Election Unleashes a Flood of Hope Worldwide

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES Employees of the Arabic-language news channel Al Arabiya prepared for a program on the American elections on Tuesday. Senior editors had expected a victory by Senator John McCain.

PARIS — From the front lines of Iraq to more genteel spots like Harry’s Bar in Paris, the election of Barack Obama unlocked a floodgate of hope that a new American leader will redeem promises of change, rewrite the political script and, perhaps as important as anything else, provide a kind of leadership that will erase the bitterness of the Bush years.

Whether it was because of Mr. Obama’s youth, his race, his message or his manner, some European leaders abandoned diplomatic niceties to compete for extravagance in their praise, while others outside the United States — fascinated by an election that had been scrutinized around the globe — reached for their most telling comparisons.

“There is the feeling that for the first time since Kennedy, America has a different kind of leader,” said Alejandro Saks, an Argentine script writer in Buenos Aires. Or, as Ersin Kalaycioglu, a professor of political science in Istanbul, put it, “The U.S. needs a facelift and he’s the one who can give it.”

There were some glaring departures from the feel-good mood. One in particular illustrated the challenges that will test the president-elect: President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia chose the day to lambaste the United States and threaten new missile deployments.

The final moments of the election were covered in obsessive detail far from America. In Australia, radio stations interrupted their shows to broadcast the Obama acceptance speech. In Berlin, newspapers printed special editions.

Perhaps one of the most poignant accolades came from Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s former president, who said in a letter to Mr. Obama: “Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place.”

Significantly, though, among American troops in Iraq, the hope seemed tinged with skepticism that change in the White House would not automatically mean change in American doctrines that have meant deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It’s not like even if Obama is elected we’ll up and leave,” said Specialist James Real, 31, of Butte, Montana, as soldiers watched the returns on television at Forward Operating Base Falcon in Iraq.

Indeed, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Iraq itself did not “expect that much change in the American policies toward Iraq. Any changes won’t be made in one night.”

In Afghanistan, where American troops are also deployed in an increasingly bitter war, the election brought a rebuke .

“Our demand is to have no civilian casualties in Afghanistan. The fight against terrorism cannot be won by the bombardment of our villages,” said President Hamid Karzai, referring to a string of coalition airstrikes that have caused civilian casualties.

For many outsiders, Mr. Obama’s victory raised expectations that a new administration would seek new relationships across the globe.

“I think he can restore the image of America around the world, especially after Bush got us into two wars,” said David Charlot, 28, a lawyer with French and American citizenship who was among a throng of expatriate revelers outside Harry’s Bar in Paris.

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, said something on similar lines. “Your election raises in France, in Europe, and elsewhere in the world, an immense hope,” he said in a message that called Mr. Obama’s victory “brilliant” and his campaign “exceptional.” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany called his victory “historic” and invited Mr. Obama to return to Berlin, where he addressed a huge rally during his campaign.

Even in lands whose leaders are no friends of Washington — such as Venezuela and Iran — the election outcome cut through official propaganda to touch some people.

“It’s kind of nice to feel good about the United States again,” said Armando Díaz, 24, a bookkeeper in Caracas, Venezuela, where Enrique Cisneros, a storekeeper summed it up like this: “A few hours ago, the world felt like a different place.” In Iran, too, some said the American example should persuade politicians closer to home to adopt similar political ways.

‘’His election can be a lesson for the dictators of the Middle East,” said Badr-al-sadat Mofidi, the deputy editor of the daily Kargozaran newspaper. Some in Iran focused on their hopes for a change in American attitudes towards their country. ‘’The nightmare of war with the United States will fade with Obama’s election,” said Nehmat Ahmadi, a lawyer.

Indeed, for many who had watched this campaign from afar, there was a sense that the election was not just an American affair but something that touched people around the world, whatever their origin. “I want Obama to win with 99 percent, like Saddam Hussein,” said Hanin Abu Ayash, who works at a television station in Dubai and monitored early returns on his computer. “I swear if he doesn’t win, I’m going to take it personally.”

