![]() Obama said the words but it feels as if Obama only wishes to believe what he once firmly believed.Ĭonventional wisdom has it that a figure who had seemed a classic “idealist” in foreign-policy terms has come to savor the bitter truths of realism. “We reject fatalism or cynicism when it comes to human affairs,” he said, clenching his left hand as he often unconsciously does at moments of conviction “we choose to work for the world as it should be.” And he turned, figuratively, to speak to “young people across the Muslim world,” as he had in his 2009 speech in Cairo, seeking to conjure a different kind of future by addressing those who would build that future. One could still hear, in the September speech, echoes from that earlier time when Obama’s hair was dark and his hopes were bright. The president has been well and truly mugged by reality. The tribune of hope and change now speaks modestly of hitting singles and doubles. The president who once fixed his gaze, and that of his audience, on the global problems looming on the horizon now speaks of urgent crises requiring instant action. The president who once made an open-handed offer to the world now delivers a harsh challenge. To go back and read the foreign-policy addresses Obama has delivered since the 2008 campaign is to witness a struggle between strong a priori convictions and a tidal wave of adversity. ![]() The world that Barack Obama confronts today is a barely recognizable version of the one he faced, or perhaps thought he was facing, in 2009. This time, the president was not interrupted even once for applause. “If young people live in places where the only option is between the dictates of a state, or the lure of an extremist underground,” he said, “no counterterrorism strategy can succeed.” He did not say, and did not need to say, that this was precisely the choice all too many of them now had to make. Yet it would be up to others, and above all to the Muslim world, to change the conditions that had allowed terrorism to flourish. ![]() The United States would organize a coalition to mount a military campaign against the jihadi “network of death” known as the Islamic State. “We will impose a cost on Russia for aggression” in Ukraine, he said. The United States, he declared, was prepared to play its traditional role as the guardian of global order. ![]() The presiding metaphor of this speech was the “crossroads” at which the world stood - between “war and peace” and between “fear and hope.” He had come to lay down a challenge to the world. He had a very different message to deliver than he had at the outset of his tenure. His hair had gone gray his long, narrow face had become a few notches more taut. In September 2014, Obama delivered his sixth speech to the United Nations. Obama was interrupted by applause 12 times. Bush, had often acted “unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others.” This, he said, had proved self-defeating, for “in the year 2009 - more than at any point in human history - the interests of nations and peoples are shared.” The dominant metaphor of his address was the “bargain” that America was prepared to strike with other nations on the great global issues of nuclear nonproliferation, climate change, economic development, and the like. The first time President Barack Obama addressed the United Nations General Assembly, in 2009, he openly acknowledged what virtually everyone in the audience felt: that America under his predecessor, George W.
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