Only a few years ago, America went to war against a dictator whose name was Hussein. Add to this that the number one enemy of America is a man whose name nicely rhymes with Obama. Under such circumstances, Barack Hussein Obama is not just a name. As a writer from The New Yorker recently joked, "It's a catastrophe!" Yet, Obama still pulled it off. And the country is a better place for it.
Now comes the hard part, however. How will Obama manage expectations? Obama's campaign and his political narrative was almost too inspirational. Add to this the monumental disappointment with the departing Bush administration. The result is almost unattainable national and global expectations. The world, and many Americans, came to see Obama almost like a Messiah that will part the waters and take us to the promised land. Such high expectations are coupled with the fact that Obama is inheriting a global economy in freefall and a US foreign policy plagued by two wars that are both going very badly.
One thing is for sure: Obama will need serious help from European allies. If his administration delivers on issues such as closing down Guantanamo, signing the Kyoto Protocol and launching a Middle East peace process, European allies will also have to do their part. After having done so many things that will change the image of the US, I can easily envision a meeting between Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel or French President Sarkozy where Obama asks for more NATO troops in Afghanistan. After all, Obama, too, will have expectations from the world.
Yet, I am not sure if Europeans will deliver these NATO troops to Afghanistan. Even after a serious change of power and policies in Washington, there may still be insurmountable differences in the political culture of these transatlantic allies. This will create a dangerous split. One can understand the transatlantic divergence when you have a stereotypical Republican cowboy running things in Washington with unilateralist zeal. But when a multi-lateralist Democrat is adopting the right global causes and he is still not getting help from Europe, things may get really nasty. You can already sense how this situation will delight all the neocons who have argued over the last eight years that "Europeans are from Venus and Americans from Mars." They will be vindicated.
What about relations with Turkey? Turks, unlike Europeans, are looking at Obama with an equal degree of admiration and apprehension. They surely are excited about "change" coming to Washington. Moreover, the idea of a "black" president is playing particularly well with the Turkish underclass, which sometimes identifies itself as a black underdog against the white cultural elite of the country.
Yet, the Turkish media follows American events through Turkish lenses. Turkish journalists immediately picked up Obama's commitment to recognize the Armenian genocide as the most relevant news items of this American election for Turkish audiences. All this leads to considerable apprehension about Obama, particularly among the Turkish ruling elite. Ankara is, of course, very happy to see such inspirational change come to Washington, but it is also seriously troubled at the prospects of a new crisis on April 24 next year, when the White House traditionally issues a statement of sympathy with Armenians. Will the presidential letter refer to the "massacres" of Armenians in 1915 or will Obama refer to them as "genocide," as he promised Armenian-American organizations several times during his campaign? This issue will sadly dominate the next few months in Turkish-American relations.
If I were to take a guess, I would say that Obama, at the end of the day, will decide not to use the term "genocide." This, however, will not be because he will have changed his mind about what happened in 1915. Instead, his change of vocabulary will come because of "realpolitik." He will come to realize that Ankara and Turkish public opinion will react with utter anger against his administration -- jeopardizing all diplomatic and military relations at a critical time. So the crisis will be postponed, at least until the following year.
