Fred Kaplan believes the hype:

“President-elect Barack Obama”—the phrase alone does more to repair the tarnished image of America in the world than any action George W. Bush might ponder taking in his final weeks of power [bold mine-DL]. The very fact of a black president with multinational roots unhinges the terrorists’ recruitment poster of a racist, parochial, Muslim-hating United States. It revives Europeans’ trans-Atlantic dreams just as their own union seems to be foundering.

That first point may be true, but it may not count for very much.  If we assume that there is nothing Mr. Bush can do at this point to repair our image abroad, Obama’s election doesn’t have to do very much repairing to surpass anything Mr. Bush could propose. Its effect is greater than zero, but probably nowhere near as great as this paragraph suggests.  Let me add something here, and this is an important point: it is not going to be Obama’s fault that his election and the early months and years of his administration do not magically restore trust and goodwill that has been frittered away for many years, and he has never really claimed that this would happen.  His “helpful” admirers have repeatedly claimed something like this.  It seems to me that he understands better than a lot of the people spinning these grand theories of his geopolitical significance that any meaningful improvement in our relations with other nations will come from time-consuming, difficult work.  It is clear that he will be given more leeway in the beginning, and there is more tolerance in most foreign countries for Obama to make mistakes early. 

However, as one of the commenters has noted, Moscow is wasting no time making clear its objections to missile defense in central-eastern Europe and suggesting countermeasures (possibly tactical missiles to Kaliningrad) if Washington goes ahead with the plan.  More than most foreign governments, Moscow seems to have few illusions about what Obama’s election means for them.  From his gradually more antagonistic response to the war in Georgia to his selection of Joe “Expand NATO Forever” Biden as his running mate, Obama made abundantly clear what they could reasonably expect from a future Obama administration, which unfortunately isn’t very much. 

The potential pitfall for Obama abroad is that there is widespread expectation in Europe of a departure not only from the Bush style of foreign policy, but also a departure from much of the substance, particularly as it relates to various international treaties and institutions.  Trans-Atlantic dreams may be the right way to describe European expectations, because they seem to have so little basis in political reality.  Some of what many Europeans dream of is probably not going to happen (e.g., the test ban treaty, the ICC), and for the most part expecting much in this area comes from Europeans’ projecting what they think a “good” American President ought to do.  Obama may attempt to do some of the things Europeans hope for, but even though both he and McCain have endorsed the Kyoto Protocols that does not necessarily make ratification politically possible.  The Law of the Sea ratification will be a particularly tough fight.

Relations with European governments will be similarly tricky.  When Merkel and Sarkozy were elected, Republicans cheered the rise of “pro-American” governments, by which they meant governments that tended to agree with them more often than not, so what counted as “pro-American” under one administration may not count that way under another.  Sarkozy and Kouchner have been eager to reduce tensions with Moscow, but they have also tended to take a harder line on Near Eastern questions and, more recently, Kouchner has been tramping around Africa preaching the same humanitarian interventionism that led to the war in Yugoslavia.  To the extent that Obama is less belligerent towards Iran than Sarkozy,  and if Obama is serious about calling on Europeans to contribute more soldiers to Afghanistan, we might see considerable friction with major European governments that would be similar to some of the tensions in the early Bush years.  There is nothing necessarily wrong with any of this–states have different interests and they will sometimes clash.  Even so, there needs to be some grounding in reality when discussing what Obama’s election means to U.S. relations with the rest of the world.  

As an unexpected aid to Obama’s potential problem with Moscow, European governments, buffeted and weakened by the financial crisis perhaps more than most other Western states, will be even less inclined to pursue anti-Russian moves.  That will provide Obama some cover from critics at home if he were wisely to opt for a less confrontational approach and at least put NATO expansion on the back burner.  The missile defense agreement with Poland will be harder to put off, and it would be very difficult to renege on it at this point without inviting a million yelps about “appeasement,” and not just from the usual suspects.  Moscow clearly views this plan as a hostile move, and relations with Russia could decline rapidly if Obama goes ahead with the plan.

