Obama at West Point

"I'm squinting at the future!"

Increasingly, Obama has been inching American foreign policy in a new direction, as I have noted with satisfaction and Charles Krauthammer (among others) has noted with chagrin. Saturday’s commencement speech at West Point has been covered by most of the major news outlets on the web, with some of them even catching on to the fact that Obama is not simply stuck in a continuation of the Bush Doctrine. In fact, Obama repudiated that doctrine in his speech at West Point, emphasizing diplomacy and cooperation in an international setting. The full speech is available here.

Whether or not the neoconservatives would like to admit it, the time for muscle and missiles has almost fully passed by this point. No nation, including the United States, can afford such inflationary “defense” spending or additional war spending, or cede the diplomatic tact and territory that the Bush administration did. In a world of intense global meetings, economics, and deal-brokering, the United States must be willing to act as an elder statesman more than a brash, young police officer out to rid the streets of all criminals. That approach only worked in the Cold War because the Soviets’ spending was even more inflationary than ours, and there were no other seriously established or rising forces to protest against U.S. ideology. I encourage President Obama’s new stance and hope that the government continues to look forward into the world of globalization, while cutting down on the ridiculous “us versus the world” theme that the neocons have played up so well.