The Most Important Foreign Policy Concern for Obama May Be the Domestic Economy

Russia and China are perhaps the two outstanding examples of societies in which the social compact is that authoritarian governments stay in power while the people feel that the government is providing rapid economic growth. The oil exporting countries may find considerable popular unrest if their authoritarian governments are tagged by the economic downturn resulting from the crash in oil prices. In many other countries, fragile governments may well be challenged by people who are suffering from their national versions of the global economic recession.

It seems to me that many leaders will try to project their domestic problems on the United States. They may do so because the global recession was triggered by the sub-prime mortgage boom and bust in this country. They may blame the government for failure to regulate the financial institutions that created the boom and bust. They may blame the American public for its greedy consumption and unwillingness to save. All three charges seem true to me.

The United States has long benefited from a positive reputation in many countries, as a country in which immigrants could succeed economically. American intervention on the winning sides in the two World Wars was also perceived as more altruistic than self interested, and the Marshall Plan and support for the reconstruction of Japan were seen in a very positive light, as was the Alliance for Progress of John Kennedy. In the early 1990's the free market economic system which the United States had advocated was seen as winning a global competition and the United States as advocating a system that was better everywhere. U.S. leadership of a global coalition to free Kuwait from its Iraqi invaders was also seen as a just action. The domestic civil rights movement was seen as trying to live up to the strong human rights message which we preached abroad.

The Bush administration has poisoned these positive attitudes, with the world feeling that it has embarked on an unjust war and occupation, that it has endorsed torture and abrogated human rights at home and abroad, and has sacrificed a global consensus on environmental actions for short-term corporate profits. If that downturn in our reputation is compounded by blame for a long-lasting global recession it will be difficult for the Obama administration to capitalize on Obama's personal popularity. indeed, one could find serious foreign policy problems popping up in many regions of the world as national leaders take anti-American actions to shore up their domestic support.