The Real Audience for Obama’s U.N. Speech Was Republicans

Pres­id­ent Obama rarely takes the op­por­tun­ity to talk back to the Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates, es­pe­cially with top White House aides go­ing out of their way to claim he doesn’t watch their de­bates or heed their at­tacks.

But on Monday, the pres­id­ent left little doubt that he has been pay­ing at­ten­tion to what they’ve been say­ing on for­eign policy. And he thinks they are wrong.

The stage for his re­sponse was one where do­mest­ic polit­ic­al con­cerns rarely in­trude on glob­al crises, geo­pol­it­ic­al strategies, and dip­lo­mat­ic touch points. Ever since Harry Tru­man in­aug­ur­ated the an­nu­al prac­tice, pres­id­ents al­most al­ways aim high when they ad­dress the open­ing of the United Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sembly, their mes­sage dir­ec­ted at the world lead­ers ar­rayed in front of them.

This time, this pres­id­ent did have plenty to say to the lead­ers of Rus­sia, China, Ir­an, and Cuba. But not be­fore he made clear just how wrong­headed are the Re­pub­lic­ans who have been rip­ping in­to his for­eign policy for months as feck­less, weak, per­il­ous, and even trait­or­ous. He has heard the can­did­ates pledge to break trade treat­ies in this hemi­sphere, de­mand pro­tect­ive tar­iffs, and threaten to use mil­it­ary force against North Korea, China, Rus­sia, Syr­ia, Ir­an, and Ir­aq.

With al­most sev­en years as pres­id­ent un­der his belt, Obama came across as the eld­er states­men saddened by the im­petu­ous­ness of un­tested can­did­ates. He sug­ges­ted that with some season­ing, they will learn what he already knows and re­cog­nizes: “that dip­lomacy is hard, that the out­comes are some­times un­sat­is­fy­ing, that it’s rarely polit­ic­ally pop­u­lar.”

His lar­ger mes­sage to those fight­ing for his job is not to give up on mul­ti­lat­er­al in­sti­tu­tions and the in­ter­na­tion­al or­der built so ar­du­ously un­der Amer­ic­an guid­ance in the sev­en dec­ades since the end of World War II. “There are those who ar­gue that the ideals en­shrined in the U.N. charter are un­achiev­able or out of date—a leg­acy of a post­war era not suited to our own,” he said. “Ef­fect­ively, they ar­gue for a re­turn to the rules that ap­plied for most of hu­man his­tory and that pred­ate this in­sti­tu­tion: the be­lief that power is a zero-sum game; that might makes right; that strong states must im­pose their will on weak­er ones; that the rights of in­di­vidu­als don’t mat­ter; and that in a time of rap­id change, or­der must be im­posed by force.”

Rus­si­an Pres­id­ent Vladi­mir Putin was the os­tens­ible tar­get of that re­mark. But it also re­flec­ted the re­peated prom­ises of mil­it­ary force heard in the GOP de­bates. More dir­ectly, Obama lamen­ted what he sees in West­ern and Amer­ic­an polit­ics, com­plain­ing that “the in­creas­ing skep­ti­cism of our in­ter­na­tion­al or­der can also be found in the most ad­vanced demo­cra­cies.”

He ad­ded, “We see great­er po­lar­iz­a­tion, more fre­quent grid­lock; move­ments on the Far Right, and some­times the Left, that in­sist on stop­ping the trade that binds our fates to oth­er na­tions, call­ing for the build­ing of walls to keep out im­mig­rants. Most omin­ously, we see the fears of or­din­ary people be­ing ex­ploited through ap­peals to sec­tari­an­ism, or tri­bal­ism, or ra­cism, or anti-Semit­ism; ap­peals to a glor­i­ous past be­fore the body polit­ic was in­fec­ted by those who look dif­fer­ent, or wor­ship God dif­fer­ently; a polit­ics of us versus them.”

Lest there be any doubt of his tar­get, he de­clared that the United States “is not im­mune” from the af­flic­tion. “Even as our eco­nomy is grow­ing and our troops have largely re­turned from Ir­aq and Afgh­anistan, we see in our de­bates about Amer­ica’s role in the world a no­tion of strength that is defined by op­pos­i­tion to old en­emies, per­ceived ad­versar­ies, a rising China, or a re­sur­gent Rus­sia; a re­volu­tion­ary Ir­an, or an Is­lam that is in­com­pat­ible with peace. We see an ar­gu­ment made that the only strength that mat­ters for the United States is bel­li­cose words and shows of mil­it­ary force; that co­oper­a­tion and dip­lomacy will not work.”

While the Re­pub­lic­ans re­peatedly as­sert he has let the Amer­ic­an mil­it­ary muscle at­rophy, he in­sisted, “I lead the strongest mil­it­ary that the world has ever known, and I will nev­er hes­it­ate to pro­tect my coun­try or our al­lies, uni­lat­er­ally and by force where ne­ces­sary.” He warned against over­use of that mil­it­ary, though.

“No mat­ter how power­ful our mil­it­ary, how strong our eco­nomy, we un­der­stand the United States can­not solve the world’s prob­lems alone,” he said. “In Ir­aq, the United States learned the hard les­son that even hun­dreds of thou­sands of brave, ef­fect­ive troops, tril­lions of dol­lars from our Treas­ury, can­not by it­self im­pose sta­bil­ity on a for­eign land. Un­less we work with oth­er na­tions un­der the mantle of in­ter­na­tion­al norms and prin­ciples and law that of­fer le­git­im­acy to our ef­forts, we will not suc­ceed. And un­less we work to­geth­er to de­feat the ideas that drive dif­fer­ent com­munit­ies in a coun­try like Ir­aq in­to con­flict, any or­der that our mil­it­ar­ies can im­pose will be tem­por­ary.”

Obama seemed to be look­ing bey­ond the Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ates with a mes­sage for Amer­ic­an voters who are voicing sup­port for the GOP pitch. “A polit­ics and solid­ar­ity that de­pend on de­mon­iz­ing oth­ers, that draws on re­li­gious sec­tari­an­ism or nar­row tri­bal­ism or jin­go­ism, may at times look like strength in the mo­ment, but over time its weak­ness will be ex­posed,” he warned. “And his­tory tells us that the dark forces un­leashed by this type of polit­ics surely makes all of us less se­cure. Our world has been there be­fore. We gain noth­ing from go­ing back.”