Analyze the $$ spent in the election campaign
Obama:
Change or continuity? (Part II)
Analyze
the $$ spent in the election campaign
By
Elíades Acosta Matos Read Spanish Version
In
an essay by James Traub published in The New York Times Magazine [1]
exactly one year before the elections that carried Barack Obama to
the presidency of the United States, you can read an interview with
Joseph S. Nye, a Harvard professor who, in a 2005 poll, was
identified as one of the 10 most influential U.S. academicians in the
field of international relations. Nye also held high posts in the
Carter and Clinton administrations and is the creator of the
"theories of soft and intelligent power," which are
reportedly the war horses of the Obama administration and a universal
panacea to solve the problems of the United States in its relations
with the rest of the world.
Those
statements by Joseph Nye cast light on what can be expected from the
new presidency by identifying the political philosophy that lies
behind the successful speeches and statements of a politician like
Barack Obama, a measured, intelligent and lucid man, at the time of
understanding and knowing how to use the force of ideas and symbols
to defend and promote his country’s interests. "As president,"
Nye said at the time, "Obama can do more for the soft power of
the United States in the world than we were able to do in the past.
[…] We feel that he can help us to transform the way in which the
U.S. deals with the world." [2]
Quite
frankly, no one would worry about the harmony between Nye’s ideas and
Obama’s, so long as they do not simplify an analysis of the
complexities of the contemporary world, or fall into the temptation
of trying to solve the world’s problems through the smart bombs,
secret prisons and preventive wars so liked by the neoconservative
clan that dominated the decisions of the departing administration.
But in Nye’s biography we find two items that force us to reflect and
to dig into the background and significance of such a coincidence.
Nye
has been not only a successful university professor and an
outstanding public figure in two Democratic administrations but also
is the current U.S. vice president of the Trilateral Commission, a
private and extremely influential group that brings together
businesses from the U.S., Canada and Europe. It was founded by Nelson
Rockefeller in 1947, the same year the Cold War began. As if that
weren’t enough, Nye is also vice president of the Bilderberg Group,
an elite of 130 businessmen, politicians and owners of major media
conglomerates worldwide that meets every year in secret to determine
common strategies to solve the world’s problems.
And
it is here, at this point, that (I don’t know why) Don Quixote’s
prudent advice to his halberdier comes to my mind: "Beware,
Sancho, that we have run into the Church." Should we not be
worried that, behind the champion of "change," there is a
theory designed by one of the champions of the conservation of
privileges, of huge profits and the hegemony of a handful of nations
and corporations over the rest of the world, precisely much of what
we have been told needs to change? Apparently, as Cuban street slang
expresses it, "the list doesn’t match the ticket."
In
an interview in Deep Journal, conducted by Dutch journalist Daan de
Wit with U.S. writer Webster Tarpley, author of the book "Obama,
the Postmodern Coup; The Making of the Manchurian Candidate,"
there
is an interesting analysis of the ideological entourage of the
current president and its alleged devotion to figures like Joseph
Nye, Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Soros. All of those figures are
linked to powerful circles worried about the retreats made by the
U.S. leadership and advocating a radical reconsideration of the
nation’s domestic and foreign policy methods, so as to exert that
leadership under the new conditions of our era.
One
of these figures’ recurrent affirmations — whose echoes, softened by
electoral caution, can be heard in Obama’s speeches — is that
instead of military invasions, ideological challenges, cultural wars
and a vigorous public diplomacy are needed to return to the United
States (and to capitalism in general) the vigor it lost during the
past several years and to reinstall the U.S. in the world’s
imagination as the paladin of freedom and democracy and the system
able to guarantee the greatest amount of happiness to mankind. In
sum, it is a question not of touching of the essence, rectify
mistakes or avoid injustice but of a vulgar approach to image and
public relations. It is not a question of transforming reality; it is
of altering human beings’ perception of reality.
When
Obama told James Traub that the figures of U.S. foreign policy he
most admired were George C. Marshall, Dean Acheson and George F.
Kennan "because of the way they solved the problems, always
choosing tools other than military tools, which are very costly,"
[3] he was in fact acknowledging his adherence to the so-called
realistic and pragmatic school of U.S. foreign policy to which the
abovementioned personages belong. Obama also stressed that, when he
admitted he also respected the group that designed U.S. foreign
policy during the Bush Sr. administration. Special mention was made
of Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft, the latter being a counselor at
the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the
Washington think tank that numbers among its advisers Brzezinski,
Carla Hill, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn and Richard Fairbanks. Richard
Armitage, Powell’s second-in-command, and Joseph S. Nye are part of
its board of governors.
