Grim reality check

Grim reality check
A glance around the globe reveals a not-so-rosy picture

This will be a year of disillusionment. But it is better to live in reality than under an illusion.

Abroad, it's the year the so-called Arab Spring will bear its bitter fruit. Syria's dictator, Bashar Assad, will surely tumble. A year ago, some utopian fools, mainly in the press gallery and the White House, would have suggested he would be succeeded by some sort of democracy.

That self-delusion isn't possible anymore after the disasters in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, where dictatorships were replaced by even worse Islamic fundamentalist parties.

Barack Hussein Obama had promised an outreach to the Muslim world more effective than that of George W. Bush — a bumbling Christian cowboy, in the eyes of foreign affairs sophisticates.

Today, the Middle East is in flames, America is even more despised, and its influence at its lowest ebb since Jimmy Carter. Obama's much ballyhooed speech in Cairo in 2009 was an American embarrassment — no president has ever been so mealy-mouthed about democracy and freedom. But his audience listened carefully. They learned Obama would stand by meekly and do nothing, just as he was deaf to the pleas of Iranian democracy activists.

But to say the Middle East is an American policy failure misses the point. It's a failure for the people of the Middle East, who lost their chance for a Berlin Wall moment. The world is darker there and will get worse in 2012.

Europe is in for a reckoning, too. The artificial creation of a single European pretend nation, with a single currency and a central bureaucracy that often trumps governments in individual countries, is staggering to a halt. Is there any doubt that their economic laggards — Greece, Spain, Portugal, perhaps Italy — will collapse, either dragging down Germany and France with them, or causing Germany and France to escape from an economic treaty in which they subsidize perpetually vacationing unionized workers in the Mediterranean countries?

Lucky for the United Kingdom, it never gave up the British pound. The dream of a unified Europe was always a stepping-stone to the bureaucrats' dream of one world government. That will end in 2012, as will Kyoto.

The United States became disillusioned with its own president within a year. During the greatest recession since the 1930s, Obama chose not job creation or tax relief, but the opposite — the nationalization of that country's heath-care system, bank bailouts and a borrowing streak that has even his Chinese bankers worried.

In reaction, Americans have tilted Republican.In 2010, the Republicans won back the Congress with a 50-seat majority. Mitt Romney, a bland, centrist ex-governor will surely be the Republican candidate. He's not inspiring, but he doesn't have to be — Obama's 9% unemployment and a $15-trillion debt are all the inspiration Americans will need to change course.

In Canada, we had a spate of elections in 2011, and on the whole, Canadians voted for stability. Unlike America and Europe, we've been cutting taxes and reducing our deficits. But Ontario, the largest province, has been spending like Greeks and Californians. Can a Euro-style credit downgrade of that province be far behind? 2012 will tell us.

EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY