Two Views From Abroad: Comments on Election 2008

An observer in India perceives strategic and diplomatic challenges for India regardless of who wins the American presidential election. He concludes with a less than ringing endorsement of Obama:

As in 2000, when Mr. Bush was elected President, and again in 2004, the Indian elite must not make the mistake of believing what is bad for the world can actually be good for India. The dynamic of international politics is such today that any exacerbation of tension between the major powers or within regions in the extended neighbourhood of India such as East, Central or West Asia and the Caucasus will end up reducing the country’s space for manoeuvre. And under Mr. McCain, such tensions will be a constant factor, especially with his half-baked plan for a ‘concert of democracies.’

This is not to say that an Obama presidency will fully end the pathology of Machtpolitik that has made America such a dangerous country. He is holding out the promise of change, and if he wins it will partly be on the basis of the appeal of that promise. Nevertheless, the future of U.S. foreign policy will be guided by larger considerations of political economy, especially the restructuring of American capital which the current financial crisis has started. Certainly, the fact that Mr. Obama seems as committed to military Keynesianism as Mr. McCain is not a good omen for a world tired of the use of force.

But if Mr. McCain will be worse for the world and India as U.S. President, this does not mean an Obama presidency will not pose a specific set of challenges to New Delhi.

He raises an interesting prospect in the rest of the article, that large Democratic gains amidst an Obama victory would mean the early revival of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

An observer in the British press, Geoffrey Wheatcroft, sees the "implosion of the American right": as the real story of the election. The final three paragraphs of his piece are practically prose porn for a guy like me; to summarize--the incoherent GOP coalition is fracturing, the Palin Pick was cynically motivated and poisonous in effect, and the American Right is due for a thrashing. See for yourself:

But the Republicans have become an equally improbable mixture of fiscal conservatives, religious reactionaries and neocons, who really have little in common beyond a shared enemy in the form of "liberalism" or what passes for such in America. The nomination of McCain himself was a sign of the conservatives' difficulties. He defeated his rivals because of his seeming authenticity and decency, but many on the Right greatly dislike him as ideologically unsound.

Then came the anointing of Palin, which may prove to have been a decisive moment. In a most entertaining article in The New Yorker, Jane Mayer describes not one but two sea cruises to Alaska in the summer of last year arranged by right-wing magazines of different hues, National Review and Weekly Standard. There they met Palin and fell for her – "my heartthrob," says William Kristol – even though the advocacy of this gormless backwoodswoman by clever rightist intellectuals was the height of cynicism.

It was also a mark of despair. "Nothing is inevitable,"McCain said on Tuesday, but a victory for Obama now looks very likely indeed, and if the turnout of younger voters rises sharply it could be a landslide. We may all yet be disappointed by President Obama, but this election will still be a thrashing from which the Right will take a long time to recover.