On
Feb. 8, 2008, under the auspices of the CSIS, Gov. Bill Richardson of
New Mexico, one of the men initially asked by Obama to occupy a
Cabinet seat, delivered a lecture whose title was extremely eloquent:
"The
New Realism and the Rebirth of American Leadership," no
doubt a symptom of the current times and the fresh air expected from
the new administration. At the other end of the world, in Australia,
Francis Fukuyama, one of the first signers of the Project for a New
American Century, the neoconservative platform of George W. Bush’s
presidency, distanced himself from the catastrophe he helped to
create, by declaring, along the same lines as Richardson: "I
realized that many of my [neoconservative] friends depended
excessively on their ideas of hard power as a means to provoke
political changes in the world, but the current conflicts are very
complicated and conventional military power alone cannot bring other
countries to our side. […] We must use soft power more extensively
to promote the interests of the United States." [4]
The
new face and the renewed cultural vocation that Obama’s
administration is trying to embody is that which history has imposed
upon him. Under the glamorous and reborn look of the spring being
promised to us, it is not difficult to sense the awful scars of the
war in Iraq, the disasters of hunger, disease and misery that afflict
millions of human beings worldwide and that capitalism has been
unable to eradicate. The theories and eventual practice of Soft and
Smart Power, its proclaimed intention to invest in schools,
hospitals, sustainable development for all, new U.S. cultural centers
throughout the world, more exchange programs, a greater flow of
information, access to technology, a fairer trade and respect for
differences would represent (if they were applied) a step forward
with respect to the frankly imperialist theories and practices of
neoconservatives. But with every logic a decisive question arises:
Are the policies of the New Realism truly destined to change the
profound bases, the roots of the current worldwide imperialist
system? Or are they barely giving them fresh air and another image,
under the pressure of the huge and dangerous mistakes of the Bush
administration?
In
the cultural field, at least, we do not see a radical change in the
orientation of the ongoing policies. On the table we do not see the
promotion of a democratic, plural, participative culture that would
improve the lives of people worldwide. There’s not even a discussion
as to how U.S. citizens can access the cultural products of the other
nations. The talk we hear is about what more-efficient and almost
invisible mechanisms should be used to resume their control of the
flow of cultures and ideas, directing them from the center to the
periphery, with the declared objective of transforming the world’s
perception of the United States. And when culture is used in this
manner, we shouldn’t be surprised that what people really want to
hide behind it are the mechanisms of coercion and penetration that
are not cultural but essentially economic, political and military.
In
this generational change that is occurring in U.S. politics, as the
old neoconservatives depart, heads lowered, in a funeral procession,
carrying the cadavers of Reaganism and Bushism, the people who arrive
to replace them are convinced that culture is today the concentrated
expression of the economy and war by other means, i.e., smooth, soft,
and intelligent.
And
if an extreme optimist appears who believes that Obama is the new
incarnation of the Messiah and that his task is to expel the
merchants from the nation’s temple and restore the nation’s earliest
virtues, I invite him to analyze the route of the money spent during
the election campaign. He will then discover the manner in which the
system makes its investments, with a cool head, when
self-preservation is at issue.
• Obama
collected more than twice the money raised by the other candidates.
It’s worthwhile recalling that in the Major Leagues what’s important
is not the modest contribution of humble citizens but the money of
the big donors who, let’s be clear, are not moved by philanthropy or
idealism but by their own interests.
• In
this campaign, the biggest donors were the big corporations, such as
J.P. Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup.
• For
the first time in many years, Wall Street invested in Democratic
candidates. So did the major legal firms.
I
don’t think that Vikrat Pandit — the current president of Citigroup,
the financial monster present in more than 100 countries, the man who
in 2007 bought the investment fund Old Lane Partners for US$800
million, more than $165 million of which landed in his private bank
account — has the same ideals and hopes for change that the rest of
the mortals have, those who gave a sigh of relief when they learned
of Obama’s victory.
But,
thinking it over, is it difficult to picture Mr. Pandit sighing with
relief at midnight on that historical Nov. 4? Of course, in his case
it was a soft sigh, as soft as the policies that he and the others
are planning to apply to the brand-new president.
Elíades
Acosta Matos, is a Cuban writer and essayist. He has published
numerous essays and books, among them "Apocalypse According to
St. George," and "From Valencia to Baghdad." Hist
latest book, "21st-Century Imperialism; The Cultural Wars,"
will be presented at the 2009 Havana Book Fair. Acosta was chief of
the Cultural Department of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party of Cuba.
[1] James
Traub: "Is (His) Biography (Our) Destiny?", The New York
Times Magazine, Nov. 4, 2007.
[2]
Id.
[3]
Id.
[4]
Eleanor Hall: "The World Today: Fukuyama Backs Obama for US
Presidency", May 27, 2008 (http: www.abc.net.au)
