At the UN, Obama Laid Out His Real Foreign Policy
President Obama’s address at the United Nations today was a stirring defense of universal moral values and international law — one that felt weirdly at odds with his actual policies. For example, at one point Obama said, “all of us — big nations and small — must meet our responsibility to observe and enforce international norms.” But it was hard to see how the American targeted-killing campaign, as well as the recent escalation in Syria, fit in.
In a weird way, this sour note is what made Obama’s speech so important: it was perhaps the clearest articulation yet of what he actually believes and how he sees the world, and yet it also showed how his policies do not line up with those beliefs. The UN address — purportedly written by the president himself — laid out Obama’s fundamental worldview in especially clear terms. He’s an inveterate optimist, deeply believing that we’ve built a world with a bright future. But he’s also willing to take aggressive, even cynical actions to secure that future. That’s why his rhetoric and policy so often feel at odds.
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