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| Not every Problem is a nail |
Speaking under leaden, chilly skies, Mr. Obama delivered the commencement address at the United States Military Academy.
“America
must always lead on the world stage,” he said. “But U.S. military
action cannot be the only – or even primary – component of our
leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does
not mean that every problem is a nail.”
Under
pressure from critics who say the United States has been rudderless
amid a cascade of crises, the president said that those who “suggest
that America is in decline, or has seen its global leadership slip away –
are either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics.”
A day after announcing that the last American soldier would leave
Afghanistan at the end of 2016, the president told this latest class of
Army officers that the United States faced a new, more diffuse threat in
an arc of militancy stretching from the Middle East to the African
Sahel.
Mr. Obama has been deeply frustrated by the criticism of his foreign
policy, which during his first term was generally perceived as his
strong suit. He has lashed out at critics, whom he accuses of
reflexively calling for military action as the remedy for every crisis.
The overriding objective he said is to avoid an error on the order of the Iraq war.
He brushed aside as reckless those who say the United States should consider
enforcing a no-fly zone in Syria or supplying arms to Ukrainian troops.
In
the speech, Mr. Obama described an array of priorities, ranging from
the Iran nuclear negotiations to a new global climate change accord,
which he said would occupy his final two-and-a-half years in office.
He
also spoke of the need for the United States to look eastward to Asia,
promoting his long efforts to negotiate a trans-Pacific trade agreement
and pledging to defend American allies in the region in their
territorial disputes with China in the South and East China Seas.
Note EU-Digest: Kudos
to President Obama for at least showing the intention of his
Administration to the world, in this major foreign policy speech at West
Point, that the "gun-boat diplomacy" of the US is not acceptable
anymore and has come to an end.
