The global fretting over Obama’s first year in office is striking.
If Arabs are disappointed with President Obama for failing to resolve the intractable problems of the Middle East, Ines Zottl of the Financial Times Deutschland writes that Europeans should fear his complete ‘abdication’ of American leadership.
For the the Financial Times Deutschland, Ines Zottl writes in part:
In reality, the world in the year 1 A.O. [AO=After Obama] has changed more than it may appear. The U.S. has vanished – a sacrificial victim to the political climate change.
America’s president is omnipresent on TV screens around the world, but as the leading power, his country has abdicated. It no longer wants to be the world’s policeman. In place of the unipolar world, we have the free play of second-rank powers. China, Europe and Russia are too weak and too self-centered to take the lead. But neither do they want to responsibly integrate themselves into a cozy world-share that lacks house rules [world-share is like home-share]. Who’s going to take out the garbage, who’ll stock the fridge, and who’ll hit the burglar over the head when the patio door is broken open at three in the morning?
No one claims that as a global policeman, the U.S. acts altruistically. But U.S. interests are often identical to those of the Western world – our world. And the U.S. has at its command the military and financial resources of by far the greatest economic power.
Woe betide the world if President Obama continues to make this the guiding principle of his policies.
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