As for “unhinging” jihadi recruitment efforts, the first and best recruiting sergeants they have are ongoing American military operations in two Muslim countries.  If Obama brings one to an end only to redouble efforts in another, there is not necessarily going to be that much damage to jihadis‘ ability to recruit.  It has never been clear to me why the election of a politician who supported the bombardment of Lebanon and supports unilateral strikes into Pakistan (which are deeply resented by Pakistanis) was going to improve the image of America in the eyes of that many Muslims.  Leave aside the question of how much flexibility Obama will have back home given the persistent efforts to misrepresent his record on Israel and the like.  Hostility to and distrust of the U.S. government are not going to change significantly so long as the same policies are in place, and that likely means that jihadis will still have a large pool of potential recruits.  Just think about it for a moment.  Suppose you think that America is warring against Islam, occupying Muslim lands unjustly and supporting Israel to the hilt at the expense of your fellow Muslims, and you were offended enough by all of this to want to join a jihadi terrorist group–are you really going to be dissuaded from doing that when the U.S. President has an unusual name and some Muslim ancestors? 

What I am trying to say is that we should not set up the next President for failure by making such grandiose, unfounded claims about what his election will mean for our relations with the rest of the world.  The next administration is going to enjoy a long honeymoon, and that’s fine as far as it goes, but we should all be as sober and clear-eyed as possible about what a President Obama is realistically going to be able to do and what he isn’t.

As a rebel Tutsi army in eastern Congo threatens to plunge that miserable country into a new round of warfare, calls for intervention have been fairly few and far between, but what few we have heard have been very loud and coming from top European officials.  Meanwhile, Simon Tisdall outlines why Britain cannot and should not attempt an intervention on its own, and this makes sense.  Then I started to get a creeping feeling, as if Michael Gerson were hovering over my shoulder muttering saccharine truisms about the responsibility to protect, and it occurred to me that the deteriorating situation in the Congo is the sort of lose-lose predicament that seems to inspire lame-duck interventions by Presidents named Bush on their way out the door.   

It was Bush the Elder who saddled the incoming Clinton administration with a bizarre deployment to Somalia that he announced in December 1992.  I remember seeing the announcement on the television and thinking, “You mean he’s still President?”  Clinton then disastrously chose to turn it into a full-blown nation-building exercise, and the political backlash at home against the mission in Somalia after the Battle of Mogadishu was so great that Clinton dared not have American soldiers in Africa ever again and was leery of interventions that required significant ground forces.  Never one with much credibility with the military, Clinton was willing to bomb promiscuously but was rarely willing to take greater risks after the Somalia debacle.  It is not that much of an exaggeration to say that the results of the Somalia mission helped to make the first Clinton term appear to be more or less a failure with respect to foreign policy. 

Would Mr. Bush embark on a fool’s errand in Congo in the closing months of his administration with the armed forces already strained by their current obligations?  Probably not, but it would be a fitting, final hurrah of irresponsibility dressed up in preachy moralism.  If he did order an intervention, it would leave Obama with yet another mess to clean up and a politically untenable position of either perpetuating a futile and unpopular mission or suffering the inevitable criticism following equally inevitable withdrawal from Congo.

My apologies for not having had more to say on Election Night itself.  First, congratulations to the new President-elect are in order.  Throughout the campaign, I kept imagining reasons why he would not be able to do this, and at every turn he kept proving me and so very many others wrong.  He mobilized and organized his own grassroots movement, fought the entrenched establishment candidate and party machine and prevailed, and in what he was able to achieve there are lessons for disaffected conservatives.  It was interesting to watch the video of Obama giving his victory speech in Grant Park, which I have driven by and walked through so many times over the last seven years, and to behold an unprecedented event there in such familiar surroundings.  Here in Hyde Park there was some celebratory honking and shouting the name Obama, but the neighborhood was on the whole very quiet (probably a lot of people were at the speech). 

