The world is still buzzing about Barack Obama. A black man elected U.S. president. A man whose genes set him astride two continents. A president-elect whose upbringing in heavily Asian-American Hawaii and in Indonesia suggest diversity isn’t merely in his blood, but in his outlook.

Yet there’s one other Obama attribute that’s causing a rippling of excitement even in nations not exactly friendly toward Washington: His youth.

The 47-year-old Obama will be the first American president born in the second half of the 20th century.

As such, his presidency marks a generational shift parallel to what’s happening in other countries.

The current leaders of Russia, Canada and Spain all are under 50.

In fact, most European countries are led by men (and at least one woman) born after 1950, whose ascent to power also reflects this shift to a generation more attuned to economic and cultural issues than to martial and geopolitical ones.

Even within “competitor” nations such as Russia and China, Obama’s “geekishness” sells among a technocratic class (to which 43-year-old Russian President Dmitry Medvedev once belonged) eager to keep the agenda focused on making money, rather than making war.

Medvedev has strayed from the technocrats’ agenda with his shockingly jingoistic and ill-timed speech after Obama’s election last week. About a third of it was devoted to bashing the United States. Yet that reflects his political weakness and the deeply injured state of U.S.-Russian affairs, rather than the views of his technocratic peers – who could still help steer this former superpower away from an unnecessary and potentially disastrous clash with the West.

The same technocratic underclass may even be found in rogue states whose politics are far more difficult to discern, thanks to the distorting effects of oppression and militarism. Yet many of these nations also are home to an increasingly youthful population inspired by Western culture and materialism.

A real estate boom in some Iranian cities that made minor fortunes for city-dwellers has created a growing middle-class eager to shift the compass of national policy away from confrontation with the West. Even though these folks currently are being squeezed by the ascendance of religious extremists tied to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ahmadinejad himself is vulnerable to being side-lined by ayatollahs unhappy with the economic dislocations his hard-line policies have caused.

The same may be true in even more opaque North Korea.

Some South Korean academics say their contacts with North Korean counterparts suggest a technocratic-academic brain trust just waiting for a loosening of the privileges of the hard-line North Korean military to push their more moderate views to the fore.

In America, Obama’s geekishness may not be as readily apparent.

Yet during the early primaries, Obama put high-tech first, actually flying out to Silicon Valley to pitch his technology and competitiveness agenda to some of the geek Brain Trust, successfully by all accounts.

Included in Obama’s plan is a raft of “green” jobs, major investments in basic research and science, visa reforms and naming the country’s first Chief Technology Officer. All are potentially important not just to Americans, but to world economic health.

Of course, Obama may be forced to shelve his geekish side and focus his early economic policy on financial crisis management. That’s also important for global financial soundness. He also needs to wheel back his anti-trade views to a wiser middle road that recognizes the important contribution open and fair trade makes to middle-class vitality, equating to economic stability – not just in America but around the world.

Yet the up-and-coming world technocratic class is on to something. High-tech is a win-win venture with the potential to improve millions of lives around the world. And if it’s invented-in-America and made-in-America, so much the better – it will uplift Americans first.

Elizabeth Sullivan is foreign affairs columnist and an associate editor of the editorial pages for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. E-mail [email protected].