Obama versus Romney
S P SETH

The recent political conventions of the two US political parties, 
Democrats and the Republicans formally nominating their presidential 
contenders, were designed to directly appeal to the American people 
through the electronic media, which is now the nerve centre of 
political campaigning. Despite all the razzmatazz of the conventions, 
the contest remains tight. By choosing Paul Ryan as his 
vice-presidential candidate, Mitt Romney has sought to consolidate his 
party’s conservative base as he has lacked their trust with his 
flexible views in the past over issues such as abortion, health care 
and so on. In other words, he is now locked into Paul Ryan’s economic 
and political orthodoxy of unfettered capitalism, small government, and 
maximum role for individual enterprise. Which means that there should 
be tax cuts for the rich to encourage private investments, combined 
with spending cuts on social entitlement programs.
It is amazing that despite the global financial crisis brought on by 
capitalism gone berserk, the Republicans have managed to restore its 
“efficacy” considering that Romney has an even chance of becoming the 
new president. That in itself is a miracle of sorts that shows that the 
Wall Street, banks and the big business have not only washed off their 
sins, but are promising to do it all over again. And that the 
Republicans have convinced almost half of the country’s electorate that 
their narrative is still the right course for a still ailing United 
States.
The Democrats are, therefore, throwing everything into their campaign 
for Obama’s re-election. The enlisting of Bill Clinton’s help at the 
recent Democrats convention was a brilliant move for several reasons. 
First, it showed the Democrats as a united party, considering that 
Clinton had said some unsavoury things about Obama as a presidential 
candidate in 2008, when he was pitted against Hillary Clinton for 
Democratic presidential nomination. Second: Clinton is rated as the 
most popular American politician today. And his testimony of Obama’s 
political credentials should rub on the President. Third: he sought to 
demolish any slur on Obama’s American identity and patriotism by 
extolling his passion for the country. Fourth, Clinton extolled Obama’s 
desire and patience to reach out to his Republican opponents. But it 
hasn’t worked because “the far right that now controls their party 
seems to hate our President and a lot of other Democrats.”
On the other hand, Obama’s commitment to reach across the political 
divide for national good was evident when: “He appointed Republican 
secretaries of defence, the army and transport…. Heck, he even 
appointed Hillary” as secretary of state after she lost the Democratic 
nomination. Fifth: he put the best spin on Obama’s economic record by 
describing him as “a man who stopped the slide into depression and put 
us on the long road to recovery.” And it was vintage Clinton with his 
folksy political style. With the election so tight, Clinton’s charisma 
might eventually be the difference between victory and defeat for 
Obama, although it wasn’t so visible in opinion polls after the 
convention.
The country’s non-performing economy remains Obama’s big problem with 
nearly 25 million unemployed and under-employed. Among the voter 
demographics, Obama is not so popular with many white males. Many of 
them find the world slipping out of their comfort zone with new 
confused social values of gay marriage, legalized abortion, humane 
treatment of some of the young Latino immigrants, not to speak of an 
Afro-American as the country’s President.
And these people and their likes in the country’s Bible belt are the 
natural constituency of the even more than usually conservative 
Republican Party under the influence of the Tea Party movement. They 
have in Paul Ryan, a vice-presidential running mate to Mitt Romney, 
someone who not only shares their conservative social values but also 
is the new poster boy of the Republican party advocating public 
spending cuts, tax cuts for the rich, reduced government and even 
lesser regulation of private enterprise. In other words, Republicans 
want more of the same that has created the present economic mess. And 
they seem to have managed to confuse many people into believing that 
Barack Obama’s four years as President has somehow been at the root of 
all the country’s economic misery.
This narrative of Obama’s economic failure seems believable to many 
Americas because, having promised high heaven during the 2008 election 
campaign, the country seems to have hardly moved ahead for millions of 
Americans caught in the maelstrom of America’s worst economic crisis 
since the Great Depression of the thirties. The American election drama 
is the theatre of the absurd where real issues are ignored to dwell on 
shadows. For instance, both the parties are ignoring the plight of 
America’s about 46 million poor who hardly rate a mention.  For Obama, 
it is all about the middle class. And the Republicans focus on the rich 
who supposedly will pull the economy out of morass with their 
investments encouraged by low taxes and virtually no regulation.
And then there is the God factor, with the Republicans having a special 
relationship with Him. Mitt Romney pounced on the Democrats for 
initially leaving God out of their platform that has since been 
rectified. Which led Romney to pronounce that, “ I will not take God 
out of…our platform. I will not take God out of my heart. We are a 
nation that’s bestowed by God.” He knows the importance of keeping on 
the right side of God in the United States where people strongly 
believe that God blesses the United States. And the Republican Party is 
the conscience of the country. They are banking on mobilizing all these 
people imbued with special American values to keep out the supposed 
Obama mob of crazy youth, women who long for abortion, Latinos, 
Afro-Americans and gays.
A rainbow coalition of such diverse groups might still take Obama 
across the winning line. According to some polls he has a small, though 
not significant, lead over Romney.  His biggest problem, though, 
remains the economy. A close second is the virtual absence this time of 
committed young volunteers who put so much into his 2008 election 
campaign. And that kind of apathy will affect voters’ mobilization for 
Obama’s cause. At the same time, the Republican state governments have 
been making sure that many of the marginalized groups that usually vote 
Democrats are unable to cast their votes with new requirements of voter 
identification.
As if this weren’t enough, the fury in the Muslim world over a 
documentary made by some crazy guy in the United States that defames 
Prophet Muhammad is likely to be politicized in the US presidential 
election, with Romney already making some noises. How it will all play 
out will also have a bearing on the Obama-Romney contest. In other 
words, it is all up in the air.