My Culture11 article on what we can expect from the future President makes an argument that will be familiar to many regular readers of Eunomia, stressing as it does Obama’s aversion to political risk, his careful, deliberative approach and his preference for consensus and accommodation.  This is my concession to Obama supporters’ emphasis on the man’s temperament, which I think the article explains fairly well, albeit not necessarily in the most flattering way.  I set this view of Obama against the interpretations of those inclined to hope for or fear significant policy shifts in the years to come.  One point that I want to emphasize is this:

There is an assumption shared by most Obama backers that he will prove to be, in Colin Powell’s formulation, a “transformational” President, particularly with respect to foreign affairs and America’s reputation abroad. But the expected transformation in foreign attitudes seems based largely on temporary foreign enthusiasm for Obama’s candidacy that is itself a product of the misconception that Obama’s election will mark some significant or meaningful change in U.S. foreign policy [bold added-DL].

As if on cue, Garry Kasparov offers this comment today:

Bush is practically a bouquet of the classic American stereotypes, the ones so easy to hate: rich, inarticulate, uninterested in the world, stridently religious and hasty to act. (And the images of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina seemingly exemplified the stereotype of Americans as racists and were viewed largely without surprise abroad. Of course they wouldn’t rescue poor black people.) Obama would explode these stereotypes.  But the world’s multitude of grievances against the Bush administration quickly would be laid on Obama’s doorstep if he were to fail to back up his inspiring rhetoric with decisive action. 

Kasparov then goes on to make a predictable argument that Obama will be betraying his promise if he does not share Kasparov’s preoccupation in vilifying the Russian government.  That is, according to Kasparov the dramatic improvement in foreign attitudes toward the United States that many Obama supporters expect will be contingent on his ability to introduce changes to U.S. policy that are satisfactory to a great variety of foreign audiences and the American public in a very short period of time after entering office, and if he cannot do this the international hostility towards his administration will be just just about as great as it has been towards Mr. Bush’s.  This is to set Obama up for failure.  Kasparov may not care about this, but what is remarkable is how much his domestic supporters have also put Obama’s “transformational” potential in the hands of other nations.  Having accepted the premise that Obama’s election will repair our reputation and image abroad, they open him up to the charge that he has failed when other nations continue to respond to U.S. policy with the same skeptical or hostile attitudes, even though they are responding to the policy and not to the man. 

P.S.  Wolfgang Ischinger, former German ambassador to the United States, sounds the warning against excessive European expectations:

I do worry that many Germans and other Europeans have developed unrealistically high expectations for an Obama administration. In some of the panels I’ve been participating in recently, you get the sense that everyone expects a trans-Atlantic paradise will emerge with blue skies and constant sunshine. Some disappointment is inevitable.

 

We know that on many issues there is an obvious, visible divergence of interests across the Atlantic. Europeans will be surprised, for instance, to learn that even with Obama in the White House and a strong Democratic majority in the US Senate, the US is unlikely to ratify the Kyoto protocol or its successor arrangements as they currently exist.

Andrew:

The Vatican failed to corral voters into the Republican column.

Because they were trying so very hard to do that, you know…

In other news, I “failed” to conquer Canada.

Turning to the House races, which seem to be much more competitive and interesting than the presidential race at this point, it’s worth noting that Kanjorski in PA-11 is doing better than I would have expected.  Unfortunately, the pro-Democratic wave in Pennsylvania might be strong enough to keep Barletta from ousting him.  It appears that Virgil Goode may indeed lose in VA-05 as I thought he might, which is a remarkable anti-incumbent result, and things are currently not looking good for the GOP in VA-11.  Souder (R) in IN-03 has held on and has been declared the winner, so I was wrong about that one.  The two Diaz-Balarts seem to be hanging on despite unusually strong challenges, but that is not yet final.  Meanwhile, Feeney in FL-24 is toast.

