Studio guest Fyodor Voitolovsky, Deputy Director, Institute of World Economy and International relations (studio guest), James Jatras, former US Senate Foreign Policy analyst (Washington DC), Michael Ben-Gad, Professor of Economics, City University, London.
What is your take on this?
Fyodor Voitolovsky: Obama, in his State of the Union tried to emphasize all the issues which can give an illustration of his success as the President. It is his second term and he is not trying to prepare his next campaign, he focused the audience’s attention on this issue also. The economy is working better, than it used to be during the last months of the previous year. And it gives a background for optimism. But I do not see such optimism about the possibility for Obama to continue his social reforms with the Republicans in the Congress. It will be much more complicated and most of them are opposing all the plans he described in his State of the Union.
After the State of the Union, do you think that Obama got rid of this humiliating image of a lame duck?
Fyodor Voitolovsky: He is trying to start a bipartisan social and economic policy. He declared that in his State of the Union. But I think it will be rather complicated.
When Obama was addressing the support for Ukraine’s so-called democracy and the reassurance to NATO allies, what do you think he had in mind?
James Jatras: I think it means more of the same, of what we’ve seen in the last three months. There’ve been news reports that there now are American military advisors in Ukraine; they are beginning to deliver some heavy weaponry to the Kiev forces. I don’t see that there is any indication that the US is going to pull away from the confrontational policy that they’ve been following so far.
Looking at Obama’s foreign policy in a broader context, a number of experts in the US were telling me that President Obama is very reluctant to take the decisions when it comes to what is happening thousands of miles away from the US, that he is preoccupied with the domestic agenda. Is it true or not?
James Jatras: I think that is true, however that doesn’t mean he doesn’t end up doing what he may be reluctant to do. This is where I think what we sometimes call the deep state – the automatically programmed impulses of the military, intelligence, financial information bureaucracy point him at a certain direction. Yes, he wanted to get us out of Afghanistan, but we went into Libya. He wanted to get into Syria a little over a year ago. And we are acting, I think, in a very provocative and dangerous way in Ukraine, despite what Mr. Obama’s reluctance might be personally.
But do you see any successes when it comes to foreign politics, especially in the relations with Russia?
James Jatras: Not really! I suppose you could count the normalization with Cuba as a small success. If he is able to come back with some kind of a deal with Iran, that would be some kind of a success. But obviously, there are strong forces, in the Congress especially, that would like to torpedo that.
In the State of the Union he warned Congress of imposing new sanctions on Iran. But we still don’t see any deal. Do you think that this year we can really expect a breakthrough?
James Jatras: I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that question. Obviously, I would say the Iranian intentions are just as murky and, perhaps, duplicitous, as those on the American side are. The fact is – Congress can’t impose any new sanctions on Iran. The best they could do would be to pass a new sanctions bill authorizing further actions, which Mr. Obama could decline to take, just like on the recent bill that was passed with respect to Russia. It doesn’t force the President to do anything, but it does sort of poison the well in terms of the atmospherics and the political intentions.
What is Europe saying about Obama now?
Michael Ben-Gad: People don’t really think very much about him. For the most part, Europe is embroiled in its own problems. From the American perspective, I know a lot of people who voted for him in 2008 with the anticipation that he would be sort of a middle-of-the-road democrat, and have actually been quite astonished by how radical he is. Whether you would define this as a social-democrat or not in the European context, I suspect that his heart probably is there, but he understands that there are some constraints on what he can do. But I don’t think anybody anticipated that he would be quite as radical as this.
Obama’s critics sometimes say that he is influenced, or even preoccupied with the social-economic models that we in Europe. If you come to the State of the Union address, you see that Obama was sending signals that the American economy is performing better, than the economy of the EU. How come?
Michael Ben-Gad: I'm not a great fan of all of his policies, but the US still has a far more flexible labour market, than Europe. It has a Central Bank that is able to respond very quickly to the changing circumstances. There are a lot of reasons why Europe is in a much worse shape. But the US, in terms of its growth since 2008, the unemployment has dropped, but labour force participation has also dropped. So, in fact, the number of people working hasn’t really changed from 2008 till now, it’s basically just recovered. So, it is not a fantastic record.
The proposals that he’s put forward, he understands, have no chance of passing a Republican-dominated Congress. He’s already put up, for example, the tax on capital gains from about 15% to close to 24%, and now he is asking to raise it further to 28%. He knows that there is no majority in either houses of Congress to do anything even remotely like that. But let’s keep in mind an important fact about him, which is that he is relatively young. He is barred from running for reelection, he is in very-very good health, he is anticipating decades of being an ex-President and he is setting an agenda not for what he is going to do over the next two years, but for what he can campaign about after he leaves the presidency. And in fact, if we think about the possibility at some point of time in the future, a like-minded resident might also be in the White House and have control over both houses of Congress, he would get credit for a lot of the things that he wants to initiate now.
