This may sound like a gross exaggeration, but forgive me a bit of idealism when I say that Barack Obama has made the greatest speech ever uttered by a government leader in the twenty-first century. Even comparing him with the great orators of the twentieth century— Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Franklin Roosevelt, and Adolf Hitler—he comes out in the top five…and that is just for delivery. As for content, he stands alone at the summit.
Very few papers have published the full text of his Nobel acceptance speech and even fewer television programs have run the full speech, which suggests that editors do not know their history and cannot perceive its significance.
For the head of state of the one remaining superpower, whose military spending dwarfs the sum of all the world’s militaries combined, to talk of “the law of love” between peoples, to conjure up the examples of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, quoting the former as saying, “violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones” is astonishing. Even more astonishing is Obama’s statement: “I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence.”
There is no cynicism in this man, no double speak, no blather, and no fear. What you see is what you get. He told the audience in Oslo gathered to witness his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize that “we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached—their faith in human progress—must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.”
Obama may well be president of the United States for eight years. With this kind of vision, the changes in American foreign policy may well be profound. Yet, he once said that turning the direction of the United States was like turning around an oil tanker—it will take many miles of ocean to achieve.
Let us though, for a moment, imagine some of the things that might happen. Already he has pledged to close Guantanamo and to prohibit torture. It may well be he will allow the prosecution of ex Vice President Dick Cheney, ex Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and other high officials to be sent for trial for war crimes. He will certainly over time cut the budget of the armed forces. He will allow the military to serve in the peacekeeping operations of the United Nations, while upping the expenditure on UN efforts including helping refugees and saving the lives of children. He will increase aid to deserving countries. He will work to eliminate malaria, measles, malnutrition, leprosy, and the other global maladies that could be eradicated quickly—and for far less than is now being spent on HIV/AIDS. He will dismantle trade barriers that hurt developing countries. He will push hard for human rights, which will mean not just pushing the cause abroad but moving to have Congress ratify the half-dozen treaties on human rights waiting for attention, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child. He will push hard on nuclear disarmament, a policy that already has found a partner in Russia. Likewise, he will leave no stone unturned in the process of halting and rolling back the spread of nuclear weapons. There will be no more wars justified by misleading, barefaced twisting of the evidence. There will be no more arms supplied to corrupt and violent dictators. And he will step up America’s efforts to control global warming and pollution.
These policies won’t be implemented overnight. Even the most sanguine among us understand that, at very least, they will take 8 years and probably much longer. But if Obama can convince voters of the value of changing U.S. foreign policy in a more benign direction, a successor who believes in the same cause will succeed him.
But in Oslo, Obama also made what many consider a contradictory point—that violence and armed force in some situations are necessary: “As a head of state sworn to protect my nation, I cannot be guided by [the example of Gandhi and King] alone. I face the world as it is.”
In so doing, he defended America’s role in Afghanistan, although many argue that this is a great mistake that could ruin all his dreams. He has said that America will start to withdraw by the summer of 2011. The pressures to stretch this timetable will be enormous. This will test his will, his political skills, and above all his high ideals.
And, speaking on behalf of the idealists among us, a lot will depend on how the peoples of the world show their support for his grand vision of a better planet.
Jonathan Power is a syndicated columnist and a contributing editor of Prospect magazine in London. His most recent book is Conundrums of Humanity (Martinus Nijhoff, 2007).