Can you believe it was almost a year ago that “President Elect” Barak Obama told an ecstatic crowd in Chicago that “Change had come to America”?
With less than a month to go before the first anniversary of that speech a lot of people in America are asking themselves whether much of that change has yet been delivered?
Saturday Night Live delivered their report card this weekend. Claiming Obama hasn’t actually achieved anything.
The scene outside the White House certainly doesn’t look like much has changed. Anti-war protestors demanding the recall of US troops and holding up signs condemning the president were commonplace throughout the George W Bush Years.
But they are still there now – dressed up in Guantanamo style orange jumpsuits and hoods, acting out water-boarding scenes and holding placards saying “Obama” “Yes We Can: US Out of Afghanistan” and “Is It Really OK if Obama Does It? ” And of course there were posters asking “Change: What Change?”
Major changes in US strategy in Afghanistan are under serious consideration inside the White House at the moment. But as many of the protestors outside know it’s unlikely that any of the most radical ideas for pulling out large numbers of troops will actually be enacted.
An entirely new plan that looks quite a lot like the old plan is the most likely outcome. Even as the war enters its ninth year tomorrow.
But there is one significant departure from W’s foreign policy evident in Washington today. The Dalai Lama is here and he does NOT have a meeting in the White House.
He is being quite conspicuously snubbed by President Obama despite the fact that every other US president since George H W Bush has welcomed him into the White House. Two years ago W had the first public meeting with his Holiness and gave him the Congressional Gold Medal. Obama will not be seen doing anything like that.
Obama’s ever pragmatic foreign policy dictates that his relationship with China is far more important than his relationship with the famous monk, even if he is favourite of Hollywood celebrities, Obama’s own Democrats and Liberals worldwide.
So he won’t receive the Dalai Lama before his visit to Beijing in November. It was obvious at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York last month and at the G20 in Pittsburgh that Obama is working hard to get the Chinese on side. He needs them if he is to secure any kind of international agreement on meaningful sanctions against Iran.
And he needs them to make right kind of noises about climate change if Obama is to persuade Americans that economic rival like China are also prepared to do their bit on carbon emissions. And of course after the financial crisis last year the Chinese own vast amounts of America’s national debt.
You never hear the US administration complaining any more about Chinese currency manipulation that keeps the price of their exports low and cost of foreign imports high. America can’t afford to complain about the Yuan anymore.
Even Hillary Clinton has changed her tune.
As First Lady she made a bold speech in Beijing in 1995 denouncing abuses against women. But when she went to China as US Sec of State in February she said very plainly that Human Rights issues are secondary to economic ones. saying “Our pressing on those issues can’t interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis.”
Why in the midst of all this blatant pandering to China the US chose to slap a tariff on imports of Chinese tyres threatening to begin a full blown trade war is harder to interpret.
But that issue aside – it’s clear that this White House does not intend to repeat all the complaints and criticism that George W Bush’s administration directed toward China. And surely that has to be counted as real change.
Even if it’s not exactly the kind of change people thought they were voting for last November.