DESPITE appearances, President Obama’s valedictory intervention in the EU referendum debate is a sign of America’s weakness rather than Uncle Sam bossing about its British satellite.

Such is America’s global decline – in economics, political reach and even military effectiveness – the US really is desperate for the EU to help fill the political vacuum. Which is why the Brits have to get with the programme.

America need the EU as an ally because the era when Western capitalism – essentially Europe and its North American outstation – could effortlessly dominate the rest of the globe has now ended.

With the fall of communism, China has become a major capitalist power in its own right (albeit with a heavy dose of state intervention).

The Obama presidency – long on elegant rhetoric but very short on real substance – is proof that even an intelligent, humane politician in the White House can’t resist the march of history.

But there is worse news. America and the West have not recovered economically from the 2008 banking crisis. By just about every economic measure, there has been a mediocre, sub-par economic recovery in the US and Europe. Living standards to this day have been little changed, retail sales inconsistent, GDP growth weak and productivity gains few and far between. Quantitative easing in the US and Europe has boosted share prices artificially, but the underlying economies remain dangerously weak.

To give him his due, Obama moved swiftly to try and re-build American industry after the banking crisis, while David Cameron and George Osborne stuck with the facile mantra of “not interfering with the market”. America might be capitalist but its business people have always seen the While House as an ally in time of trouble.

For instance, Obama pumped a massive $62 billion of federal money into America’s ailing US car industry – a move Tories on this side of the Atlantic are too scared on ideological grounds to repeat for the British steel industry. Result: the US economy has grown and millions of (low paid) jobs have been created.

Yet Obama’s superb rhetoric can’t hide the fact that the American dream is over. America has lost its position as the world’s biggest trading nation, its GDP is on a par with the EU and is being overhauled remorselessly by China. Obama’s eight years in the White House were not without some impact.

He passed long-overdue health care reform, extending coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans.

But living standards for working class Americans have been flat for a generation and show no signs of improving.

As a result, social discontent has boiled over and threatens to destroy the conventional party system.

Enter Donald Trump, stage right, seeking to mobilise the angry working class, especially those living in the Old South. Although Trump is a freebooting millionaire property dealer, he does not represent America’s ruling elite.

The Republican Establishment and its corporate funders are wedded to neoliberalism and an aggressive foreign policy that seeks to secure the dominance of US capital across the world. Milking working class grievance, Trump claims to be is opposed to free trade agreements, including the TTIP deal with the EU, and opposed to more foreign wars. He may not win the presidency but his rise spells the definitive end of the old Republican voting bloc and the likely death of two-party politics in the US. Obama, for his part, is no radical. It is his lack of radicalism in the face of the crisis that has allowed the white working class to be captured by the populist right.

Remember that Obama was the chosen candidate of the Democratic Party establishment in 2008, to defeat Hillary Clinton’s first bid for the nomination. But now all has been forgiven in order to keep the Republicans out of the White House – and fend off a challenge from the Democratic left in the shape of Bernie Sanders, a self-styled socialist.

The popularity of the Sanders’ campaign shows what Obama might have achieved had he been willing to use his early popularity to mobilise mass support for genuine change.

Rather than back Sanders, Obama has thrown his huge support in the black community to Clinton. As a result, the black population has voted overwhelmingly for Hillary in the primaries. It is curious that by any assessment that the first ever black president has done only a modest amount in practical terms to promote black civil and economic rights during his time in office. Instead, he has studiously championed non-racial solutions aimed at lifting everyone up “from one rung of the ladder to the next”.

YET such are the deep-rooted disadvantages for the black community in the United States, including a persistent institutional racism, this vanilla approach cannot and will not work. In fact, institutional racism is getting worse in America. In 2013, under Obama’s watch, the right-wing majority in the Supreme Court effectively tore up the Civil Rights-era voting legislation – letting the Republican-dominated state houses in the South decide on rules for the franchise.

The result has been to make it more difficult for poor blacks and immigrants to vote. It is no surprise, therefore, that in his final period in office Obama has turned to international issues, rather than confront the reality of domestic US politics. Hence the (welcome) overtures to Cuba.

But we should remember that Obama is no pacifist. Anti-war activists voted for Obama thinking of him as an anti-war president. Certainly Obama reduced US troop numbers abroad. He replaced boots on the ground with something more sinister. Enter the Drone War. Obama expanded assassination by drone to an art form. And US drone attacks have been instrumental in the displacement of over two million Pakistanis. But as her economic power wanes, America finds it more difficult to rely on pure military power. Besides, after the debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria, the American public have grown tired of foreign adventures on behalf of the corporate elite.

As a result, Obama has tried to persuade the reluctant Europeans to shoulder some of the burden. The compliant Brits and French did so in Libya with a disastrous aftermath. Slowly but surely, the UK is being pulled into a ground war in Libya, as America’s proxy.

Barack Obama is showing some naivety here. Berlin is in no mood to allow the EU to become America’s policeman in the Middle East and North Africa, while the US confronts China in the Pacific region. Then there is Moscow to contend with. Expect Berlin to cut a deal with Putin, if it comes to a confrontation.

Which may explain why Obama is so desperate to have David Cameron inside the EU to keep an eye on things for the White House.

Of course, there are other – and more positive – reasons for Scotland and the UK to remain part of the European Union. A united Europe is a peaceful one. In general, Europe’s more liberal, interventionist political culture is better for human and employee rights, and for sharing the fruits of economic progress. Perhaps some day the First Minister of an independent Scotland might travel to the White House to share that experience with whoever occupies the White House.


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