5 dias, 5 mensagens para Obama - day 4

"About the Barack Obama administration, please tell us:

1 one thing you hope for

2 one thing you fear

3 one piece of advice you would give"

1 That the United States actively and consistently engages in conflict-resolution, starting in the middle east. This would be the real practical translation of Joseph Nye's concept of "smart power", which the new secretary of state has already introduced to the official lexicon of American foreign policy during her testimony in the Senate hearing. If America were to engage in seeking a fair solution for the conflicts between Israel and its neighbours that basically accepts the legitimate interests of all regional parties, this would restore US credibility in the wider Muslim and much of the rest of the world, and make it much more difficult for the ideologues of jihadism to gain support and adherents in the region. Perhaps even more important, such an engagement may offer the last hope to actually implement a two-state solution that would allow Israel and Palestine to live peacefully with - or at least alongside - one another. The blueprints for a peaceful settlement are all there. It needs international - i.e., American-led - even-handedness and firmness to translate them into reality

2 That a Barack Obama administration could be distracted from pursuing its foreign-policy agenda through a combination of factors that already are known and present. Among them are a deepening economic crisis that may spur protectionist tendencies; special domestic interest-groups that would try to subvert a more inclusive and fair US policy in the middle east; and short-sited actions by other international players (Russia, Iran, North Korea or certain non-state actors) that would try to test the strength of the new administration at an early stage, either to embarrass the new administration or to prove to their own and other societies that the US is still the enemy.

3 In order both to achieve the goals set out under the "hope" category and to avoid the risks under the "fear" one, the main advice is from the beginning to seek solutions and pursue global policies in the most inclusive way. That means getting the emerging powers (China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, and - prospectively - even Iran) to address issues of real globality (i.e. issues that do not just affect the entire world but that also cannot be solved without global cooperation) and to rebuild the structures of global governance. Everyone knows that the present composition of global-governance institutions and clubs (the United Nations Security Council, the G8, IMF, World Bank and others) no longer reflects the distribution of real (both hard and soft) power in the world; nor do these institutions and clubs invite those who have gained in the relative power-shifts to take real responsibility.

Volker Perthes, director, German Institute for International and Security Affairs