http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=81D5FA6A-A551-49E4-BAF3-83D660257BC5 Obama's exceptional U.N. address
By: Josh Gerstein
September 24, 2014 08:04 PM EDT
UNITED NATIONS — Call it the American exceptionalism exception.
If there’s one place on President Barack Obama’s annual speaking calendar where rhetoric about the U.S. being the world’s greatest power doesn’t sell, it’s at the United Nations.
So when he spoke to heads of state and diplomats Wednesday, there was little talk of America’s duty to solve the world’s problems.
For many in the international audience, that kind of language conjures up notions of American imperialism, military adventurism and a foolhardy quest to remake the world in America’s image.
Even as the U.S. expanded its most significant military operation since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq a decade ago, Obama watered down his noble-America rhetoric. Instead, he promoted a more benign kind of American optimism likelier to be soothing to the ears of those on the world stage.
“I often tell young people in the United States that despite the headlines, this is the best time in human history to be born, for you are more likely than ever before to be literate, to be healthy, to be free to pursue your dreams,” Obama said, casting for positive trends amid a cascade of global crises. “For America, the choice is clear: We choose hope over fear.”
Obama’s effort to find notes of optimism on the global scene struck a contrast with the grim picture painted by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who decried “barrel bombs and beheadings” and bemoaned “a terrible year for the principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter.”
However, the closest Obama came Wednesday to embracing a special obligation borne by the U.S. was a mention of Americans being “heirs to a proud legacy of freedom.”
While much of Obama’s speech called out what the U.S. views as bad governance and human rights violations by countries around the world, the president was so intent on avoiding the image of the U.S. as a moral hegemon that he surprised many in the audience by bringing up the recent shooting and subsequent racial strife in Ferguson, Missouri.
“I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri — where a young man was killed, and a community was divided,” the president said. “So, yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions … but we welcome the scrutiny of the world.”
An Obama aide later said the president referenced Ferguson to make clear to his audience that “we’re not perfect.”
It was a far cry from his speech to the American people just two weeks earlier, where he suggested that despite his best efforts to have powers around the globe resolve crises in their neighborhoods, U.S. military forces would again be called on to lead the fight against a terrorist group nearly half a world away.
“American leadership is the one constant in an uncertain world,” Obama said in a prime-time address from the White House. “America, our endless blessings bestow an enduring burden. But as Americans, we welcome our responsibility to lead. From Europe to Asia, from the far reaches of Africa to war-torn capitals of the Middle East, we stand for freedom, for justice, for dignity. These are values that have guided our nation since its founding. … Our own safety, our own security, depends upon our willingness to do what it takes to defend this nation and uphold the values that we stand for.”
Of course, Obama’s own sincerity in making the case for American exceptionalism is open to doubt. It’s not material he appears to be particularly comfortable with. It seems to make its way into his public remarks in advance of elections or when he’s trying to persuade Americans that the U.S. government needs to take on responsibilities abroad that some may be reluctant to shoulder.
In his 2012 State of the Union address, with the White House going into reelection mode, Obama called the U.S “the one indispensable nation in world affairs.” He used a similar turn of phrase in the final presidential debate that year, just weeks before Americans went to the polls.
“Back when he was getting a lot of flack from the right for not fully believing in American exceptionalism, you heard him hike up that rhetoric just to be clear,” said Washington Monthly editor Paul Glastris, a former chief speechwriter for President Bill Clinton. Obama’s “notion of American exceptionalism is not other people’s notion of American exceptionalism. It’s not that we don’t have to play by the world’s rules, but more that we have special burdens,” the former Clinton aide added.
Obama isn’t the first U.S. president to zigzag a bit when it comes to the question of national hubris versus national humility. Obama’s predecessor, President George W. Bush, came into office promising a “humble” foreign policy that would avoid nation-building. He wound up overseeing the prolonged and bloody American occupation of two countries, as well as flawed efforts to create democratic institutions where none had existed.
The talk of the U.S. leading, but not lording over, other countries dovetails with the main policy goal of Obama’s U.N. diplomacy this year: winning international support for the U.S. drive to rout the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Obama spoke several times Wednesday of the importance of other countries joining the new campaign against ISIL that America has launched. U.S. officials have also been eager to play up the role of five Arab countries who participated in airstrikes launched Monday night on ISIL in Syria alongside the U.S.
He picked up some more concrete assistance when a U.N. Security Council session that he chaired later Wednesday passed a binding resolution calling on U.N. member nations to make it a crime for their citizens to travel abroad to fight with terror groups or to recruit for those groups. Foreign fighters have in recent years flowed into a wide range of conflict zones, including Afghanistan and Libya, and are now building up their presence in Syria and Iraq.
“I called this meeting,” Obama explained, “because we must come together — as nations and an international community — to confront the real and growing threat of foreign terrorist fighters.”
That message is one that Obama has felt comfortable sending to both international and domestic audiences. In his first public comments after Monday night’s airstrikes, he stood outside the White House and declared, “This is not America’s fight alone.”
Obama sometimes seems to have a decidedly unromantic view of the obligations of national leadership, pointing not to ideals or destiny but to duties brought on by capability or even simply by size.
“We have a special responsibility to lead. That’s what big nations have to do,” he said at a U.N. session Tuesday, urging China to step up its efforts to combat climate change.
Obama may be a convert of sorts to the notion of American exceptionalism, convinced by his first-hand experience in the Oval Office that — like it or not — the U.S. is, as he began to say towards the end of his first term, the world’s indispensable nation and that countries around the world often seem paralyzed until it’s clear that the U.S. will step forward.
While Obama steered clear of expressing such sentiments at public U.N.-related events this week, when he spoke to an American audience away from TV cameras Tuesday, the president evinced a bit of pride at the way the U.S. had assembled a broad coalition to strike at ISIL.
“This week what you’re seeing is what American leadership means,” Obama told donors at a political fundraiser in a Manhattan apartment. “What we’ve seen is American leadership at its best. It doesn’t mean that the problems are easy or that they’re solved anytime soon, but it indicates the degree to which we continue to be the one indispensable nation. And we should be proud of that. These are big challenges, but we’re up to the task.”
