Euphoria swept the world after the election of President
Obama, a symbol of hope and yearning for compromise after years of war and
resentment toward his predecessor's style and policies. Today, after an
electoral rebuke at home, Obama is still popular among America's traditional
allies, but his star power among Muslims - a focus of his international
outreach - is fading.
American unhappiness with Obama and the government, evident
in the staggering blow to incumbents in midterm elections Tuesday, stems
largely from concern about the weak U.S. economy, suggesting there will be a
basic continuity in U.S. foreign policy.
Still, Obama departs this week on a 10-day, four-country
trip to Asia, his longest foreign trip as president, and pundits will keep a
close watch for any signs that his weaker position at home is recalibrating his
approach abroad. The Afghan war, Mideast peace efforts, Iran's nuclear activities,
climate change and the prospect of a currency war rank among global challenges
- with trade and finance topping the agenda at summits of world leaders in
South Korea and Japan this month.
Democrats lost the U.S. House to resurgent Republicans and
suffered setbacks in the Senate, an outcome that will make it harder for Obama,
faced with a divided government, to push his policies. Some in China fear an
escalation of conflict over trade issues if the president seeks to deflect
tougher Republican criticism of economic recovery plans.
"It is easier to accuse China of making that
mess," said Xiong Zhiyong, a professor at China Foreign Affairs University
who specializes in U.S.-China relations.
There is uncertainty, too, in the Middle East, where some
Israelis believe he will have less leverage over them because of his party's
electoral losses. Many Israelis mistrust Obama, pointing to pressure on them to
renew a slowdown on settlement construction as evidence that the United States
is favoring the Palestinian side in its role as mediator.
Obama's legislative achievements, which include an economic
stimulus bill and a landmark health care measure, failed to dissipate
frustration fueled by a sense that he has lost the electrifying power to
inspire that he displayed as a candidate.
Yet in many countries, his call for multilateralism, which
runs parallel to a decline in American diplomatic and economic clout, remains a
welcome departure from the era of President Bush, whose two-term presidency was
largely defined by the war in Iraq and the divisive debates on which it hinged.
Obama's brand has done much to repair America's tarnished image, some citizens
believe, even if concrete results have been lacking.
"People around the world were expecting him to be
God," said Mehmet Onol, a 29-year-old manager at the Istanbul branch of a
New York-based consulting firm. "The great expectations are what make his
term seem to be a disappointment."
A summer survey by the German Marshall Fund in the United
States found that 78 percent of respondents in the European Union approved of
how Obama was handling international policy, a slight dip from last year. The
same study showed Obama's approval plunging by nearly half to 28 percent in
Turkey, reflecting traditional anti-American sentiment in a predominantly
Muslim country that is a NATO ally. Opposition to the Iraq war was fierce in
Turkey, whose parliament denied permission to U.S. troops to use bases on its
soil in the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
Similarly, a survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project,
released in June, found that Obama's approval ratings were generally positive
outside the Muslim world, although not quite as high as in 2009. However, the
poll found that in Egypt, the percentage of Muslims expressing confidence in
Obama fell 10 percent to 31 percent over the same period; from 33 percent to 23
percent in Turkey; and from 13 percent to eight percent among Pakistani
Muslims.
For many Muslims, American policies do not differ markedly
from one president to the next, and represent the hegemonic designs of a
Western superpower, or even a vendetta against Islam. Obama has presided over
the drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq, a plan set in motion by Bush, but a troop
surge in Afghanistan and obstacles to a deal between Israel and the
Palestinians appear to have undermined outreach to Muslims, embodied in his
"new beginning" speech in Cairo last year.
"I don't respect Obama any longer since he's done
nothing for peace," said Raheela Nawaz, a 25-year-old housewife in the
Pakistani city of Multan. She asserted that American drone attacks on suspected
Taliban and al-Qaida targets in Pakistani tribal areas were "increasing
hate against America."
On his trip to Asia, Obama will visit India, where Bush was
popular for ending a three-decade ban on civilian nuclear trade that was
slapped on the country after its first atomic test in 1974. Analysts
anticipated closer cooperation on defense purchases and technology, but little
if any changes in the alliance as a result of the American election.
"Notwithstanding the extreme partisanship in the United
States on political issues, on foreign policy there is still a fair amount of
cohesion," said Prof. Kanti Bajpai, professor of international politics at
New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.
U.S. policy aside, Obama's extraordinary personal journey
was a key part of what enthralled the world, for a time at least. People were
ecstatic in Kenya, where his father was born. In this month's Asia tour, he
will likely get a warm welcome in Indonesia, where he lived as a child. Obama
is popular in Brazil, where half the population is black, and in him they
continue to see inspiration although Latin America's biggest nation has few
blacks in top political posts.
As a candidate, Obama attracted 200,000 cheering fans at a
speech in front of Berlin's Victory Column, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize
after less than a year in office because of the belief that he had strengthened
international cooperation. Critics deemed the award to be premature, and even
Obama expressed surprise at the honor, amid a growing sense that the
international promise of his presidency could not possibly fulfill the lofty
expectations of his fans.
Whether Obama encouraged that sense of promise to win
office, or whether it sprang up around him, is a point of debate. In Europe,
meanwhile, there is a sense of bewilderment as much at the divisive, logjam
culture of U.S. politics.
"People here still don't quite understand American
politics, the idea of political majorities, Congress or the U.S.
Constitution," said Steven Fielding, director of the Center for British
Politics at the University of Nottingham. "Obama is seen as the president
and all-powerful."
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Associated Press writers Erol Israfil in Istanbul, Paisley Dodds
in London, Mary Lane in Berlin, Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, Nirmala George in New
Delhi and Tini Tran in Beijing contributed to this report.
