The model of the world Barack Obama held in his mind upon taking office is no more. The states of Europe, with their bottomless entitlement structures, were the ideals. The countries of the Middle East, with their post-colonial resentments, were America’s moral creditors. In Strasbourg, France, he told a crowd soon after becoming president, “In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world.” And in his famed Cairo speech, Obama explained that between the Muslim world and the West, “tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies.”
Corralled by our European betters on one side and our Muslim victims on the other, we would sulk forward into a less conspicuously American century. This meant bringing our social priorities in line with Europe’s and making our amends with Muslim leaders who had hitherto been denied the respect they self-evidently deserved. Ambitious legislation would blanket America in government-run health care, and despotic regimes would hear few American complaints about human rights. Interventionism at home and bashfulness abroad. This was what world opinion, to which Obama was obsessively attuned, demanded of America. “I’m here to listen, to share ideas and to jointly, as one of many NATO allies, help shape our vision for the future,” he told the crowd in Strasbourg. “Too often the United States starts by dictating,” he told a reporter from the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya news channel. “So let’s listen.”
Is the president still listening? What we hear now is that the political and geo-strategic calculations of Barack Obama are obsolete. In 2009, Europe was presented with the tab for the continent-wide spa service it had become. Standing before the abyss of insolvency, leaders instituted sharp austerity measures, which made Europe suddenly look a lot more like America. Tuitions were no longer on the house; retirement ages were raised; and workweeks were extended. Instead of getting a free lunch, Europeans washed dishes. At the same time that Barack Obama proposed an international European-style spendathon, Europe discovered thrift and told him to take his gauche prodigality elsewhere. While Germany, the biggest saver of the bunch, slashed its way back to health, the U.S. mountain of debt hit unthinkable new heights.
And then news started trickling in from the Muslim world. A spasm here, a shake-up there. By the start of 2011, the despotic status quo of the Middle East to which Obama had deferred was crumbling. Most important, whatever comes of the revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and beyond, they were decidedly not anti-Western in nature. The “colonialism” to which Obama attributed so much Arab suffering played no role in the protesters’ revolutionary narratives. Arabs do not want America to apologize or pay historical damages. They want their leaders gone, and many are ready for U.S. help.
Europe is not what Obama thought it was; nor is the Muslim world. Nothing so embodies the twin mockery of Obama’s original vision as today’s news that French President Nicolas Sarkozy might soon call for European airstrikes on Muammar Qaddafi’s command headquarters. Decadent, peace-loving Europe is now tightening the belt at home only to beat the U.S. to bombing the bad guys. And for the anti-imperialist Libyans, Western firepower won’t come a moment too soon.
The man who was to knowingly shepherd Americans through historic change has come to a dead stop while the world around him transforms in ways he cannot negotiate. When Obama spoke of Europe’s underappreciated leadership role, he wasn’t envisioning France out-hawking the U.S. on regime change. Despite the constant blare from a world turned upside down, one gets the sense that the Obama Listening Tour ended a long time ago. The administration responds to each day’s news as though things would right themselves if only George W. Bush would leave office.
The inversion of Barack Obama’s world means ultimately that where he saw a place for American humility, American leadership must re-enter. He is fond of offering the formulation whereby the fate of country X must be decided by the people of country X. But as we see now, the fate of country X is often placed partially in the hands of country Y. For today, that’s Sarkozy’s somewhat Americanized France. Tomorrow, countries Y and Z might not be nearly as palatable.
