Tag Archive for: Barack Obama

Amandla Awethu: Obama speaks in South Africa

President Jacob Zuma and US President Barrack Obama during a press briefing at the Union Buildings in Pretoria. (Photo: GCIS)

President Obama visited South Africa at a time when the nation is consumed with concern for the ailing health of Nelson Mandela. During their stay in South Africa, Obama and his family visited the Robben Island prison in which Mandela spent 18 years, and the stone quarry where he and his fellow prisoners were forced to work. Obama met privately with Mandela’s family to offer his support at this difficult time and observed that Mandela and South Africa’s transition to democracy is a ‘personal inspiration’. In a meeting with young African leaders in Soweto, Obama was keen to spread his ‘yes, we can’ message to Africa’s next generation of leaders and to encourage them to take inspiration from Mandela’s and Desmond Tutu’s moral courage.

On Sunday 30 June, at the University of Cape Town, Obama gave the keynote speech of his three-nation Africa tour. This speech, delivered in the continent’s largest economy, was to the whole African continent. He explained that his passion for politics was sparked by the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. The venue of the speech was significant.I In 1966 at the University of Cape Town, Bobby Kennedy had delivered his ‘Ripple of Hope’ speech, in which he said:

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope… those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Read more

Basketball diplomacy with North Korea

President Barack Obama warms up before playing a basketball game at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, May 9, 2009.It’s uncommon for the US Defense Department to be moved by North Korean rhetoric and war-mongering, but the recent escalation of threats has succeeded in eliciting a response from the Pentagon.

The US announced over the weekend that it is bolstering its nuclear missile defences in Alaska and Japan in response to the threat from North Korea. The Defense Department plans to increase missile defence systems in Alaska, adding 14 interceptor missiles. The US will also be installing a second X-band radar system in Japan to improve its early warning capabilities.

The US is going to this expense (roughly a billion dollars) because, it admits, the North Korean missile program is more advanced than first thought. While Pyongyang is likely still years away from developing a genuine inter-continental ballistic missile, the US wants to be prepared for any contingency. In fact, there are experts on North Korea such as Victor Cha, a former Director for Asian Affairs in the White House, who say that North Korea poses a near-term rather than long-term threat. So, just how great is the threat from North Korea and can the US and its allies minimise it? Read more

Obama’s mindset

Where's Obama's foreign policy mind at?What lies ahead for US policies affecting Australia? Paradoxically, the greatest doubt about America’s strength in the world comes from within the US itself. Obama’s second term foreign policy will probably resemble his 2008 campaign and the early part of his first term. In other words, Obama will mainly focus on domestic policy. His vision as a student, law scholar and politician in Chicago was about transforming America, not about the world. He believes the American people favour that priority. His first term frustrations in foreign policy will hardly change his view. In four years, Obama soothed international perceptions of the US in some international quarters and entered no major wars. Give him credit for that. But he transformed no world hotspots. A handicap is his worldview that sidesteps the notion of clashes of interest among nations, and encourages a multipolar world in which Washington talks with everybody about whatever, hoping that if big powers disarm, rogue states will be inspired to follow. This view is decidedly not shared by Beijing, the major world capital of most concern to many Australians and most Americans. Moreover, Sudan, Iran, North Korea and others have been slow to heed Obama’s call to rectitude. Yet he’s extremely unlikely to return to Bush’s big stick approach and pro-democracy sermons. Read more

The third US presidential debate: a consensus on Asian Pacific security

Governor Romney and President Obama during the second Presidential debate, 3 October 2012

I’m currently attending the Australian American Leadership Dialogue in Honolulu, the fifth such meeting to be held in Hawaii as part of the now 20 year-old venerable Australian American Leadership Dialogue process. It’s an interesting setting to watch the third Presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

This debate focused on foreign and security policy, although Governor Romney was certainly keen to bring discussion back to the state of the American economy at every opportunity. Both President Obama and Mitt Romney performed strongly in the debate. On that basis I would score the debate narrowly in favour of Romney for two reasons. First, foreign policy should be a natural area of advantage for an incumbent President, because Obama has after all been directing the policy for the last four years. Second, Romney came across as looking largely on top of the issues, and cut a credible image as someone who could become the Commander-in-Chief. That’s no small achievement for a candidate who has had very little foreign policy experience in his political career to date. Read more