Is Obama a Socialist?

[gagged_Louise]

Take #2 of the above (ran out of edit time, and I hope this one is cleaner and clearer, so please skip the old one):


Yes, those were a couple of really good points Tantric. When it comes to diplomacy, speaking up to other nations and to a variety of groups around the "world community", I believe the difference between US and European ideas and expectations, ways of addressing something, are due to something else too. The US at least for the past 150 years, has known she was by far the most powerful state in its own hemisphere, and full-scale invasion of the mainland or even attempts to exert hard pressure from other countries close by hasn't really been something she needed to take into account. Superiority can be raken for granted by a wide margin, nobody expects Canada or Mexico to invade, boycott shipping or try to revile the USA in foreign media. Nobody seriously thinks Brazil would make real damage to U.S. interests by some kind of boycott or by forming an anti-American military league. Maybe you'll say Cuba has been a threat to the heartland but during the Cold War they were mostly a pawn of the Soviet Union - a state of affairs that was furthered by U'S' policies - and without strong Russian assistance they could never have posed a threat to key American security interests. And to say Cuba is a threat to United States national interests *now* is a joke.

In Euroep, every country has had to adapt to that the neighbour might react, put pressure on you or even invade: everybody's got a history of being pushed in by the others' ambitions, of being invaded and bombed at home, of having your ports mined or your claims questioned by the neighbours. These days they're not going to war with each other but the possibility of mutual pressure, boycotts, responses and backroom politics is still something that can't be escaped. It's simply not possible, certainly not in tense conditions in peacetime, sometimes not during war either to go for thje kill at once and talk ina "read my lips" style, unless you're sure the path you're going is fail safe.

When Germany reunited in 1990, the West German leadership, Kohl and the others, did show pretty openly that they were taking this into their own hands and were not going to be stopped by anyone, even if the idea of a unified Germany had been something nobody wanted to voice just a few years before- but they took that path as they became aware that there was no one who was really going to try to stop them, as long as they had the support of most people in both German states. And as long as there wasn't a sudden revamp of the Cold War and a communist revival, which were barely possible by early 1990. They knew neither Gorbachev, Thatcher nor Bush was really going to put a foot down, and East Germany was both industrially and politically bankrupt, so they could afford to go for it in a style that was kind of American.

It's always been a tighter place. To just speak no-holds-barred like John Wayne, without weighing in that there could be a response to it, open or veiled, down the line, isn't often an option to European politics, and I guess that colours the expectations of how it's communicated and discussed as well. That goes a long way to explain why modern politicians and public spokesmen in Eiurope are more diplomatic and less blunt than American presidents and the like tend to be. In the old days, when Britain, France and Russia felt they were on top of the world, they could act and speak just as bluntly as the American idea is you should do. But those days are long gone, When it comes to intra-European affairs - Bismarck speaking about Britain, in peacetime, and so on - I guess they ended came to an end already in the 19th century.