About Obama — without prejudice

By Mikhail Rostovsky, Eugene Ivanov

I do not think that, as president, Romney would have had his sights firmly set on another foreign adventure – maybe yes, maybe no. That is not my starting point. I wish to argue that the difference between Obama and Romney lies in their attitudes toward prejudice.

Obama's foreign policy cannot be described as pro-Russian. If Mitt Romney had won, it would not have signaled a catastrophe for Moscow. Still, on the morning of Obama's triumphant return to office, I still felt a sense of joy and relief.

Modern political life is full of the crazy and the illogical. Yet Obama's victory gives hope: Moscow and Washington will not bicker about outdated and contrived ideological constructs, but about what truly matters in their own national interests.

Hot topic: Elections in the U.S.

Russia was once the epicenter of American foreign policy. Today, if Russia is still at the epicenter, it is only at the epicenter of Mitt Romney's speeches.

A few days before the U.S. presidential elections, I met in Moscow with a former high-ranking member of staff under the previous Republican president. The former official’s present business depends on good relations between Russia and America. Regarding the outcome of the forthcoming elections, he displayed remarkable sang-froid, verging on indifference. "What will really change if Romney wins? Today, U.S. foreign policy has very little room for maneuver. Our resources are far from being what they once were. And the common ground shared by the U.S. and Russia – both in a positive and negative sense – is shrinking in size and significance."

Such an assessment is not just an escape clause. China and Iran are now the main concerns of both Democrats and Republicans alike. That distinction once belonged to Russia. Even now, the country is still used as a rhetorical soapbox for people whose youth coincided with the era of the Cold War.

Is it wise to underestimate the importance of rhetoric in politics? No, definitely not. Words and thoughts have substance. Only in their memoirs do politicians take decisions based on necessity and the corridor of opportunity. In reality, the corridor of opportunity often masks deep-seated prejudices.

For example, in making the decision to launch his country into a full-scale war in Vietnam, President Lyndon B. Johnson, according to his biographers, understood that it would destroy the very soul of his presidency. Being behind the "Great Society" slogan, Johnson wanted to go down in U.S. history as a great social reformer. Vietnam forced the president's hand: the war or the "Great Society." Johnson lived and breathed his ideal society. But his mind was beholden to the fashionable foreign policy concept of his day - "the domino theory."

The point of the theory is such: if one domino falls – in this case, if one country in South East Asia turns communist – all the other states in the region will inevitably follow.

But the domino theory proved to be rooted in prejudice. The president lost the war and destroyed his dream of a "Great Society."

I do not think that, as president, Romney would have had his sights firmly set on another foreign adventure – maybe yes, maybe no. That is not my starting point. I wish to argue that the difference between Obama and Romney lies in their attitudes toward prejudice.

Obama is a cool-headed pragmatist, whose gaze is fixed not on the past, but on the future. Romney is a politician whose personal prejudices remain unclear. After all, it is impossible to read a person’s mind –this goes double for politicians. The question of how much a politician believes in his own rhetoric is, I fear, doomed to remain forever open.

The more prejudice there is in Washington, the more there is in Moscow – they feed off each other. Even during Obama's first term, Moscow's attitude toward U.S. policy was bedeviled by wild prejudice.

Seemingly normal people, for example, were convinced that the "Arab Spring" was the result of a cunning U.S. conspiracy.

Those very same people genuinely believe that the opposition sentiment in Russia is the consequence of a devious scheme concocted by the United States, even though, in actual fact, all the political disturbances in Russia come from within.

I am afraid even to imagine how Moscow would have ratcheted up its anti-U.S. prejudice if the electorate had been swayed by Romney's abstruse rhetoric about "geopolitical enemy number one."

To summarize: Obama's second term will not result in America and Russia becoming close buddies. Where our interests do not clearly coincide (or clearly do not coincide) – for example in Central Asia, the Caucasus, the missile defense shield in Europe – the rivalry will be just as intense as ever.

But there is a chance that this rivalry will not be rooted in prejudice. For such familiar sparring partners as Russia and the U.S., that is no small matter.

Mikhail Rostovsky is a political columnist for Moskovsky Komsomolets.

First published in Russian in RIA Novosti.

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