Barack Obama’s UN speech sounded like a second-rate university lecture
By Nile Gardiner World Last updated: September 21st, 2011
26 Comments Comment on this article
Barack Obama speaks at the 66th UN General Assembly (Photo: AFP/Getty)
After watching President Obama’s 40-minute address to the United Nations General Assembly this morning, I think the White House should seriously consider hiring a new team of speechwriters. There was little depth or direction to this muddled speech, which seemed to meander from one foreign policy topic to another without really saying anything of substance. In fact it came across as several speeches cobbled together in haphazard fashion, with the president trying to appeal to a multitude of different audiences at the same time. This was more like a professorial address by a university lecturer than a speech by the leader of the free world.
Even the assembled world leaders, used to hearing some of the most dire speeches in history during UN meetings, seemed lulled into a state of suspended animation as the president droned on. Strikingly, there was not one applause line in the entire speech, and a deathly, sceptical silence greeted the most powerful figure on earth.
George W. Bush was hardly popular at the UN when he was president, but the assembled international elites did listen intently to what he had to say, and the dictators and tyrants who gathered in Turtle Bay genuinely feared him. In the case of his successor, I very much doubt that America’s enemies on the world stage were quaking in their boots when he took to the podium today. There was no real projection of American power in Obama’s words, and he instead offered a great deal of internationalist mush in its place.
The president’s speech was hopelessly naive in parts, with constant reference to the ideals of the United Nations, despite the world body’s appalling track record from Rwanda to the Balkans, and endless rhetoric about why “peace is hard work”. While extolling the dream of a nuclear-free world, the Iranian nuclear crisis received only a cursory mention from the president, despite the imminent threat of a nuclear-armed genocidal rogue state emerging in the Middle East. There was no indication given today that the Obama administration will stand up to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his relentless drive to build Tehran into a regional superpower.
On the Israeli-Palestinian issue there was the usual drawing of moral equivalence between the two sides, which has become a hallmark of the Obama approach to the matter. While the president used harsher language than usual in describing the threats Israel faces from its neighbours, his speech will do little to convince Israel’s government that he is a truly reliable friend. Although the president seemingly tried to avoid overtly insulting the Israelis on this particular occasion, something he has done several times in the past, he placed great emphasis on painting the two sides of the dispute as complete equals in the eyes of Washington, declaring that “the deadlock will only be broken when each side learns to stand in each other’s shoes.”
Barack Obama’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian question is symbolic of broader problems in this administration’s foreign policy, not least a striking refusal to stand firmly with America’s allies, something we have seen in the case of Britain as well. Indeed, his speech as a whole today will do little to challenge the image of a presidency content to “lead from behind” in an increasingly dangerous world, while muddling through one international crisis after another. Under Obama’s leadership, the world’s only superpower looks short of confidence, while her adversaries from Tehran to Moscow and Beijing grow stronger and more assertive. A world without strong American leadership should be unthinkable, but under the current US presidency we already getting a taste of it.
Tags: Barack Obama, George W Bush, Israel, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, United Nations
By Nile Gardiner World Last updated: September 21st, 2011
26 Comments Comment on this article
Barack Obama speaks at the 66th UN General Assembly (Photo: AFP/Getty)
After watching President Obama’s 40-minute address to the United Nations General Assembly this morning, I think the White House should seriously consider hiring a new team of speechwriters. There was little depth or direction to this muddled speech, which seemed to meander from one foreign policy topic to another without really saying anything of substance. In fact it came across as several speeches cobbled together in haphazard fashion, with the president trying to appeal to a multitude of different audiences at the same time. This was more like a professorial address by a university lecturer than a speech by the leader of the free world.
Even the assembled world leaders, used to hearing some of the most dire speeches in history during UN meetings, seemed lulled into a state of suspended animation as the president droned on. Strikingly, there was not one applause line in the entire speech, and a deathly, sceptical silence greeted the most powerful figure on earth.
George W. Bush was hardly popular at the UN when he was president, but the assembled international elites did listen intently to what he had to say, and the dictators and tyrants who gathered in Turtle Bay genuinely feared him. In the case of his successor, I very much doubt that America’s enemies on the world stage were quaking in their boots when he took to the podium today. There was no real projection of American power in Obama’s words, and he instead offered a great deal of internationalist mush in its place.
The president’s speech was hopelessly naive in parts, with constant reference to the ideals of the United Nations, despite the world body’s appalling track record from Rwanda to the Balkans, and endless rhetoric about why “peace is hard work”. While extolling the dream of a nuclear-free world, the Iranian nuclear crisis received only a cursory mention from the president, despite the imminent threat of a nuclear-armed genocidal rogue state emerging in the Middle East. There was no indication given today that the Obama administration will stand up to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his relentless drive to build Tehran into a regional superpower.
On the Israeli-Palestinian issue there was the usual drawing of moral equivalence between the two sides, which has become a hallmark of the Obama approach to the matter. While the president used harsher language than usual in describing the threats Israel faces from its neighbours, his speech will do little to convince Israel’s government that he is a truly reliable friend. Although the president seemingly tried to avoid overtly insulting the Israelis on this particular occasion, something he has done several times in the past, he placed great emphasis on painting the two sides of the dispute as complete equals in the eyes of Washington, declaring that “the deadlock will only be broken when each side learns to stand in each other’s shoes.”
Barack Obama’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian question is symbolic of broader problems in this administration’s foreign policy, not least a striking refusal to stand firmly with America’s allies, something we have seen in the case of Britain as well. Indeed, his speech as a whole today will do little to challenge the image of a presidency content to “lead from behind” in an increasingly dangerous world, while muddling through one international crisis after another. Under Obama’s leadership, the world’s only superpower looks short of confidence, while her adversaries from Tehran to Moscow and Beijing grow stronger and more assertive. A world without strong American leadership should be unthinkable, but under the current US presidency we already getting a taste of it.
Tags: Barack Obama, George W Bush, Israel, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, United Nations