In an article in today’s New York Times titled “Election Unleashes a Flood of Hope Worldwide,” leaders around the world celebrated Obama’s victory as a step towards progress and as a sign of American willingness to embark in a new direction in foreign policy (well, almost everyone; the president of Russia announced Russia would start deploying missiles if the U.S. got in their way).
After reading this, I saw an uncanny similarity to the promises Woodrow Wilson made at the close of World War I. Like Obama, Wilson had the world on his side, and a catchy Fourteen Points doctrine to boot. The victors thought he would let them have their way, the Italians thought they would be rewarded for helping the Allies, and colonized nations were especially keen on his idea of self-determination of peoples. Even the losers thought they would receive more favorable treaty terms. Instead, no one was happy by the end of the peace negotiations, and almost all were disappointed. The U.S. later withdrew from the very League of Nations that he had proposed (of course, they tried to make this up later in starting the United Nations after the second world war. Leave it up to us Americans to do something like that).
Obama isn’t a messiah, nor is he the sole answer to all our problems. He’s not perfect. But I think he’s a step in the right direction. So if the next four years don’t go as smoothly as planned, or if the economy doesn’t suddenly get better in the next month, I hope that people don’t give up on their government.
But then again, you can’t say Bush didn’t try. He might get a gold star for effort, but he still screwed up our reputation with the rest of the world in the process. Let’s hope that Obama can do better.
I was thinking about this same thing a while back.
Whenever I shared my theories though, people looked at me funny because I remembered who Wilson was. >____<
No one man is perfect, but with any luck this will be an improvement.
Glad I found your blog 🙂