There’s no reason to credit the exit polls too much, but if CNN’s exit polls are at all accurate, Obama may end up taking Indiana in addition to Missouri, which would give him 375 electoral votes by the end of the night.  If New Mexico’s CNN exit poll is reliable, and assuming that New Mexico backs the popular vote winner at around the same level that he receives nationally as it usually does, Obama is looking at a solid 55%.

Ross:

So while my rational mind expects an easy Obama win, as of this morning my irrational mind is suddenly convinced that come nine PM tonight, some furrow-browed announcer will be remarking on his this is much, much closer than anyone expected …

With the exception of 2000, which was freakishly, abnormally close in the one state that mattered, the results have broadly matched up with the latest pre-election polls.  2004 was very close in the decisive state, but the candidate leading in the national polls won.  2006 matched up more or less with what people told pollsters about their Congressional preferences.  The last two presidential elections have chastened us to refrain from making bold pronouncements on Election Night before the ballots are counted, but there is not really much reason to expect that voting patterns from ’06 dramatically changed again in a pro-Republican direction.  If anything, the Democratic margin of victory ought to be larger this year than last time.  I predicted an eight-point Obama win a few days ago, and I am beginning to think that I may have been too conservative in my estimate of how badly McCain will lose.  

The anchors and reporters tonight are going to make the outcome seem as uncertain as they can to keep people tuned to their stations for as long as possible.  Nothing could be worse for them and their sponsors, as a matter of doing business, than a lopsided, enormous victory by one side, which is what we have every reason to expect tonight.  Exit polls are being kept under wraps, as they should be while millions are still voting, but if they weren’t I think there would not be much suspense tonight about any of the results, except perhaps whether Obama does or does not take Georgia and North Dakota.  I don’t think he will, but throughout the campaign I and a lot of other people have underestimated what he could do, which suggests that the results are going to be even more favorable to him than anyone expects.

And once the media is no longer acting as Obama’s Praetorian Guard, Palin won’t be subjected to this relentless slagging. ~Robert Stacy McCain

In other words, shortly before the end of time Palin will start getting more positive coverage. 

It’s not clear to me why the following anecdote is supposed to persuade skeptics that Palin is a phenom:

Palin and her husband Todd came out on stage and the governor had changed into a T-shirt with the Shippensburg University joke slogan, “Ship Happens.” I jotted that down on my notepad.

When she’d finished giving her short speech, the crowd rushed the stage for handshakes and autographs and I pushed forward to get some photos. Palin worked her way toward where I was standing. I figured, “What the heck? Why not?” and handed up my notepad for her to sign. She looked at the pad, saw where I’d written the T-shirt slogan, then looked at me and with a laugh pointed to her shirt, saying, “Ship! Ship!” — just to make sure I had it right.

Think about that. Amid a madhouse of fans and autograph-seekers, after a day of campaigning, she deciphered my scrawled note, recognized the potential misunderstanding, and cheerfully played it off. A minor incident, but displaying a keen perception that some others who’ve met her have likewise noticed.

Unless I am missing something here, this means that Palin’s ability to read his handwriting and recognize the potential confusion created by the not-so-subtle pun is proof of her keen perception.  Maybe his handwriting is particularly hard to read, in which case it’s clear that Palin is the next Catherine the Great.

A few years ago, threatening to freeze dodgy Russian companies out of the developed world’s capital markets would have been a real threat. Now, if they find London, New York, and Frankfurt unwelcoming, they can turn to the exchanges in Dubai, Mumbai and Shanghai. ~Edward Lucas

Well, yes, that’s true.  This is what comes from globalization.  It means that there are many more centers of wealth and power than there used to be, which reduces the leverage of any one center or group of centers over weaker or poorer states.  This is why promoting globalization and hegemony makes no sense–the former steadily undermines the latter.  As wealth and power are more widely distributed, the absolute advantage that advanced industrial democracies possess has been sharply reduced.  This is not to celebrate or lament this development, which the cheerleaders of global free trade and neoliberalism have done more to bring about than most others in the West.  It is an odd time to start complaining about the rise of other economic and political powers when this is what globalization ultimately had to mean.

