The series of meetings held in Europe last week, and in which President Barack Obama was obviously the star participant, mark his debut in international affairs, and an early attempt to put his, and America’s, imprint on the future course of world affairs. He has placed his currently huge prestige behind the decisions made at the G20 meeting of leading countries. And he has attempted to get NATO behind the United States’ new foreign policy orientations, particularly in relation to his country’s continuing preoccupation with what is still perceived as the number one threat to global political stability, the situations in Iraq-Afghanistan-Pakistan.

The President has been well aware that the current economic and financial crisis gripping his country, and increasingly the world in general, has reduced the image of pre-eminence with which his country has been viewed abroad. He has been well aware also, that there is an increasing anxiety among the so-called emerging powers, to see a re-arrangement of both the rules and mechanisms governing global economic and political relations. Their intention has been to reduce the degree of unilateralism in rule-making by the post World War II dominating states, in particular the United States itself, and to make global governance reflect the need for more balanced relations between traditional and emerging powers.

But the President is also aware that, despite the changing balance of relations, his country still does hold the key to the resolution of any discussions relating to global change, whether in the realms of economic, political or environmental relations that are the subject today of increasingly intensive global concern. What he, and indeed the traditional European powers, have had to concede is, that the resolution of problems relating to these issues can no longer be done by, as it were, Western fiat.

In international political relations, the President has found himself defining as a key issue President Bush’s old one of the role of al Qaeda and the Taliban, though in Afghanistan and not so much Iraq. Of course Afghanistan is where it all started. But, unlike Bush he well recognizes that to the extent that those two forces, and in particular the Taliban are at the root of the instability in that part of Asia, the notion that their significance can be as easily diminished by the unilateral exercise of  United States power and decision-making now has to be dispensed with. Yet, in what some commentators consider a potentially dangerous turn in relation to this issue, President Obama’s insistence that Pakistan is now the new source of danger, with the Afghanistan-Pakistan boundary being the new location for the Taliban, poses the possibility of the United States being now bogged down not in Iraq, but in Pakistan itself, a traditional ally of the US. The continued hesitancy with which the other NATO states have responded to American requests for the presence of their troops in Afghanistan, to pursue what the Americans, with their love of acronyms are now calling the AfPaq war, is a sign that they will not be easily dragged into any new conflagration.

Indeed, the signs are that attempts are being made to draw the United States into recognition that, particularly in relation to the tensions in that part of Asia, as well as to Middle Eastern relations, the old unilateralist mode of the Iraq war must be decisively put aside. The US is being told that it must accept a multilateral mode of problem-solving in which those that she has formerly defined as trouble-makers, or at least unhelpful, must now be fully engaged. So there are signs that the ‘new diplomacy’ of President Obama, must in that wide area wholeheartedly include not simply the European NATO powers, but the non-European Turkey, Iran, Russia and even India. For India’s central geopolitical preoccupation has always been the very Pakistan which the Americans now believe to be the new focus of Asian instability.

President Obama’s United States is not yet ready to accept that a diplomatic modus vivendi with Iran is central to what happens in that Asia-Middle East arena over the next decade, and it may even be that the Iranians themselves have not yet come to the point of reorganizing their own diplomatic approach either. But all the signs are that the President must take the lead in inducing the diplomatic re-arrangement there, and, as a first task will have to do the work required to take his Congress along with him.

Referring to Congress suggests a not dissimilar task of presidential persuasion in the realm of global economic relations. For, starting nearer home in our hemisphere, we can already see the indications of resistance by Congress in respect of United States-relations with Mexico – the US’s closest economic ally in the hemisphere. The reluctance of the Congress to accept the rules of NAFTA to allow fuller participation of Mexico in their trading arrangements (this time in relation to a significant Mexican role in transportation of goods northwards) indicates the ever-present inclination to protectionism among American legislators, and their influence in US decision-making and implementation in international economic relations.

But the new President must already realize (in spite of his acceptance of electoral support from the Teamsters Union which has induced the US-Mexico current contention) that here too “the times they are achanging.” For even during President Bush’s time, the forceful diplomacy of both Brazil and India at the WTO has created a stalemate in the Doha Development Round negotiations, as the US hesitates to yield to their new demands. Now, the disturbance of international financial relations is reinforcing the need for less protectionist attitudes, and less resistance to institutional change in international economic relations on the part of the US.

Statements by the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, a distinguished international and development economist in his own right, just before the G20 talks, have emphasized the issues involved, and the emerging powers’ determination to get a change of rules in attempts to come to terms with them. Speaking to the London Financial Times (March 31, 2009), he has insisted on the need to maintain capital flows to developing countries in the face of a rapid decline in the course of the current financial crisis. In that regard, he noted the “withdrawal of private capital flows from emerging markets in 2009… estimated at around 700 billion dollars [with] no immediate prospect of resumption in 2010,” and insisted on the need for an end to what he described as this  “financial protectionism.” The G20 talks have in part responded to his concerns.

The Indian Prime Minister has also insisted that G20 discussions must take on board the issue of ensuring that economic growth must be “inclusive” – that the emerging powers cannot accept the Western powers’ inclination to pursue their economic growth through measures that negatively affect the developing countries.

He further coupled this with a call for changes in the “mode of operation and internal governance” of the international financial institutions, so long dominated by the Western powers.

The signs are that there is a move now by the Western powers to seriously take these issues on board. The signs are that the old G8 approaches to global economic governance will be subject to change, even if the Western powers initially take on the attitude of ‘hastening slowly.’ China’s call for the creation of a new reserve currency has certainly startled American circles, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s pre-G20 visit to that country will certainly have been a reminder to the US that the traditional developing countries’ group has now been joined by a country of major influence.

Will the implications of the G20 talks filter down to the smaller countries and regions like our own? Can we, in some way, engage with emerging powers in our hemisphere and beyond, to have our special preoccupations taken into account? Perhaps we will get a hint from the way in which Caricom conducts its discussions, and indicates its priorities, at the Summit of the Americas later this month, when President Obama makes his hemispheric debut.