There has been a whirlwind of curiosity about Obama’s thoughts on the Gaza conflict that has only been been whipped into a low-level fervor due to Obama’s wise decision to stay tight lipped on the issue. Despite Obama citing foreign policy as perhaps the most important area for the rule of one president at a time, reporters and pundits have attempted a variety of approaches to get more out of the President-Elect to no avail.
Listening to ABC’s This Week via podcast on my way into work this morning, George Stephanopoulos was no different. However, Stephanopoulos cited another fact that lead to this question in my mind: how much liberty does Obama possess to engage in the Gaza conflict in a full-throated manner upon assuming office?
The fact that lead to the above question was that Stephanopoulos and ABC received literally thousands of listener questions in advance of Obama’s appearance, and according to Stephanopoulos almost all of them had to do with the economy. The Iraq invasion has been a topic of national discussion for some time now, by which I mean not just a topic for reporters and pundits, but a topic with which Americans writ large have been engaged. However, nothing grabs people’s attention quite like economic strife, particularly when that strife involves erratically fluctuating markets and job losses in the millions.
So to some degree, one has to wonder whether the curiosity over Obama’s thoughts on Gaza is merely a product of the news media and topic in which the average American has little interest. If this is in fact the case, should we then expect that upon assuming office Obama will have a great deal less to say about the conflict in Gaza than many might hope and is that as it should be (contra Tony Blair’s call).
Granted, the United States has been a long time player in the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and is roundly considered a close ally of Israel’s. However, with as many domestic items as are currently on his plate, Obama’s ability to fulfill that historical role seems distinctly hampered. Further, one has a hard time imagining the average American content to see their newly elected President whisking off to the Middle East in order to play middle-nation-state to a sixty year old conflict with 401K values and jobs disappearing like a cruel magic trick.
At least part of the difficulties currently faced by the U.S. are the result of its seeming uni-polar status as world superpower over the past decades. Continuing to play that role in an unfettered style with such crippling domestic challenges would seem, perhaps, both a fool’s errand and a delusion of the grandest variety. Like it or not, when it comes to geo-political affairs, it seems that U.S. is in need of a partner (or group of partners).
Increasingly it appears that Nicholas Sarkozy is willing to assume that role, and it may be that Obama would be well advised to use Sarkozy’s willingness to his advantage. Of course, one of the primary challenges that any new player, Sarkozy or otherwise, has in such an ascension is that of legitimacy.
One has a hard time imagining that a direct call for a ceasefire would have been as quickly rebuffed as Sarkozy’s were it to have come directly from the U.S. But this question of legitimacy is precisely where Obama is well positioned to assist Sarkozy and others by expressly indicating his support for the role Sarkozy seeks to play. What’s more, Obama’s promise of a new direction for the country gives him a degree of latitude in passing the torch in a way that few other candidates stood to realize.
At the end of the day, the U.S. will remain a key player on the geo-political scene regardless of its domestic challenges. But the best interests of the country and the planet may lie in a decision to share the reigns, not just to deal with an increasingly shaky house, but also as a means of signaling a distinct shift of course from the past eight years.
Time, as they say, will tell the tale.