And So It Begins
Like clockwork, McCain’s campaign is responding to Obama’s Berlin speech in almost exactly the way I expected they would:
While Barack Obama took a premature victory lap today in the heart of Berlin, proclaiming himself a ‘citizen of the world,’ John McCain continued to make his case to the American citizens who will decide this election [bold mine-DL]. Barack Obama offered eloquent praise for this country, but the contrast is clear. John McCain has dedicated his life to serving, improving and protecting America. Barack Obama spent an afternoon talking about it.
Also, they are hitting Obama for his cancellation of the “inappropriate” visit to Landstuhl, which is an inexplicable blunder by Obama. If he was not speaking to the Berliners as a presidential candidate (not credible, but that’s the official line), how can he then invoke his candidacy as a reason to not go to visit an American military base in Germany?
P.S. The line about being a ”fellow citizen of the world” was just the most prominent example of how Obama blundered in this speech. Obama misjudges the public mood here in the U.S. quite badly if he thinks that “this is the moment” when Americans are interested in tearing down walls and embracing globalisation. The policy implications of this laundry list of trouble spots are serious:
Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice? Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time?
Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words “never again” in Darfur?
If voters think that electing Obama President will mean doing a lot of heavy-lifting with foreign aid, sheltering refugees in Africa and protecting Burmese dissidents and the Zimbabwean opposition party, they will not be terribly interested in putting him in that office. I would have thought that he would have understood the public’s weariness with the Iraq adventure better than this. Does he not understand that one important source of discontent with the war is its costliness and the diversion of resources to Iraq rather than having them used and invested here at home?
Update: As James notes, besides being grating the claim to be a citizen of the world is also meaningless.
Second Update: In James’ defense, and to answer to the generic response that “Kennedy and Reagan said it, too!” I would just add that the phrase “citizen of the world” is meaningless no matter how many former Presidents and famous people have said it. Worse than suggesting some “post-nationalist” attitude, the phrase is simply false: no one is a “citizen of the world,” so what can it mean to claim to be one?
There may be critics of Obama’s speech who object to this line simply because Obama said it, but I can say that James and I aren’t among them. I have previously objected to conservative uses of Tom Paine-isms, and will continue to do so, because I consider Tom Paine to be a dreadful source of inspiration who was frequently wrong about fundamental things. It is also not a vindication of the phrase that the idea of being a kosmopolitis can be traced back to certain Hellenistic philosophical schools, particularly the Stoics, in an era of absolute monarchies and empires–that just drives home how undesirable and how at odds with republican liberty the idea of being a “citizen of the world” is. Claiming to be a kosmopolitis became fashionable when active citizenship and meaningful political participation were on the wane; world “citizenship” is typically the foe of engaged citizenship in one’s own community.
Filed under: politics
BHO is, as Daniel has observed from the begnning, a liberal internationalist and interventionist.
If all human suffering potentially justifies internationalist activity and (next step) intervention, disaster could ensue.
However misguided, the Iraq war was justified on the basis of natonal strategic interest as well as sympathy for the oppressed Iraqi people. If we are citizens of the world and our policy it to rescue all the world’s fallen, we will promptly exhaust our treasury and our military in Burma, Bangladesh, Darfur, Zimbabwe, and God knows where else.
Let’s hope it’s just rhetoric.
Grumpy Old Man,
We’re in a sad state when we are reduced to forlornly hoping that the probably next POTUS just lied through his teeth to a worldwide television audience.
I think solidarity is being confused with militarism here. The analogies were the Marshall Plan and NATO, not WWII. And yes there was a Cold War analogy, but it was the Berlin Airlift. True, this isn’t the mark of an isolationist, but if Pope Benedict had made this speech, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Not every call to action is a call to war.
Americans don’t have an issue intervening abroad. The past 30 years provide ample evidence enough of that. The donations that poured in the Southeast Asian Tsunami victims was amazing. A lot of missionaries are given massive private support for their programs overseas. Americans have an issue their children being shot in stupid wars.
And I was some issues with grammar this afternoon.
[…] More, in a similar vein, from Daniel Larison (in his postscript) and Matt Welch. […]
Popes are not in the habit of deploying the Swiss Guard to foreign countries to back up what they have said in their public addresses (not that there are enough members of the Guard to do much anyway). We’re having this conversation because Obama is a presidential candidate and not a cardinal.
Private charity is one thing. Foreign aid is another. Foreign aid, despite its relatively small portion of the overall budget, is never very popular, because it is correctly deemed ineffective, inefficient and a cause of corruption. It is also subject to the political-cultural agenda of the administration in question, which is not how many people want to have their money spent.
Two questions present themselves when a candidate says things like this: how is any of this going to be done, and who will pay for it? With respect to Burma and Zimbabwe, some sort of forcible intervention is clearly one of the likely options for “doing something” about the state of affairs in these countries. With Darfur, the military option is even more prominent in the list of “solutions.” This is what bothers me about Obama: he insists that all of these things are serious problems and all of them are *our* problems, which implies that our government is responsible for fixing them. If he wills certain ends, he will end up willing the means to reach them if he is not just engaged in bluster, and in many cases military intervention will appear to a liberal internationalist to be the best or only option.
It is just a few steps from this speech to saying that “Mugabe has left us no choice but to attack,” because Obama will have locked himself into a position that demands some kind of intervention. That’s what is wrong with hyping foreign crises as great moral issues. Having framed the issue this way, to stand by and do nothing is supposedly to be a moral failure, when it may be very wise and sensible to stay out of the crisis.
