Is Obama Naive?

Is President Obama naive? Dick Cheney's national security adviser doesn't think so.

One of the odder criticisms of President Obama is that he's "naive" when it comes to international affairs because of his contention that America and the world share most of the same interests. Here's National Review Editor Rich Lowry:

Obama's mistake is in believing "the interests of nations and peoples are shared." They aren't. Georgia has an interest in becoming a strong nation capable of defending itself; Russia has an interest in quashing it. China has an interest in dominating all of East Asia; Japan and other neighbors have an interest in containing it.

But as John Hannah, former national security adviser to Dick Cheney, notes today, the President's Oslo speech reaffirmed another conservative favorite:

I thought the president's sober defense of the essential role of force and military power -- and specifically American military power -- in maintaining global order against the predations of those who would destroy it was extremely important. It was important most of all because it's the truth, perhaps the central truth of international affairs for the last 60-odd years.

The interesting thing here is that if you believe what Hannah asserts - that American military power has sustained "global" order for 60 years - than either we have done so out of the goodness of our heart or because our interests dictated that we assume that role. If you believe the former, than you are indeed naive, although not in the way Lowry believes.

If you believe the second case, that broadly speaking what's good for America (using our military to sustain global order) is good for the world (enjoying that order), then there's nothing naive about Obama's earlier statements that the world shares common interests. Otherwise, they wouldn't have benefited from America's global military posture.

Personally, I think the entire debate would benefit from a little more rhetorical precision - we haven't underwritten "global" security but the security in regions that were vital to U.S. commercial and military interests. We certainly weren't (and aren't) interested in underwriting the security of China or Russia or Africa to any great extent - and that's a fairly large chunk of the globe right there.

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