Politicians' speeches are often dismissed as empty rhetoric whose purpose is to win elections.
A few exceptions come readily to mind: Lincoln's "with malice toward none," Churchill's "blood, toil, tears and sweat" and "we shall fight them on the beaches," and FDR's "nothing to fear but fear itself."
Far too often overlooked because it did not come at a particularly dramatic moment was John F. Kennedy's 1963 commencement address at American University. The October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that brought the world to the brink of U.S.-Soviet nuclear war had ebbed from public consciousness, replaced by the run-up to the civil rights March on Washington scheduled for that August.
Kennedy believed both sides had come to a new understanding of nuclear realities, so, at what in retrospect was the height of the Cold War, he charted a new path: "If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity."
With this simple phrase -- echoing but dramatically changing Woodrow Wilson's rhetoric -- Kennedy signaled that the U.S. could safely coexist with its ideological opponents. Initial proof was the limited nuclear test ban treaty -- first in the line of nuclear-risk-reduction agreements extending to today's Russian-American negotiations to further cut nuclear stockpiles.
Kennedy was outlining a new foreign policy no longer based on the Manichean divide of the "free world" versus the "communist world." He believed that viewing the world in mutually exclusive moral opposites was dangerous because it allowed for no compromise.
America could tolerate diversity, but expected reasonable restraint on the part of its adversaries. The reality of Mutually Assured Destruction, Kennedy foresaw, created that restraint and opened the possibility of confidence-building and risk-reducing measures that did not eliminate conflict, but limited it. This speech, and the nuclear test ban treaty, signaled the beginning of the end of the Cold War and the start of de facto collaboration between the two superpowers to temper and manage their conflicts.
Kennedy was certainly a realist, but he was no cynic. He realized that differences and conflicts would continue, but negotiation and engagement could prevent them from escalating to nuclear war.
During his first year in office, President Kennedy faced two significant foreign policy crises. The Bay of Pigs was a disaster for his administration, but it did not lead to a confrontation with the Soviet Union (though it may have motivated Russia to place the missiles in Cuba that precipitated the 1962 crisis). Later in 1961 when the Berlin Wall was built, Kennedy condemned the Soviets for imprisoning people behind the Iron Curtain, yet the U.S. did not attempt to tear down the wall.
During his first year in office, President Obama has certainly faced numerous challenges -- two wars, a worldwide financial crisis and recession, the possibility of Iran going nuclear, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, continued terrorist attacks, and the list goes on. Like Kennedy, Obama was elected as a man of change. And, like Kennedy, Obama is a man of words charting a new foreign policy direction.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in his remarks accepting the Nobel Peace Prize -- a speech that shocked many with its focus on justified uses of force, and led many to overlook its emphasis on the underpinnings of a just peace.
Obama's speech in Oslo projected realism devoid of cynicism. While the prospect of war between nuclear superpowers has largely been replaced by threats of catastrophe through nuclear proliferation, "modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale." These new conditions "require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace."
"We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified."
"So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths -- that war is sometimes necessary, and war at some level is an expression of human folly. Concretely, we must direct our effort to the task that President Kennedy called for long ago. ‘Let us focus,' he said, ‘on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions.' A gradual evolution of human institutions."
Obama is basing his foreign policy of multilateral internationalism on a morally rooted, rather than cynical, realism. "To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason." Yet "in a world in which threats are more diffuse, and missions more complex, America cannot act alone. America alone cannot secure the peace." In critical times, major powers have the responsibility to act as peacemakers and peacekeepers.
And they must have the necessary tools. Force and the threat of force are not enough. The international community, Obama argued, "must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to actually change behavior -- for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of the international community must mean something. Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable. Sanctions must exact a real price. Intransigence must be met with increased pressure -- and such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one."
Following his analysis of just uses of force and the need for credible alternatives to it, Obama then described "the nature of the peace we seek. For peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting."
Against a backdrop of continuing protest in Iran, he asserted that "peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please; choose their own leaders or assemble without fear. ... neither America's interests -- nor the world's -- are served by the denial of human aspirations."
Yet "the promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. ... engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But ... sanctions without outreach -- condemnation without discussion -- can carry forward only a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door."
A just peace "also must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want." Echoing earlier speeches, he once again emphasized that because the consequences of climate change "will fuel more conflict for decades.... it is not merely scientists and environmental activists who call for swift and forceful action -- it's military leaders in my own country and others who understand our common security hangs in the balance."
Returning to one of his recurring themes, Obama again emphasized the need for "moral imagination; an insistence that there's something irreducible that we all share."
This is the heart of his concept of shared mutual responsibility for the future which fuels the drive for concerted action on common problems: "We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place."
This was a carefully argued statement of principles for both the use of force as well as measures short of force in support of the greater good. It was a reminder to Americans of their global role without the hubris of American exceptionalism. And a reminder to the rest of the world -- perhaps especially to Europeans -- that sometimes there is no alternative to armed strength: "... the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions -- not just treaties and declarations -- that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms."
For the U.S., this is a new leadership style. Instead of focusing on the immediate future, the current opinion polls, the relentless news cycle, and the next election, Obama's Nobel Prize focused on the long term, linking realism about the past with idealism about a better future. The Nobel speech was simultaneously realistic, idealistic, and pragmatic. Obama does not neatly fit into any one school of thought. He is clearly not the stereotypical American hero who divides the world into good guys and bad guys, or proclaims a titanic struggle of the West against the rest. He is not the naïve liberal idealist expecting that laws and institutions will eliminate all military conflict. And, he certainly does not share the views of cynical realists anticipating that only military force can prevent wars or serve national interests.
Some have argued that the silence of the European audience in the Oslo city hall indicated their shock at hearing a Nobel laureate speak of war when accepting the peace prize. Perhaps this is true. But, on the other hand, it could well be that they too understood that peace in the absence of war would be a concept devoid of meaning.
