When the Oil Spill Does Matter!

It seems that the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico is going to deteriorate Obama’s political future and overshadow his internal agenda. The Spill makes Obama to talk to his nation for the first time from the Oval Office of the White House and call the event as “the worst environmental and economic disaster” for America. He also mentioned that this is “an assault on American shores and citizens”. A sentence which reminds me of George W. Bush’s rhetoric after the 9/11 attacks. I am not going to say that the Oil Spill is the 9/11 of president Obama but it seems that he himself insist on that. Obama accused British Petroleum of failing to do proper measures to control the Spill and requested from BP to pay compensation to the victims. Obama’s strong rhetoric against BP made British new prime-minister to react to the accusation. It seems that after a century of “special relation” between the US and UK the environmental event deteriorated the liaison. This event has some implications on the US administration and also has some lessons for the International Relations as an academic discipline as follow.
First of all, as I mentioned before the Obama’s political gesture is now at risk by this environmental crisis. Because of the importance of the issue he traveled four times to Louisiana to show his commitment to solve the problem. This is exactly what we can call it a showdown of Obama. According to a poll 52 percent of American people disapprove Obama’s handling of the crisis. This a clear reason for Obama’s concerns. His second term of office may be at stake, so he angrily makes pressure on BP and deployed 27000 national guardsmen to curb the oil leakage to the gulf. History shows the Obama’s legacy in the subject.
The second point is incremental importance of environmental issues in domestic politics and international relations. We are witnessing some kinds of tensions happening in the US-UK relations because of environmental issue. It’s not new but it shows the importance of low politics in International Relations discipline. Some events like climate change, the Iceland volcanic ash, poverty, infectious diseases, Louisiana oil spill etc are going to shape the agenda setting of international arena.
The last point not the least, is the growing significance of NGOs in International Relations. In Oil Spill issue once again we are witnessing that a super-power confronted with an NGO which is simply BP. This event shows that the states are not sole actors of International Relations and some new actors which are not necessarily weak have been appeared. After September 11th the world has recognized terrorist groups as NGOs which can change the trace of history and all the states determined to fight them. It seems that now another kind of NGOs which is economic giant challenged the sovereignty of a super-power. Regardless to the result of this confrontation, these new entities-NGOs- are in the chessboard of International Relations and cannot be ignored whether the states like them or not.

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