In Berlin, Anna Lemme, a 29-year-old architect, said she did not usually hurry to catch the news first thing in the morning. ‘’But this morning I jumped to the radio first thing at 5 a.m.,” she said.

There was little doubt that for some, Mr. Obama’s skin color made his victory all the more exhilarating.

“The United States is choosing a black man as its president. Maybe we can share a bit in this happiness,” Mr. Cisneros said in Caracas.

The Afghan president, Mr. Karzai, said the election had shown the American people overcoming distinctions “of race and color while electing their president” and thereby helping to bring “the same values to the rest of the world sooner or later.”

For many in Africa — and in Kenya in particular — his election evoked a deepening of pride. As President Mwai Kibaki said in a message to Mr. Obama, “your victory is not only an inspiration to millions of people all over the world, but it has special resonance with us here in Kenya” — the birthplace of Mr. Obama’s father and paternal grandparents.

That sense of association may also encourage some to believe that Mr. Obama will give Africa special attention. “We express the hope that poverty and underdevelopment in Africa, which remains a challenge for humanity, will indeed continue to receive a greater attention of the focus of the new administration,” said Kgalema Motlanthe, the South African president.

Many outside Africa competed for his attention, too.

In a statement, the 27-nation European Union said it saw “the promise of a reinforced trans-Atlantic relationship” in Mr. Obama’s election. Even big business joined in.

“From a business perspective, I’m very happy that the economic issue was at the top of the agenda in the campaign,” said Lakshmi Mittal, the head of the world’s biggest steel-maker, “and we’re very positive that we’ll see more measures to address the economic crisis with his election.”

On momentous occasions, politicians reach for big words. The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, for instance, said that “American democracy has just lived through a marvelous moment, one of those major turning points that periodically demonstrates its vitality, its belief in the future and its trust in the values on which it was founded over two centuries.”

In Parliament in London on Wednesday, members of Britain’s three major political parties lavished praise on Mr. Obama. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that Mr. Obama had run “an inspirational campaign, energizing politics with progressive values and his vision for the future.”

Mr. Brown mentioned several times that he planned to work closely with the new administration, said he had spoken to Mr. Obama “on many occasions,” called him a “true friend of Britain” and said: “I know Barack Obama and we share many values.”

But politicians also peer through the prism of self-interest.

In South Korea, some pondered the destiny of a free-trade agreement negotiated by the Bush administration and criticized by Mr. Obama. Lee Hae-min, South Korea’s top trade negotiator, warned that any change in the deal could undermine South Korea’s support for the deal and “open a Pandora’s box”.

In the Middle East, the focus of much tension that has drawn in successive American administrations, Saeb Erakat, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, urged Mr. Obama to transform the proposal for a two-state solution in the Palestine-Israel conflict “to a realistic track immediately.”

At the Vatican, a statement urged Mr. Obama to show “respect of human life” and expressed the hope that “God should illuminate the way” for him in his “great responsibility.”

Some saw a chance to patch up old feuds.

Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who displeased Washington when he withdrew Spain’s troops from Iraq in 2004, said Mr. Obama’s victory “demonstrated the vitality of this great country, and of democracy and the unstoppable force of the ballot to bring about change.”

“I am confident this opens a horizon of promise for relations between the United States and Spain,” he told a press conference in Madrid.

But even in the moment of triumph, some in Europe questioned whether Mr. Obama would really make a break with his George W. Bush, the least popular American president among Europeans in recent history.

“When Obama takes office on January 20,” the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said in an editorial, “we will see whether the Europeans — and especially the Germans — really just had a problem with Bush’s presidency or with America itself.”

Others were less cynical. “The margin of victory was emphatic and, whatever else follows, today the world changed,” said an editorial in The Times of London, and The Guardian newspaper proclaimed: “They did it. They really did it. So often crudely caricatured by others, the American people yesterday stood in they eye of history and made an emphatic choice for change for themselves and the world.”

That was not a universal view in Moscow where one analyst, Mikhail Delyagin, compared Mr. Obama to Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who is often blamed in Russia for destroying the Soviet Union.

