Manipal, India — U.S. policies often affect
the globe, and hence the global interest in U.S. politics. Although Australian
feminist Germaine Greer may disagree, few in Asia see the possible re-entry of
Hillary Clinton into the White House as epochal. Sri Lanka had its two Bandaranaike
ladies as prime ministers, India had Indira Gandhi, Pakistan Benazir Bhutto,
Turkey Tansu Ciller, Bangladesh the feuding Khaleda-Hasina duo, Indonesia
Megawati Sukarnoputri and the Philippines Corazon Aquino and now Gloria Arroyo.
If there has been any significant change in
gender dynamics because of these individuals becoming heads of government, it
has been too small to notice. While First Lady, Hillary Clinton did not give
gender discrimination the priority that she gave issues such as healthcare, and
to expect her to change U.S. society, economics and politics -- from a gender
standpoint -- in a way that even the formidable British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher could not within her own Conservative Party, may be a trifle
optimistic.
In contrast, the election to the U.S.
presidency of Barack Obama would signal the true conclusion of the revolution
begun by President Abraham Lincoln when he emancipated U.S. slaves in 1863 --
that human beings are one, no matter what their color.
As secretaries of state, neither Colin
Powell nor Condoleezza Rice has broken the mould of international opinion,
which still regards the United States as being of the same persuasion as
Europe, where policies that are racial in substance are the norm. Even in
Britain it is far tougher for a nonwhite to reach the higher echelons of the
medical and other professions than is the case in the United States. On the
continent, Germany has been leading the cry of "Europe for
Europeans," aware that ethnicity and not nationality is the core principle
at work in fashioning policies related to migration and employment.
Within Asia -- even in the Middle East and
East Asia, two corners of the continent in thrall to European brands -- a
reaction has been developing to such Mugabist policies. Consumers are turning
away from patronizing brands where only the intangible "European
premium" makes a commodity do well in the marketplace despite its high
cost. This premium has been diminishing over the decades, as countries in Asia
and even in South America learn to produce items of a quality comparable to
those from Europe, if not -- as in the case of airlines -- better.
Should Barack Obama make it past the
obstacles laid in his path by his formidable Democratic opponent, and
thereafter beat John McCain on Nov. 20, the world will awake to a United States
that will have shown itself to be colorblind.
Within Asia, such a lack of prejudice would
be extraordinary. Even while verbally lambasting "colonial" mindsets
in countries with a white majority, almost every Asian country is host to forms
of discrimination that more closely resemble the United States of the 1800s
than even the 1960s. Within India, caste still figures prominently in the
social psyche, with even a section of Muslims and Christians effectively
turning back from the core of their faith by seeking to separate out
"outcaste" Muslims and Christians from their ranks. In Japan, the
Korean community and indigenous groups such as the Okinawans and the Ainu
suffer invisible discrimination, the way non-Han ethnic groups do in China.
It seems a long way away for India to have
a prime minister from the lowest social caste. As in Pakistan or any other
Asian country, women who have reached the top have come from the highest levels
of the social ladder, cocooned in privilege as snugly as Hillary Clinton. The
coming to office of an individual with the extraordinary background of Barack
Obama would set the United States on a moral level in advance of both Asia and
Europe.
In an earlier column this writer argued
that an Obama victory would, in conjunction with his approach to international
relations and policy, go a considerable distance toward erasing the anger and
fear toward the United States that the policies of George W. Bush in particular
have created. Some of those presently queuing up to join groups hostile to
perceived U.S. hegemony would have second thoughts.
A swift recognition that the U.S. military
in Iraq is actually fostering rather than stanching extremist responses -- the
way that U.S. troops acted as a recruitment agency for the Viet Cong in an
earlier war -- would remove one of the primary engines driving recruitment to
jihad: anger at the U.S.-NATO occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. If the local
population, be it Iraqi or Afghan, cannot take over responsibility for their
own security, no one else can. Each month spent in occupying these countries
creates more collateral human and infrastructural damage. This helps religious
extremists pose as the only saviors, the way the Viet Cong and the North
Vietnamese army did in Vietnam.
If Obama is truthful about his intentions,
the United States may find that a withdrawal of its troops from these areas may
ignite not a catastrophe but an eventual reconciliation, of course with Iraqis
rather than Dick Cheney's friends determining who controls the local oil
industry.
Although almost all the column inches and
the political rhetoric have been about the personnel in uniform -- and they are
admittedly a superb professional force -- it is soft power that has given reach
and salience to U.S. influence within populations, as distinct from often
despotic governments. In a world that is hopefully democratizing, it will be
these millions rather than the few hundred within the local elites that will
set the terms of engagement between themselves and the United States. An Obama
presidency would show the much more potent and attractive "soft
power" face of the United States rather than the mailed fist favored by
those who are at their best at 3:00 a.m.
But it is not only internationally that the
backwash of an Obama presidency could be game-changing. Within the United
States, African-Americans are still overwhelmingly represented at the lower
levels of income and education. Some of this comes from an inner feeling of
hopelessness, that the cards are so stacked against them that whatever they do
they will not be able to cross the color bar. The fact that so many
Indian-Americans, with skin hues far duskier than many African-Americans, have
pushed their way to the top in universities, boardrooms and now -- with
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal -- in U.S. politics, shows that the United
States is much less color-fixated than Europe or Asia.
If the African-American community sees one
from among them finally become the legal tenant of the White House, some would
surely feel motivated enough to put aside the "victim mentality" that
is the biggest barrier to their own progress.
In India, such a process has taken place
several times. In Kerala, a social reformer called Narayana Guru ignited
ambition within his own so-called "outcaste" community to follow his
example and his teachings and succeed. Today the social group that the guru
came from is the second most affluent in Kerala, after the Christians. In Uttar
Pradesh state, the coming to the highest office of Mayawati, who is from the
most backward of Hindu castes, has generated a will toward improvement among
her people that is changing the social dynamics of her state in a healthy way.
Only emulation, and not prison, can ensure
that African-Americans will be as successful as others in the United States.
The Obama family in the White House would help this needed social
transformation far more than the Clintons or the McCains. There is a lot at
stake in U.S. presidential politics today, not only for the rest of the world,
but substantially within the United States as well.
-(Professor M.D. Nalapat is
vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and
professor of geopolitics at Manipal University. ©Copyright M.D. Nalapat.)
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