“I would have thought that he would have understood the public’s weariness with the Iraq adventure better than this. Does he not understand that one important source of discontent with the war is its costliness and the diversion of resources to Iraq rather than having them used and invested here at home? ”
You misunderstand the fundamental nature of the American. Above all else, the quintessential American wants to be loved. To be adored, really, but liked is the pragmatic goal. There is a difference between both the cost and psychic repercussions of the Iraq war and foreign adventures in humanitarianism which change the cost-benefit equation dramatically. If the Iraqis really had welcomed us with flowers, if democracy and western ideals had spread like wildfire, had the world showered us with praise and admiration, George Bush would be the most popular president in modern history, even if nothing else (economy, katrina response, etc) changed.
If Barack makes the world wave tiny American flags instead of burn them, he will be loved at home as well as abroad.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve misunderstood what drives most people in this country, but on this point I just don’t buy it. There are some Americans who are upset by hostility to the U.S., but there are just as many people whose reaction to foreign criticism is, “Who cares what they think?” I know this is true because it just happened five years ago, and it happened four years before that, and it happens each and every time our government is taken to task by critics overseas for something it does in the world. Besides, most Americans do not want to get caught up in the internal politics of Zimbabwe or Sudan. At first, the public will accept the idea of “helping people” or whatever the official pretext of meddling is, but the public will tire of it very quickly.
Since Americans should be rightly concerned about the economy and $$, wouldn’t the negative consequences of a speech like this dictate that Obama talk about ‘economic populism’ even more once he returns? And find a VP candidate who can bolster his credibility on that score?
Assuming his handlers in the campaign are aware of the negative consequences.
I don’t think Obama’s statements are in any way incongruous with the last 16 years of American foreign policy. (For all I know, they’re likely of a piece with those of the Bush I, Reagan, and Carter administrations too.) This interventionist strain is worrying, and deserves criticism, but I fail to see what’s uniquely horrific about Obama.
This blog post hits on an important question in foreign affairs, though, and one which I haven’t seen Mr. Larison address (at least, not in the past 6-8 months) - what is your view on International Human Rights norms? And what would be your ideal response to dealing with states which repeatedly violate these norms?
It’s the fact that there is nothing very much different from at least the last 16 years of foreign policy that bothers me. There’s nothing “uniquely horrific” about him–it is very conventional and predictable acceptance of the consensus on foreign policy that horrifies me.
I think states that repeatedly violate human dignity should sometimes come under at least some sanctions from governments and they should expect boycotts by individuals and private institutions. On the whole, our government should be very wary of establishing high-level and close cooperative relationships with states that egregiously abuse their peoples, and in the past I called for the U.S. to sever our ties to Uzbekistan after the Andijan massacre. Divestment strikes me as a useless tool to influence another state’s policy. Besides causing the regime to become more stubborn in its refusals to change policy, it simply opens the door to investment by other interests that have no qualms about these abuses. In most cases, I recommend subverting such regimes with greater engagement, exchange and investment, which generally tend to weaken the regime’s control over its population and limit its ability to engage in repressive and brutal tactics. However, I am extremely skeptical of, if not downright hostile to, the presumption that these abuses compromise fundamental guarantees of state sovereignty, and I reject any doctrine that justifies military action–whether under U.N., NATO or unilateral auspices–to police the internal affairs of other states.
“it is the very conventional and predictable acceptance of the consensus on foreign policy that horrifies me”
Yes, that is what I assumed from some of your earlier posts, I just wanted to make sure I understood the nature of the criticism.
For what it’s worth, Obama seems to be running as the guy who can administer the American empire more efficiently, and that’s how I took his speech. There’s nothing that should alarm a population which has happily elected interventionists for the past 16 years.
Thanks for the response on the IHR issue, I appreciate your time.
This was his “President of the Planet” speech, where he moves beyond US borders to inspire the whole world. My image of the way he thinks is something like “Here I am, in my 40’s, half black, half white, with basically no experience, about to roll into the Presidency of the most important country no earth. What are the odds? I’ve obviously been picked by God or the zeitgeist or something that has nothing to do with me. Why should I limit my horizons until I get some indicator that I’m overreaching? Maybe I am the One…”
I understand that Obama thralldom is not everyone’s cup of herbal tea here on Eunomia, but the criticism here, especially in the OP, strikes me as overwrought, hypercritical, and literal-minded.
An overseas trip like this for a candidate like Obama, who is in love with the idea of of America (and with, I’ll venture, the country itself), in love with history, in love with language–well, on a trip like this, you’re gonna end up with speeches like the one Obama gave.
Although it appears to have annoyed most commenting here, to me, it was just another inspiring speech about walls that have to be breached or brought down (he was in Berlin), alliances (again, of course), and the power of good to overcome evil.
What’s not to like?
And Josiwe gets it right upthread, I think, about a core American value that Obama sought to represent abroad: RIghtly or wrongly, we crave recognition as not only exceptional but also as good and likable and reliable and strong. All those things together. We want to inspire the world, not fill it with something approaching misgiving or dread.
That was the appeal the United States held for Obama’s father, in 1960. It’s the appeal that most Americans, I believe, want their country to have today. Obama’s speech was not really more complicated than that. I do think he wants to inspire. And the source of his inspiration is his thinking that a well-functioning, well-meaning government staffed with the same will succeed where the cynical and the incompetent have failed us and the world for the past 8 years.
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