“Not having large-scale management experience, he has greater chances to disorganize America, to destabilize America, out of the very best intentions, as Gorbachev once did.”

But the supporters generally outnumbered the skeptics.. “We were all hoping that he would win,” said Carla Saggioro, a retired architect in Rome. “And the fact that he did with such a large margin is a sign of real change _ at least let’s hope so.”

The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, called Mr. Obama’s election a “historic opportunity” for a stronger working relationship with the United States.

“He values highly the resolution of all the conflict issues through dialogue,” Mr. Ban said. “He has expressed publicly that he is willing to meet anybody, any country, so that will provide good opportunity not only for the United States, but also the United Nations as a whole to resolve all issues through dialogue.”

Mr. Ban said he had met Mr. Obama by chance last year on a plane flight. “He was very engaging and he knew a lot about the United Nations,” Mr. Ban said, “and I was very much encouraged.”

For Many Abroad, an Ideal Renewed

Itsuo Inouye/Associated Press

Local residents celebrated as they learned of Sen. Barack Obama’s apparent victory in western Japan on Wednesday.

GAZA — From far away, this is how it looks: There is a country out there where tens of millions of white Christians, voting freely, select as their leader a black man of modest origin, the son of a Muslim. There is a place on Earth — call it America — where such a thing happens.

Even where the United States is held in special contempt, like here in this benighted Palestinian coastal strip, the “glorious epic of Barack Obama,” as the leftist French editor Jean Daniel calls it, makes America — the idea as much as the actual place — stand again, perhaps only fleetingly, for limitless possibility.

“It allows us all to dream a little,” said Oswaldo Calvo, 58, a Venezuelan political activist in Caracas, in a comment echoed to correspondents of The New York Times on four continents in the days leading up to the election.

Tristram Hunt, a British historian, put it this way: Mr. Obama “brings the narrative that everyone wants to return to — that America is the land of extraordinary opportunity and possibility, where miracles happen.”

But wonder is almost overwhelmed by relief. Mr. Obama’s election offers most non-Americans a sense that the imperial power capable of doing such good and such harm — a country that, they complain, preached justice but tortured its captives, launched a disastrous war in Iraq, turned its back on the environment and greedily dragged the world into economic chaos — saw the errors of its ways over the past eight years and shifted course.

They say the country that weakened democratic forces abroad through a tireless but often ineffective campaign for democracy — dismissing results it found unsavory, cutting deals with dictators it needed as allies in its other battles — was now shining a transformative beacon with its own democratic exercise.

It would be hard to overstate how fervently vast stretches of the globe wanted the election to turn out as it did to repudiate the Bush administration and its policies. Poll after poll in country after country showed only a few — Israel, Georgia, the Philippines — favoring a victory for Senator John McCain.

“Since Bush came to power it’s all bam, bam, bam on the Arabs,” asserted Fathi Abdel Hamid, 40, as he sat in a Cairo coffee house.

The world’s view of an Obama presidency presents a paradox. His election embodies what many consider unique about the United States — yet America’s sense of its own specialness, of its destiny and mission, has driven it astray, they say. They want Mr. Obama, the beneficiary and exemplar of American exceptionalism, to act like everyone else, only better, to shift American policy and somehow to project both humility and leadership.

And there are others who fear that Mr. Obama will be soft in a hard-edged world where what is required is a clear line in the sand to fanatics, aggressors and bullies. Israelis worry that he will talk to Iran rather than stop it from developing nuclear weapons; Georgians worry that he will not grasp how to handle Russia.

An Obama presidency, they say, risks appeasement. It will “reassure Europeans of their defects,” lamented Giuliano Ferrara, editor of the Italian right-wing daily Il Foglio.

Such contradictory demands and expectations may reflect, in part, the unusual makeup of a man of mixed race and origin whose life and upbringing have touched several continents.

“People feel he is a part of them because he has this multiracial, multiethnic and multinational dimension,” said Philippe Sands, a British international lawyer and author who travels frequently, adding that people find some thread of their own hopes and ideals in Mr. Obama. “He represents, for people in so many different communities and cultures, a personal connection. There is an immigrant component and a minority component.”

