Just days ago, Barack Obama’s tenure in the Oval Office came to a close, but citizens of the United States and the world have already begun to chronicle the history of his presidency. From the Affordable Care Act, to the 2011 Navy SEALs Operation to kill Osama Bin Laden, to his approach to the Syrian Civil War, both the President’s proponents and detractors will have ample ammunition to draw upon for decades’ worth of debates about his legacy and leadership. On September 20, as he delivered his final address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Obama exhibited the oratorical prowess and international leadership that have resonated with people across the world, and whose effects are often overlooked and underestimated by contemporary critics.
The United Nations General Assembly, which convenes each of the 193 UN member states each year and acts as the principal “deliberative, policymaking and representative organ of the UN,” provides an interesting medium for assessing President Obama’s long-term international legacy. Ineffectual as it may appear, the General Assembly provides each UN member state—regardless of size, geography, or history—an essential forum for cooperative diplomacy in a 2016 world of sharpened fault lines. A positive, inclusive internationalist message is particularly important for countries at the fringes of globalization, and Obama’s first and final speeches at the General Assembly—both of which implore a global citizenry to embrace the benefits of global integration and cooperation—chart the evolution of the President’s foreign policy and indeed suggest his legacy extends beyond the realm of concrete political achievements.
Hope and Change?
In September 2009, after only eight months as President, Obama delivered his first address to the General Assembly, calling for a more inclusive, cooperative, and multilateral international order. Distancing himself from what he characterized as the misguided unilateralism of his predecessor, he announced a new era of improved U.S. relations with the Muslim world, promised to restore peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine, and reaffirmed the importance and potential of the United Nations as a collective security agency. “No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation,” said Obama in 2009, referencing the UN’s founding principle of anti-colonialism and collective security. “No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold. The traditional divisions between nations of the South and the North make no sense in an interconnected world; nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War.”
Framing the importance of international cooperation around non-proliferation and disarmament, the promotion of peace and security, confronting climate change, and supporting an interconnected, global economy that works for all, Obama presented a sweeping, optimistic vision of an American-led world order. In December 2009, the Nobel Prize Committee awarded the President the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” efforts he articulated most clearly in his UN speech three months prior. However, many onlookers denounced the Prize as premature, given not for concrete achievement, but for hope and the potential for future achievement. Just so, they castigated the President for seeming to value lofty campaign pronouncements over actionable political change.
Between 2009 and 2016, critics of the Nobel Committee’s decision looked on as President Obama ordered an additional 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan; as authoritarian governments crushed largely peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators in the Arab world; as the Islamic State overran swaths of territory in war-worn Iraq and Syria; and as millions of refugees flooded Europe’s borders to escape violent conflict. The international institutions President Obama lauded in his 2009 speech did not act to prevent conflict and violence exercised against civilians, perhaps because they lack the fundamental capacity to do so. Meanwhile, he appeared repeatedly to shirk his executive responsibility to take a decisive strategic stance on conflict in the Middle East.
Hope Delayed
President Obama spoke in darker and more concrete terms as he addressed a General Assembly seven years more storied and weary this past September. In many ways, Obama’s farewell address to the Assembly was a coming-to-terms with his failure to concretely enact the ambitious diplomatic platform he outlined seven years ago. His words resounded with a qualified but reasserted message of hope and change. “I want to suggest to you today that we must go forward, and not backward,” he expressed towards the beginning of his speech. “I believe that as imperfect as they are, the principles of open markets and accountable governance, of democracy and human rights and international law that we have forged remain the firmest foundation for human progress in this century. I make this argument not based on theory or ideology, but on facts—facts that all too often, we forget in the immediacy of current events.”
The president spoke in a very different domestic political and cultural climate from 2009— today, popular prejudices and isolationist tendencies are increasingly reflected in the coming presidency of Donald Trump and the ascendant nationalist parties of Europe. Obama underlined the progress his administration has overseen over the past several years to increase the efficacy of multilateral institutions: supporting the efforts of large and small-scale NGOs, pursuing development and military intervention through NATO, and encouraging economic integration. In so doing, he cautiously pushed his audience to consider how a Trump presidency would undo that progress while a Clinton presidency would build on it.
