Obama’s great luck

By Weekly Archive On Nov 5, 2008

It
is beyond question that Barack Obama — who, by the time I finish
writing this article will be 24 hours away from being President of
the United States — will face an economic crisis more complex than
any faced by any other president of his country on Inauguration Day.

On
the other hand, he’s very lucky that he will succeed one of the most
unpopular presidents in the history of his country.

Because
Obama has shown to be an intelligent and able person, he contrasts
strongly with his predecessor. Also, since he is young and of mixed
blood, the new president represents the possibility of ethnical
changes in a society that has suffered for so many years the
government of conservatives and racists.

In
the economic situation afflicting the United States, at the gates of
a crisis so deep that it can only be compared with that of the 1930s,
at the end of an "era of prosperity" that reached
scandalous excesses beginning with the flotation of the dollar/gold
exchange imposed by President Richard Nixon, and later with the
deceitful policies of Reagan and the Bushes, father and son, who cut
taxes for the rich in order to stimulate the economy while
sacrificing the general welfare, the "bubble crises" and
the recession are the perverse presents the neoconservatives are
leaving for Obama.

With
its international relations extremely deteriorated and the United
States’ leadership in the world irreparably lost, the whole world
seems to be waiting for the new president to enter the White House —
although with very different hopes.

Most
people hope for an end of the United States’ interventions and
aggressions anywhere in the world; first, they hope for a withdrawal
of U.S. troops and their allies from the countries where they are
currently deployed. They think that the superpower could contribute,
under another leadership, to the emergence of a world at peace and
regain the prestige and links with other nations it once enjoyed.

The
world community hopes that a new team in the White House will mean
that the United States will renounce the idea of imposing its
international agenda;

• that
will renounce its policy of imposing its model of democracy on the
world;

• that
it will accept the establishment of international controls over the
world economy, including the United States’;

• that
it will adopt a policy that favors global disarmament and bans the
development of nuclear weapons by all nations, not excluding the
United States;

• that
it will accept the democratic, fortifying and modernizing
multilateralism provided by the United Nations;

• that
it will recognize the authority of the Movement of Nonaligned
Countries, the existence of the new regional blocs and the role of
China as a world power;

• that
it will end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by withdrawing the
troops of the U.S. and its allies, which are there under U.S.
pressure;

• that
it will adopt and support a policy of peace in the Middle East, with
the recognition of, and guarantees for, the Palestinian nation;

• that
it will renounce to the use of NATO for imperial purposes,
acknowledge its obsoleteness in the wake of the Cold War, and
propitiate its disintegration;

• that
it will end the economic, financial and commercial blockade it has
imposed on the Cuban people for 50 years and shut down its execrable
naval base at Guantánamo;

• that
it will definitively renounce its intention to use Latin America as
the rear guard of its imperial policy, and

• that
it will end its political domination or hegemony over other nations
throughout the planet.

However,
there are very powerful interests in the United States and other
nations that have supported Obama’s election because they consider
him better able than his opponent to renew U.S. leadership in the
world, precisely because of the different image he projects. In him
they see a chance to save the essence of imperialism by creating an
image that is less violent and cruel, more skillful and negotiating,
more multicultural and less chauvinistic, a policy less aggressive
and more conciliatory. They believe that Barack is a simple risk or a
necessary concession in the face of a greater danger.

It
is up to the American people, not its monopolies and
military-industrial complex, to make sure that the world sees in the
White House a road to rectification, collaboration and peace.

Manuel
E. Yepe Menéndez is a lawyer, economist and journalist. He is
a professor at the Higher Institute of International Relations in
Havana. He was Cuba’s ambassador to Romania, general director of the
Prensa Latina agency; vice president of the Cuban Institute of Radio
and Television; founder and national director of the Technological
Information System (TIPS) of the United Nations Program for
Development in Cuba, and secretary of the Cuban Movement for the
Peace and Sovereignty of the Peoples.