By Roberto Savio and - -
ROME, Apr 12 2010 (IPS)

In the few weeks since President Obama succeeded in passing his health reform bill, we have seen numerous developments that clearly indicate the search for global governance is growing more and more difficult. Let’s begin with the United States, where the lesson to be learned is that politics, in matters of greatest importance, can simply ignore public opinion. Various Democratic senators whom Obama pressured to support the reform bill now run the risk of losing re-election for doing so.

To a significant degree, the United States has lost an essential component of democracy itself: the ability to generate consensus in the name of the interests that are above those of a single party. The Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, issued a very simple order: don’t vote for Obama, whatever may come of it.

The attack campaign against Obama has had very concrete effects. The day before the health bill passed, a poll cited in El Pais indicated that 24 percent of Americans believe that Obama is the Anti-Christ, 38 percent believe that he is emulating Hitler, 45 percent that he is not in fact an American, 57 percent that he is a Muslim, and 67 percent think that he is a socialist. The wave of hysteria reached such a peak that the majority leader of the House of Representatives, Steny Hoyer, had to meet with a hundred of his colleagues and the FBI to discuss taking protective measures for congressmen who voted for the reform bill.

For those who believe that the US and Europe share the same vision of the world, consider McConnell’s statement about the Democrats: they won’t get Republican help in their attempt to “turn us into a Western European country”.

How in this unprecedentedly divided country could an agreement be reached on, for example, the Palestinian question or climate change? These are important issues for Europe, where the crisis of governability is not only the result of domestic conditions in member countries (and there are many). It is clear these days that national interests are trumping those of the larger European project.

I would like someone to explain what European president Van Rompuy has accomplished since Germany forced his election to dodge the candidacy of more forceful personalities. In the newspapers aimed at the 400 million Europeans, there is no mention of this rumpled Belgian politician; rather coverage is devoted to the European foreign minister, Baroness Ashton because of the numerous mistakes she has made or her failure to launch the new EU diplomatic corps.

No one is willing to give up any privilege. And there is no longer any doubt that, as stated in Die Zeit, the interests of Germany no longer coincide with those of Europe. Helmut Kohl, when he backed the creation of the euro, went against public opinion (like Obama), accepting as the first president of the European Central Bank an also rumpled Dutchman, in the company of fiscally-irresponsible Greeks and Italians, while the Germans expressed their horror at the abandonment of the mark because the governor of their own Central Bank was not granted the task of overseeing the transition to the euro.

In contrast, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who listens closely to public opinion, has recently proposed a reformulation of Europe which would expel those countries that fail to respect community parametres. The moral: Europe is far from offering the conditions for leadership that follows Obama’s plans.

In all of this, China has clearly displayed that it is following its own course and that its international relations are aligned with it. Accordingly, it does business with African dictatorships, North Korea, Burma, Iran, etcetera, or reaches dubious agreements on climate change. Given that it is the global economy’s only locomotive that hasn’t lost speed, China knows perfectly well that it cannot be controlled by the US and especially by Europe. On its own, it is making internal reforms to address climate change which far exceed those adopted by Europe and the US. Yet a global agreement among these powers seems inconceivable.

After 40 billion dollars were thrown at the problem without effect, the future of the global economy is not rosy. The EU vice president, Joaquin Almunia, believes that it will take at least ten years to absorb the EU’s excessive public debt. John Lipsky, subdirector of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), thinks that we will see public debt return to post-World War II levels. And IMF director Dominique Strauss-Khan has stated that unless the much-announced reforms of the financial system are implemented, we will see “social uprisings” before long.

The conclusion is clear: politics must return to the pursuit of great designs for world governance through national action, though it is neither popular nor easy, and takes on the major challenges of climate change, financial reform (in Washington alone, financial lobbies have spent more than 200 billion dollars to block reform over the last ten years), peace in Palestine, development in Africa, food production, and all of the other recurring issues that fill the declarations of the G8 and now the G20. If not, we may see the dawn of a new age of social upheaval -and this in the opinion of the director of the IMF, a pillar of the system and symbol of evil since the massive demonstrations in Seattle ten years ago.

There can be no doubt that these rumblings throughout the world affect us directly and personally. Should we be optimistic, or pessimistic? As Indira Gandhi said, the optimist is a pessimist who doesn’t have all the facts. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Roberto Savio is founder and president emeritus of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency.

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