Victory of Obama is celebrated all over the world. Euphoria is also felt in India. As I understand Obama’s position on issues, it makes little sense to me that people should be wishing Obama to win. At least the people in India shouldn’t.
Obama is a bad news for India. He has been arguing for bringing laws that curbs outsourcing. He wants to bring a taxing model which will discourage outsourcing. He has threatened to attack Pakistan and Bush has already started attacking Pakistan. He wants to pull out from Iraq not because it is an illegal and criminal war but because it is a fiasco. He has positioned himself very strong with Israel. Alignment with Israel put US in a situation where it left with very little space to adjust its policies. This almost fix general framework of Obama’s foreign policy.
So, Why such a euphoria? Answer- Obama is not arrogant.
At the start of this century, It has been a decade since the fall of Soviet Union. There was no serious challenger of American power. There has been little trouble here and there. As someone said, “Americans have been sleeping with snake for 40 years. One day they wake up and found that snake is dead. And they found lots of mosquito flying around.”
Another observation is the growing economic strength in places where America does not have a direct control, such as China and India. This must have caused some American policy makers to think that American position can be challenged. So, American vision for 21st century was to maintain world dominance of America.
Combination of above two factors gave way to the hawkish side of American foreign policy advisers. They mocked the cautious voices. They took control the white house along with Bush. They thought they will clean up this planet from “mosquitoes”. 9/11 happened and they got their chance. After Iraq war, It turns out that America is not almighty and not that powerful to fight multiple wars in parallel and contain the conquered population. It is time to take a step back for American power. Rethink and reshape or, we should say, re-package American foreign policy.
Obama is a new face of the American vision but vision is almost same. He doesn’t speak with arrogance. He doesn’t reflect American power in his speech. That gives him an appeal in rest of the world that now America will become a humble and just power. For some it always been a just power and in Bush times it just went off the track.
People are already saying that if he tried to modify the fundamental nature of American power then he will face an enormous resistance from all the power centres. All the way from “John Bolton” to “The Economist” are threatening in their meek wordings. It seems to me that Obama is not even is a mood of doing any of it.
I don't know 