The Revival of multi-lateralism : What Obama did accomplish

The Revival of Multi-lateralism

What Obama did accomplish

by Jose A Ibarra

It's been the worst of times and at times, it even felt like we were close to the end of times.

As bad as the situation has gotten in recent years, the 90's were known for bringing relative peace among major powers that in many ways left us unprepared for the shaky ground the international system would find itself in a few years deep into the new millennium.

Chaulk it up to bitterness from being led into a war based on false pretenses, chaulk it up to anger felt by non-participants of the Iraq war when being told they were against the United States if they didn't participate. You could chaulk it up to the Bush administration's neoconservative and ultra realist view of international relations that alienated the other members of the UN Security council and increased reservations about our allies joining us in any conflict. Chaulk it up to fear of being on the receiving end of terrorist attacks for supporting the United States, or you can even simply chaulk it up to the world feeling disillusionment at the perception that the United States had turned its back on its values.

We've had this discussion plenty of times and there's enough minds still pondering this whole thing, but the fact of the matter is that after 9/11, for whatever reason, international cooperation began to crumble. The idea that the modern nation could co-exist in a unipolar world with a single superpower began to really come under attack.

We find ourselves taking on many challenges today that far exceed the ones we did in the 90's because of this, but we and the national media are here today discussing the validity-the legitimacy of President Barack Obama receiving the Nobel peace prize.

Of course there's not so much outrage as much as there is annoyance of today's national discussion. There is so much that we are all missing in the midst of this 'does he deserve it' discussion that we do ourselves a disservice to address the prize's merits instead of actually putting a light to President Obama's true accomplishments.

I believe Fareed Zakaria has described it best, 'it's a gesture of good will' in which the United States is being welcomed back to the world community. There was a lot of attention to then candidate Obama's reference to himself as a 'world citizen' in his European tour during his presidential campaign, but this prize is a bud from that seedling that he planted during that speech.

To our own peril and the peril of the world, during the Bush administration there was almost a complete breakdown in communication among the major powers of the world.

Tensions between the States and China intensified with talk among Bush advisers and the gasoline added to that by people such as Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity about the growing 'economic threat' that China was becoming for the U.S. Russia was not going to take the element of Mutually Assured Destruction being eliminated for them by allowing us to put down a missile defense system that would make most of their nuclear capability just take up dead storage space. Europe was losing its patience for war in the Middle East and have since heavily withdrawn from both Afghanistan and Iraq. The world's perception of the United States now having turned toxic.

We have had several gatherings of the United Nations to take on the issue of North Korea and Iran but we continuously run into problems convincing all of the veto wielding members of the Security Council to vote with us. The ability to even respond with one voice has repeatedly been tested in recent years and the inability to come together on issues has made the Security Council very ineffective and incapable of doing much of anything, let alone be a tool to mitigate developing conflicts such as the Russian-Georgian war.

Iran has been participating in Iraq by providing men and arms. North Korea has turned its back to the United States over the Bush administration's failure to keep up our end of the bargain in talks for nuclear disarmament.

Despite all this, in 9 months, cooperation between the US and Russia has been restored by the elimination of an unnecessary missile defense program and we've regained their cooperation in the UN Security council. China has made historic moves to protect foreign journalists covering China, changing a long time record of censorship, and has also been more sympathetic to American concerns on North Korea and thus has successfully pushed North Korea to restart talks of disarmament.

The most significant moves the President has taken in reviving American multi-lateralism has been in sitting down with Iran for the first time in decades. Not only have we gotten them to the table, but through this issue the United States, Germany, the UK, France, and even now Russia has rediscovered what a united front is and has restrengthened the idea that the world's best solutions to its problems are global solutions.

The turn around of the past few months over the past few years is very significant. In the most pessimistic of expectations, we could've been heading into an era of great collusion against the United States resulting from continued self destructive actions when dealing with the rest of the world. The reality is that there obviously wasn't good results from immovable hard lines against our own allies. The recognition now is that the world's problems cannot be solved with a fractured response. The gains we've made this year in reviving international cooperation are truly incredible. It's a reason to really sit back and question how consequential just on these accomplishments the Obama administration will be for future global relations.

Is it really that far out there to award someone for a change of tone, a change in the way that a whole country that is the most powerful one in the world deals with the rest of the world? It seems insulting to the award itself that this in itself would not qualify you as a good candidate for the award, considering the terrible choices Al Gore and Woodrow Wilson have been in the past.

Do we not reward our children and our most humble pro sport players recognition for being good sportsmen, by showing restraint, good manners, and intelligence when dealing with their competition?