El Diario Exterior, Spain

Translating into Obamics

Alvaro Vargas Llosa reflects on how what the diverse observers and politicians of the world believe about Barack Obama is in fact what they believe about their own societies and how the way in which he is seen abroad has a lot to do with the way in which the factions relate with each other on either side of each country’s ideological frontier.

By Alvaro Vargas Llosa

Translated By Carolyn French

January 18, 2007

Spain - El Diario Exterior - Original Article (Spanish)

Foreign leaders and journalists often joke that the whole world should vote in American elections given that the results effect the planet as a whole. In spite of his setback in New Hampshire, around the world from Buenos Aires to Paris, intense scrutiny of Barack Obama is taking place. But what the diverse observers and politicians believe about him is in fact what they believe in regards to their own societies.

In Europe, one perceives a guilty attitude. The Left-wing, which tends to attribute to the United States imperialist foreign policy and discrimination against Black and Hispanic people, is not welcoming Obama’s ascent as one would expect. There have been very few critical articles in La Republica, in Italy, or in Le Monde, in France [Editor’s Note: which are considered by many to be more to the right politically]. On sending the message that they are ready to elect an African-American, a part of American society is exhibiting an attitude much less prejudiced than commonly attributed to this country. This lesson proves particularly uncomfortable for socialist Europe. Contrast the attitude of those Americans that are willing to elect Obama to President with the conditions that drove the communities of North African origin to a state of violence in the outskirts of Paris recently. And has Scandinavia ever begat at any time something comparable to Obama from the minorities that the State tends to treat so generously so long as they do not make too much noise?

The European Right-wing shows more enthusiasm for Obama than the Left-wing. The French political scientist Dominique Moisi seems to consider that the Democrats will give Europeans pro-American arguments to promote the United States in the midst of the anti-American ones. “Why is Obama so different” asks a text distributed by Project Syndicate “from the other presidential candidates? After all, in matters of international politics, the next President is going to have very little room to maneuver. He (or she) will have to stay in Iraq, intervene in the conflict between Israel and Palestine on the side of Israel, and confront global warming. If Obama can change things it will not be by the political decisions he makes, but by what he is. The moment he appears on televisions around the world, victorious and smiling, the United States’ image and the soft power will experience something akin to a Copernican Revolution.

The French philosopher Guy Sorman points out, in his recent article, that “the heart of the United States continues to be conservative” and “will stay within a magic square designed by Reagan in 1980: moral, market, military action and a small central government.” He indicates that Obama will withdraw the troops in Iraq, but step up the presence of the United States in Afghanistan. Other commentaries from the Right-wing point to the fact that, in contrast to Hillary Clinton, Obama’s health care plan will not impose mandatory insurance: a sign that his type of social engineering is basically “Diet.”

In Latin America, the Right-wing is also applauding Obama in its own way, for different reasons. They utilize him as an example of the right way of creating social change although they dispute his socializing tendency: pacifist and through established institutions. In La Nacion in Argentina, Mario Diament points out that Obama’s predecessors imply that the candidate “does not burden himself with the history of racial discrimination” that other black leaders do and applaud the fact that “he is not one of the enraged leaders from the civil right’s era.” The implicit message directed at the Latin American Right-wing is that the United States is a society of self-help, and that, in contrast to radical Bolivians and Venezuelans, it does not believe in replacing minority discrimination with Communist revolutions.

Perceiving that the racial mobility implicit to Obama’s personal history is publicity almost too good for the American society, the Latin American Left-wing has tempered its enthusiasm for the African-American senator. One expert observed in Venezuela that the only significant gesture towards Latin America resulting from Obama’s foreign policy is “the lifting of travel restrictions to Cuba” and “maybe to talk someday with Hugo Chavez.”

Few outside observers, from the Right-wing or the Left-wing, seem to believe that Obama would signify a dramatic change for the United States in real terms. With respect to domestic politics, no European or Latin American hopes for something similar to the “New Deal” of 1932 or the “Great Society” of 1964; in international politics, no one awaits anything comparable to the “realpolitik” of Nixon and Kissinger of 1968. That makes Obama a primarily psychological and symbolic phenomenon. Consequently, the way in which he is seen abroad has much more to do with the way in which the factions relate with each other on either side of each country’s ideological frontier than with what the senator would really do or not do.

ORIGINAL SPANISH TEXT HERE