Over the weekend, President Obama gave a commencement address at West Point that continued to define his vision of America’s place in the world. This was really a coda to the speech he gave in Oslo when he received his Nobel Prize, in which he laid out the case for the morally justified use of force.
Obama used his December speech at West Point to announce a new strategy and troop deployment to Afghanistan, and this address provided the broader framework into which the Afghan strategy can be contextualized. It’s almost as if the president was saying, “Don’t worry, I’m not sending you off to war every time I speak here. I want you to understand the long-view, too.”
Some blogs, like over at HuffPo, have focused on Obama’s “repudiation” of Bush’s foreign policy. And there was certainly enough of that:
America has not succeeded by stepping out of the currents of cooperation — we have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice, so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities and face consequences when they don’t.
So we have to shape an international order that can meet the challenges of our generation. We will be steadfast in strengthening those old alliances that have served us so well, including those who will serve by your side in Afghanistan and around the globe. As influence extends to more countries and capitals, we also have to build new partnerships, and shape stronger international standards and institutions.
This engagement is not an end in itself. The international order we seek is one that can resolve the challenges of our times — countering violent extremism and insurgency; stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and securing nuclear materials; combating a changing climate and sustaining global growth; helping countries feed themselves and care for their sick; preventing conflict and healing wounds. If we are successful in these tasks, that will lessen conflicts around the world.
That doesn’t sound much like Bush at all, particularly in the pre-2005 period. And that’s, of course, a good thing. The rhetoric of shock-n-awe has been replaced by calm recognition of the actual challenges of the 21st century.
Some on the right will undoubtedly attempt to cast the more reserved rhetoric as too dovish. But of course it’s difficult to argue that this reason-driven commander in chief was playing to a lefty crowd when he sent more troops to Afghanistan.
I was more struck by the parallels between Obama and Harry Truman. Both drew linkages between America’s domestic strengths and its ability to retain primacy in the international arena.
Here’s what Obama said this weekend:
[W]e must first recognize that our strength and influence abroad begins with steps we take at home. We must educate our children to compete in an age where knowledge is capital, and the marketplace is global. We must develop clean energy that can power new industry and unbound us from foreign oil and preserve our planet. We have to pursue science and research that unlocks wonders as unforeseen to us today as the microchip and the surface of the moon were a century ago.
American innovation must be the foundation of American power — because at no time in human history has a nation of diminished economic vitality maintained its military and political primacy. And so that means that the civilians among us, as parents and community leaders, elected officials, business leaders, we have a role to play. We cannot leave it to those in uniform to defend this country — we have to make sure that America is building on its strengths.
Now compare that to Truman’s 1949 State of the Union address:
Our domestic programs are the foundation of our foreign policy. The world today looks to us for leadership because we have so largely realized, within our borders, those benefits of democratic government for which most of the peoples of the world are yearning.
We are following a foreign policy which is the outward expression of the democratic faith we profess. We are doing what we can to encourage free states and free peoples throughout the world, to aid the suffering and afflicted in foreign lands, and to strengthen democratic nations against aggression.
It might be “democracy” to Truman and “innovation” to Obama, but that’s reflective of the times. The tie-in between domestic progress and international power remains strong and, as important as it is to distinguish between Bush and Obama, we should heed that lesson as well.
Photo credit: The U.S. Army’s photostream
