Obama tackles Cuba and defence spending
We are about to see Obama’s mettle tested domestically in America. I’m in the States this week and very struck by how his first international foray has gone down here.
To some extent its supposed success has been taken for granted. There have been comparisons with Reagan in that the office of the US president had returned to actually LOOKING presidential.
Certainly, the Michelle and Barack joint appearances served to conjure the visible teamwork of Nancy and Ronnie of twenty five years ago.
Like Reagan, Obama has also raised the prospect of a “nuclear free” world.
But the other nuances of Obama’s trip, particularly the visit to Turkey, and what he said about respect and engagement with the Muslim community, have sparked little reaction Stateside. Yet that opening is something almost unthinkably different post 9/11.
What’s interesting to note here is something else which has not been said, namely, the Israeli lobby has gone eerily quiet…
So what, beyond the abiding baptismal fire of the economic meltdown that greeted his election, is this great test of his domestic mettle?
There are two such challenges to which he has returned. Both have been previously untouchable: Cuba, and defence spending.
On Cuba, Obama’s pragmatism and determination to stick to his election promise are seemingly on show. He’s proposing to lift some of the restrictions on Cuban Americans wishing to travel to Cuba and to allow them to remit more money to their families there.
The 47-year US economic embargo on the communist island will stay, however.
Obama seems to have judged it well. There is little outcry even from the neo-cons. He has left it to Congress to propose the normalisation of all travel to Cuba – a move the president will be pleased neither to have proposed, nor now to resist.
Pragmatic again when it comes to spending on weapons programmes? He has left it to defence secretary Bob Gates (well clothed in Republican service to George W Bush) to propose major cuts in defence purchasing.
This is an unprecedented physical attack on what Eisenhower dubbed the “Military Industrial Complex”, from a man previously regarded as a safe pair of hands by Republicans and arms manufacturers alike.
Eighty five per cent of US Congressional districts have a high dependence on these ludicrous hi-tech stealth programmes, many of them will have little or no relevance to America’s current war fighting needs.
Obama is privately said to want much deeper cuts, though the employment implications in a recession are great.
The New York Times, in its editorial yesterday, argued too for far deeper cuts. Hence the pragmatism? Get the idea of cuts out there and let others do the talking…
The threat to Obama’s plans is neither from Conservatives, defence contractors nor lobbyists.
The challenge to Mr Obama’s entire locus remains the financial meltdown, which is still headed south.
All one can say thus far, is that his other policies play to the belt-tightening that the rest of the American empire will have to endure to survive.