Competition for Global Hegemony - Frédéric Ramel
In Cosmopolitanism in Hard Times, Vincenzo Cicchelli and Sylvie Mesure (Eds), Leiden & Boston, Brill Publishers, 2021.
‘I speak ... as a fellow citizen of the world’ (Obama, 2008). These were the words used by Barack Obama in Berlin in July 2008 during his first presidential campaign. If he explicitly echoed another very well-known assertion, that of President Kennedy ‘Ich bin ein Berliner,’ Obama seems here a cosmopolitan candidate. This interpretation relies not only on his own life, which is, to a certain extent, cosmopolitan; his father was Kenyan and he spent part of his childhood in Indonesia. He also elaborates his speeches by referring to this cosmopolitan tradition of thought (Hammack, 2010). In fact, his election generated hope not only in the United States but also in the rest of the world. This first black man who accessed to the highest political responsibility of the country embodies a cosmopolitan president. Peoples felt that his presidency would be as beneficial to Americans as to the nationals of other countries. The Nobel Peace Prize he received shortly after his enthronement strengthened such feeling. Indeed, Barack Obama would be a Kantian in the Oval Office (Selzer, 2010)...