Lucas says later:

The Kremlin’s message to Europe is cold and confident: you need us more than we need you.

This is an exaggeration, but there is some truth to it.  An exporter of natural resources needs markets, and to the extent that its economy is heavily dependent on revenues from one or two exports it is vulnerable to market fluctuations more than the consumers, but when it comes to something as basic as energy the consumers cannot easily do without the exporter nation that provides so many of their supplies.  Russia wants and needs foreign investment, but Europeans will need oil and gas more.

Lucas’ most unpersuasive and strained claim:

The key to the West’s future security is the security of the Baltic states.

Yes, how did the West survive almost three hundred years of Russian control of the Baltics?  This is like saying that Russia’s future security is the security of Greenland.  It is pretty much a crazy thing to say. 

Lucas goes on:

So what does Estonia do then? America may offer moral support, but is it going to risk a Third World War with Russia to protect Estonia? Such a course of events is not inevitable, or even likely. But it is not as preposterous as it should be.

Indeed, it should be entirely preposterous, as Estonia should never have been admitted to NATO, because America is certainly not going to risk WWIII to protect Estonia.  The sooner that everyone understands that, and the less they talk about new Cold Wars, the better.

What is says is that anti-communism no longer matters. Religion and culture (witness Kevin Williamson’s anti-elitist sneer above) now drive American conservatism; foreign policy takes a way back seat. ~Democracy in America

This is, to put it kindly, a very strange interpretation of some of the complaints and attacks against Anne Applebaum’s regret-filled endorsement of Obama.  First, let me say that Applebaum’s piece is a good example of the sort of thing I have been talking about when I said:

Many have hedged their Obama endorsement with paeans to the “old” McCain whom they once liked and their alleged Obama endorsements are filled with disappointment that McCain has let them down, as if to say, “I can’t believe you’re making me do this.” 

It is true that anticommunism is obviously no longer the glue that holds conservatives of different strands together, and it would be fair to say that anti-jihadism does not quite inspire the same unity, especially when one is told that anti-jihadism is inseparable from support for the war in Iraq.  That being said, I don’t see how anyone looks at mainstream conservatism and the Republican coalition today and concludes that “foreign policy takes a way back seat” to religion and culture.  During the campaign, it has been central, and this has been true of major and minor Republican candidates alike.  Ron Paul’s dissenting presidential campaign was focused primarily on foreign policy questions, and McCain’s nomination is almost unthinkable without foreign policy arguments being at the heart of mainstream conservatism.  The one and perhaps only meaningful litmus test was support for the “surge.”  That doesn’t mean that the arguments that circulate among mainstream conservatives are good arguments, but they clearly take priority over everything else.  Until the financial crisis hit, virtually every other issue was framed in terms of national security and sticking it to those lousy Iranians/Russians/Venezuelans/whoever.  To some extent, despite her lack of foreign policy knowledge, the Palin choice was a roundabout acknowledgement of the centrality of foreign policy to the campaign because her presumed energy expertise would help achieve–so she keeps telling us–chimerical energy independence (thus supposedly thwarting the ambitions of Putin, Chavez, et al.). 

Palin was a symbolic nod to social conservatives, yes, but even the themes they have had her using show an emphasis on foreign affairs and national security.  In choosing Palin, McCain was freed by and large to ignore social issues, and for the most part he has ignored them; choosing Palin “proves” that he accepts pro-lifers and social conservatives into his camp, so their issues do not even require that much in the way of lip service.   

The bit that I found particularly amusing about the one denunciation was the description of Applebaum as “Europe-dwelling,” as if this were still supposed to be considered a moral failing.  The phrasing made it sound as if Williamson, the one penning the attack, was equating Europe to some sort of hovel or cave, which I suppose must have been the point.  Oh, no, a Europe-dweller!  This is supposed to be an insult?