Francis Nyamnjoh, a Cameroonian novelist and social scientist, said he saw Mr. Obama less as a black man than “as a successful negotiator of identity margins.”

His ability to inhabit so many categories mirrors the African experience. Mr. Nyamnjoh said that for America to choose as its citizen in chief such a skillful straddler of global identities could not help but transform the nation’s image, making it once again the screen upon which the hopes and ambitions of the world are projected.

Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at the People’s University of China, said Mr. Obama’s background, particularly his upbringing in Indonesia, made him suited to understanding the problems facing the world’s poorer nations.

He and others say they hope the next American president will see their place more firmly within the community of nations, engaging in what Jairam Ramesh, junior commerce minister in the Indian government, called “genuine multilateralism and not in muscular unilateralism.”

Assuming Mr. Obama does play by international rules more fully, as he has promised, can his government live up to all the expectations?

“We have so many hopes and wishes that he will never be able to fulfill them,” said Susanne Grieshaber, 40, an art adviser in Berlin who was one of 200,000 Germans to attend a speech by Mr. Obama there in July. She cited action to protect the environment, reducing the use of force and helping the less fortunate. In essence, she wants Mr. Obama to make his country more like hers. But she is sober. “I’m preparing myself for the fact that peace and happiness are not going to suddenly break out,” she said.

Many in less developed countries — especially in the Arab world — agree that Mr. Obama will not carry out their wishes regarding American policy toward Israel and much else, and so they shrug off the results as ultimately making little difference.

“We will be optimistic for two months but that’s it,” predicted Huda Naim, 38, a member of the Hamas parliament here who said her 15-year-old son had watched Mr. Obama’s rise with rapt attention.

But some remain darkly suspicious of the election itself. They doubted that Mr. Obama could be nominated or elected. Now they doubt that he will govern. The skeptics say they believe that American policy is deeply institutionalized and that if Mr. Obama tries to shift it, “they” — the media, the corporate robber barons, the hidden powers — will box him in or even kill him.

“I am afraid for him,” said Alberto Müller Rojas, a retired Venezuelan Army general and the vice president of President Hugo Chávez’s Unified Socialist Party. “The pressures he will face from certain sectors of society, especially from white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, will be enormous.”

Part of that fear stems from genuine if distant affection.

“He has charisma, he’s good-looking, he’s very smart, he’s young and he knows how to make people like him, to the point that when he went to bow down to the Israelis, people here still made excuses for him,” said Nawara Negm, an Egyptian writer and blogger.

There is another paradox about the world’s view of the election of Mr. Obama: many who are quick to condemn the United States for its racist past and now congratulate it for a milestone fail to acknowledge the same problem in their own societies, and so do not see how this election could offer them any lessons about themselves.

In Russia, for example, where Soviet leaders used to respond to any American criticism of human rights violation with “But you hang Negroes,” analysts note that the election of Mr. Obama removes a stain. But they speak of it without reference to their own treatment of ethnic minorities.

“Definitely, this will improve America’s image in Russia,” said Sergey M. Rogov, director of the Institute for U.S.A. and Canada Studies in Moscow. “There was this perception before of widespread racism in America, deeply rooted racism.”

In Nigeria, a vast, populous and diverse collection of states, Reuben Abati, an influential columnist, has written, “Nigerians love good things in other lands, even if they are not making any effort to reproduce the same at home,” adding, “If Obama had been a Nigerian, his race, color and age would have been an intractable problem.”

So foreigners are watching closely, hoping that despite what they consider the hypocrisies and inconsistencies, the nation they once imagined would stand as a model for the future will, with greater sensitivity and less force, help solve the world’s problems.

There is a risk, however, to all the extraordinary international attention paid to this most international of American politicians: Mr. Obama’s focus will almost certainly be on the reeling domestic economy, housing and health care. Will he be able even to lift his head and gaze abroad to all those with such high expectations?