This characterization of a world that has made noticeable strides towards supporting rule of law, human rights, and accountability, but risks turning back on that progress, also reflects the President’s broader achievements and foreign policy legacy. His administration has actively supported human rights, accountable governance, and humanitarianism abroad, however overlooked and unremarked U.S. efforts on these fronts go. The U.S. Agency for International Development underlines how Obama has, over the course of his two terms, elevated global development to a core pillar of American foreign policy—on par with diplomacy and defense. He set forth the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which established international guidelines for “sustained and inclusive economic growth; democratic governance; game-changing innovations; leveraging new partners and multiple sources of development financing; and building sustainable systems to meet basic human needs.” He also directly implemented programs like Feed the Future and Power Africa and broadened partnerships with humanitarian organizations globally.
However, some aspects of Obama’s foreign policy have been both more conspicuous and inauspicious. His failure to put together an effective coalition at the onset of the civil war in Syria underlines the failure of international diplomacy channels in addressing more contentious and military-based issues in global politics. Although Obama spearheaded humanitarian efforts in Syria, his broader Syria policy is defined by a lack of international leadership. Critics rightly highlight his 2013 decision to shirk from enforcing the “red line” he established for Bashar al-Assad after learning that the Syrian dictator deployed chemical weapons against his own civilians. To an extent, this leadership deficit also extends to U.S. efforts to counter the Islamic State. Although multilateral, the U.S.-led coalition does not operate within the auspices of the United Nations or NATO. A 2016 world that is highly skeptical of international institutions and global integration makes it difficult to fulfill the president’s earlier promises through fully multilateral means.
Although his 2016 speech identified goals for global prosperity and interconnectedness similar to those in his 2009 speech, Obama was circumspect when it came to Syria, Israel and Palestine, Russia, and Iran. Instead of promising to reinvigorate Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, as he had attempted to do earlier in his presidency, he recognized faults all around, observing that both sides would “be better off if Palestinians reject incitement and recognize the legitimacy of Israel, but Israel recognizes that it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land.” He also addressed the intractability of conflict in Syria and the question of a newly belligerent Russia and China. This new tone, in some ways a direct response to critics of his foreign policy strategy, or what they see as a lack thereof, underline the extent to which Obama’s presidency was an exercise in balancing far-reaching ambition and rhetoric with the day-to-day political roadblocks to actionable change.
Obama sharpened his legacy as an internationalist, calling heads of state to embrace the inevitability of globalization, but qualified that “a world in which 1 percent of humanity controls as much wealth as the other 99 percent will never be stable.” Perhaps quietly nudging Congress to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), he effectively balanced forward-looking, internationalist rhetoric and immediate political realties. The Obama administration’s approach to the TPP and willingness to push for international trade deals is a tangible marker of his evolution in the foreign policy realm. 2008 Obama was far more skeptical of free trade, and supported trade deals only if they came attached to “strong labor, safety, and environmental standards.” The 2015 President Obama who negotiated the TPP was less of an idealistic internationalist, more politically savvy and conscientious. The TPP ought to be considered one of the outgoing president’s most significant foreign policy achievements, and is itself rooted in the internationalist agenda he articulated at the onset of his presidency.
It is difficult to dissociate the content of Obama’s speech and his overall legacy from the space where he delivered the speech. Via the UN, and specifically the General Assembly, President Obama’s message of embracing international cooperation was broadcast across the world, offering a connection even to nations that are rarely the center of Western attention. He spoke both broadly and specifically, pointedly reorienting the international community towards the institutions and organizations in their founding intended to maintain a peaceful and cooperative global order. Above all, in one of his final widely viewed as president speeches, Obama was characteristically unapologetic about his decisions in office. Historians, like the man himself, will not hesitate to look beyond legislative achievement when determining his place in the annals of history.
Image source: Flikr/Tom Page