department of Atomic Energy officials, who oppose any kind of restraints on India’s nuclear programme in the context of the Indo-US nuclear deal. Obama has, somewhat uncomfortably retained that Democratic party agenda of pushing India and Pakistan to make peace on Kashmir. Clearly any one of these could emerge as obstacles in Indo-US relations in the coming years.

McCain

As a “traditional” Republican, McCain would be India’s best bet because he is unlikely to turn the non-proliferation screws on the country. Neither is he likely to get involved in one of those high-minded fits that periodically afflict the Democrats to resolve the problems of the world, and India and Pakistan in particular. McCain, a former POW and war veteran is a healthy realist, of the kind India can do business with. And speaking of business, he is the most forthright in dismissing concerns over outsourcing and efforts to undermine his country’s free trade posture.
Given the interest that merely the nomination process of American political parties is attracting across the world, we could demand that the US give a one-fourth of a vote to non-Americans to participate in the process. But more seriously, what it reveals is that, despite the profligacy of George W Bush, the US remains a pivotal global power. So it is a matter of great interest to everyone as to who will be the leader of the country.
What the campaign reveals till now is that while the failings of the Bush presidency have created an enormous yearning for change — the factor that Obama is tapping — worries about the economy could provide the decisive edge to a candidate. With foreclosures already upon them, and a recession around the corner, Americans would be keen to see experienced hands at the helm, rather than heed a soaring message calling for radical change.
This article appeared in Mail Today February 7, 2008

Bush's system-destructive years provide a clean slate for an American renewal

The democratic world seems to be coming up with a magic figure for the tenure of a high office. It is approximately eight years. Margaret Thatcher exceeded it by three years and had to be pushed out of office, as was Tony Blair who was two years over par. The Americans, whose love for organisation is well known, have institutionalised it to two 4-year terms for their president.
But the pushing process begins early; ask George W Bush. Till two years ago he could do no wrong. He led his country into an extraordinary adventure in Iraq and they voted him back to power in 2004 with a greater majority. He used the fiscal surpluses he inherited to pursue the conservatives’ favourite agenda — tax cuts — even after defence expenditure soared. He systematically undermined American civil liberties and the people seemed not to care.
Bush has already been condemned to the prison specially reserved for democratic politicians — irrelevance. Tony Blair is there, as are V.P. Singh, Inder Gujral and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Politics is a cruel profession. It takes a protagonist to unprecedented heights and then, without fear or favour, lets go of them. You can be a dictator like Stalin or a Mao, feared and adored in their lifetimes, but getting their comeuppance in history.
The high, and the let down, for politicians in the democratic system may not be as dramatic, but it must nevertheless be painful. In the United States, the process usually begins with a president’s last state of the union address. Last year around this time, when Bush delivered the address, the economy was doing well and the war badly. Poor Dubya, he got slammed for the war and little praise for the economy. This time, the war in Iraq is doing well and the economy on the brink of recession, and no one is talking about the war.

Iraq

He was a Teflon president till last November when his party lost its majority in the US Congress because of the war in Iraq. Given the iron control that the neocons retained on the system, it is more than likely that in the coming years the Bush “legacy” will be more about discovering the ways and means through which the President damaged and devalued the system, rather than the touted achievements. Last week, the Center of Public Integrity went through the process of counting the lies of his administration on the issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction and concluded that it had lied on a grand total of 935 occasions in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Bush has sought to strike an uncharacteristically non-confrontationist tone in his latest state of the union address, hoping perhaps to use the next 51 weeks that he had to salvage something of a legacy. But his thrust still seems to be the “what’s in it for me” approach. Take the war in Iraq. Violence may be down, but anyone who believes that the addition of 20,000 soldiers changed things around in Iraq is living in cloud cuckoo land. The change has come by the creation of the 80,000 strong Sunni militia paid $300 per month by the US to police the Sunni-majority areas. As for the Shias, they run the government and are biding their time for Uncle Sam’s departure. What will happen to this militia when the US leaves, no doubt after Bush is well settled at his ranch in Crawford, Tx? No one knows. But one thing is clear, neither the Iraqi army, nor the national police are capable of providing security for the country that has been torn apart by a war of George W. Bush’s making.

Afghanistan

Typically, Bush has sought to use this last opportunity to push for institutionalising his tax cuts. The cuts, heavily weighted in favour of the rich, are supposed to produce a budget surplus by 2012 — the end of the next president’s first term. But the predictions do not take into account the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that currently cost some $200 billion per annum.
The US president has simply papered over the huge problems confronting the war in Afghanistan. They are not just those connected to fighting the resurgent Taliban and the deteriorating situation in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. They are related to the quarrels within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and its partners on the way the Afghan mission should be prosecuted, and the contribution of the nations involved. As it is, only the British, Canadians and Dutch, along with the Americans, permit their troops to fight. The others focus on “reconstruction”. Yet if there was a single issue that was to define the Bush Administration it was the “war on terror”; but the struggle in Afghanistan indicates that it is far from being won, leave alone fought with any degree of effectiveness.
The problem for Bush, and for the rest of the world, is that the American voter has moved on and is focusing on the coming presidential poll. As of now the election is wide open. We are not sure as to who would be the Democratic and Republican candidates, and circumstances could actually take the race to the summer when the delegates elected at the primaries will formally vote for their respective candidate in party conventions. Predicting what way the election will play out is even more confounding because different outcomes could be suggested with different pairs of contestants.
But certain consequences of the Bush presidency are becoming evident. According to the Economist, “the proportion of Americans who think their country should be active in the world is the lowest it has been since the early 1990s.” This is bad news. Someone recently pointed out that we have reached an era where when America sneezes the world does not catch a cold. But if the turbulence in the world economy is anything to go by, the sneeze still has the ability to generate the shivers.
But the bigger problem the world will face from an isolationist America is that of managing the world system. In an alternative world, Bush should have led the world to an era where the United Nations could fulfill its mandate of maintaining world peace and directed the efforts to combat climate change. But that and other possibilities were wantonly destroyed by Bush’s policies.
Countries like India need to reflect on a US that is less attentive to Afghanistan and Pakistan. A facile view can be that with the big bad Americans back in their own country things will work just fine. But that is simply not true. There may be 25 NATO allies and 15 partner countries involved in Afghanistan. But more than half of the 53,000 troops there are American, as is the overwhelming portion of the air and naval effort.

Renewal

The US has been an interfering busy-body ever since they became the world’s hegemonistic power. But when it comes to crises — be it in Burma, Kenya, Darfur or Pakistan —the world looks to the US for leadership. The contrast with the rising role of China cannot be more marked. Beijing’s amoral approach to foreign policy has encouraged the proliferation of nuclear weapons to Pakistan and compelled countries like India to upturn its pro-democracy foreign policy in Burma.
Every election in a democratic country shifts its political paradigm. George Bush’s system-destructive tenure may actually be setting the stage for his successor to reconstruct the US on a new basis. That seems to be the sentiment that is propelling the once implausible candidacy of Barack Obama. The change of drivers has begun in the US, the old is virtually gone, but we do not yet know who will be the new driver, or his, or her’s, chosen direction.
This article appeared in Mail Today January 30, 2008