 



  

Australia’s China dilemma

Sushil Seth

Because of its historical beginnings as a British colony, Australia didn’t need to make hard choices on the international stage. It simply followed Britain, the mother country.

During WW11 when Japan was over-running one Asian country after the other pushing Britain out of the region, Australia feared for its security drawing closer to the United States. After WW11, it became part of the US-led ANZUS alliance.

But now with the rise of China and the resultant strategic competition between it and the United States, Australia is in a serious predicament.  China is now its biggest trading partner, with much of its export income coming from trade with that country.

The predicament is, therefore, centered on how best to balance its relationship with both these countries to maximize Australia’s advantage.

This is where it becomes tricky, because Australia not only wants to keep its strategic alliance with the United States but also is seeking to further strengthen it against the backdrop of China’s rise and the perceived security threat.

To this end, it is providing new base facilities for the US military as part of its new energized Asia-Pacific policy, as announced by the US President Barack Obama in an address to the Australian parliament when he was last visiting Australia.

Predictably, China is not happy, as it fears that this new development is directed against it. And Beijing has let it be known in no uncertain terms. Australia, of course, denies this. It regards its ties with the United States as part of its long-standing strategic relationship with the United States without any anti-China connotation.

The problem though is that even within Australia, there are some important voices that counsel against aligning too much with the United States in US-China strategic rivalry.

But they are not politically important enough to make any difference so far because Australia’s political establishment, by and large, favors US strategic connection.

This is for two reasons. First is that Canberra’ US alliance is an insurance against any security threat to Australia, and China is seen as a potential threat as indicated in its 2009 defense white paper.

Second, by being welcoming of the US presence and engagement in the Asia-Pacific region, Canberra hopes that the United States wouldn’t one day simply walk away from the region, leaving Australia to its own devices.

 However, those in Australia who would like a more nuanced relationship with the US argue that Canberra should rather play a role in persuading the United States to share power with a rising China.

In this way, the US-China relationship would be managed peacefully, thus avoiding a potential military conflict sometime in the future as happened in the past between a rising Germany and the established European powers in WW1, and to Hitler’s rise leading to WW11.

An important proponent of this broad argument is Professor Hugh White at the Australian National University, formerly a senior defense department official. He has argued his line in his book, The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power.

It is believed that China will become the world’s biggest economy in a decade or so, thus leaving the US behind. Its military power is also growing, though the US will still remain the world’s strongest military power for many years to come.

Even at this stage China has amassed a strong military deterrent, if not denial, capability to make the United States cautious about exercising or using its superior military power against China.

Therefore, to avoid any mischance of a US-China strategic rivalry breaking into a war, it is considered necessary that US should accommodate China into a power-sharing arrangement.

Paul Keating, a former Australian prime minister, is another one cautioning his country against drifting towards confrontation with China as a US ally. He recently said that peace in the region lay in accommodating China as a “great power”.

He added, “The presumption has been that the foreign policy of Australia is somehow synonymous with the foreign policy of the United States.”  Which “could never have been broadly true, notwithstanding the points of coincidence from time to time in our respective national interests.”

He, therefore, advocates a more independent approach for Canberra in its relations with the United States. Incidentally, Keating chairs an international advisory council of the China Development Bank.

There are problems with this thesis, not with the idea of sharing power but its feasibility. First, it assumes power sharing as if it is there for the US to give and for China to partake.

International relations do not operate like that. The US might be the dominant power in the region but there are other regional actors that might not go along with a regional duopoly between the US and China. 

A solution to this might lie through creating a concert of powers as in the Europe of the 19^th century to create balance of power. Even that didn’t stop military conflict eventually leading to WW1.

In its supposed Asian reincarnation, this might involve other regional heavy weights like Japan and India. But China might regard it with suspicion as Japan and, probably, India too is tilted toward the US. Therefore, Beijing is unlikely to relish the balance of power idea tilted against it.

China might also find the idea of being assigned a power-sharing role as condescending hearkening back to the days when the European powers, including the US, decided what was good for China.

The humiliation of 200 years of European domination of China is too fresh in Chinese mind to accept arrangements, even of an enhanced power-sharing role, as demeaning.

Besides, who decides what sort of power sharing is involved? For instance, China basically wants the US out of the Asia-Pacific region that it regards as its own political and strategic space since 14^th and 15^th century. And the European colonial meddling, in their view, was a historical aberration.

Now that China is powerful, it wants to restore, what it sees as, its historical destiny. It, therefore, wants the US, as Beijing sees it, to stop interfering and/or encouraging some regional countries to put forward their rival sovereignty claims to South China Sea islands. The US is not willing to abandon its regional allies to China’s wishes.

In other words, it might be difficult for both China and the United States even to go beyond the first base of a regional sovereignty issue.

It would, therefore, seem that strategists like Hugh White and former politicians like Paul Keating are barking up the wrong tree.  In international relations, where national interests are involved, there are no neat solutions.