Barack Obama’s Cairo speech Thursday, by design and billing, was an address to the Muslim world. And in substance it hit all the requisite points, less shifting U.S. policies than better explaining them–on Israel, on nuclear proliferation, on the spread of human rights, on the war against Islamic radicals.
But the speech also contained themes that transcend U.S. relations with Islam, and which are clearly going to be central to the next four, if not eight, years of American foreign policy. Obama, using himself as an example, was continuing to lay the groundwork, first begun in Europe, to build a global identity among the world’s peoples. After a discussion of his own upbringing, as a Christian from a family that includes Muslims, who lived in Indonesia and visited Africa before arriving in the Arab world, Obama made this appeal for an emerging global commonality:
For we have learned from recent experience that when a financial system weakens in one country, prosperity is hurt everywhere. When a new flu infects one human being, all are at risk. When one nation pursues a nuclear weapon, the risk of nuclear attack rises for all nations. When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered across an ocean. And when innocents in Bosnia and Darfur are slaughtered, that is a stain on our collective conscience. That is what it means to share this world in the 21st century. That is the responsibility we have to one another as human beings.
This is a difficult responsibility to embrace. For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes subjugating one another to serve their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.
That last sentence, given humanity’s consistently bloody tribal history, seems particularly ambitious. Compare this to the optimistic foreign policy frames the United States has projected for the last two decades. George H.W. Bush spoke of a “new world order,” which, quoting Winston Churchill, imagined a globe where strong nations embraced ideas like “justice and fair play” to govern the world stage. (The idea lost currency as the United States, predictably, tended to interpret justice and fair play–in Iraq, Israel and elsewhere–according to the traditional realpolitik.) His son, George W. Bush, imagined a similarly idealistic world governed by clear dividing lines between good and evil, democracy and Islamo-facism, the philosophies of the Occident and the extremes of the Orient. In the latter Bush’s vision, the U.S. was the hero, bringing freedom and justice to a messy world. (On this point, be sure to read Spencer Ackerman’s post on how these definitions backfired on Bush and worked against U.S. interests.)
Obama envisions a different framing altogether. [More after jump.]
He acknowledges the existence of bad actors, and pledges to use violence against those who promise violence. He also admits to the deep cultural differences that define the globe. But from that starting point, he insists on a common global identity that is far more powerful than the differences. This vision, as I have touched on before, does not elevate the United States as the protector of transcendent values, but rather lowers America into the great pool of nations and peoples, where everyone operates on the same level with a God-given set of responsibilities to understand each other and work together for collective improvement. The political leader who has spent a lifetime moving between cultures envisions a world where tribal differences are trumped by common humanity and practical necessity. In some ways, it is as idealistic a vision as the ones proposed by Bush senior and junior. Time will tell if it is more successful.
It is notable that Obama ended his speech with three quotes, one from the Koran, one from the Talmud, one from the New Testament, each describing God’s instructions for all people to work together and get along. Of the three, the quote from the Koran is the most eloquent. “O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.” It is, in a poetic verse, an apt encapsulation of Obama’s radical idea–that despite our differences we are meant to find common purpose.
So can it be done? Well, Obama is saying to the world, look at me: the son of a Kenyan and a Kansan, the Christian man with a Muslim family, the black Hawaiian teenage stoner who rose through the traditionally white Northeastern Ivy League to lead the world’s most powerful country. I’ve already done it. You can too.