'Haunted' president puts his faith in concert of nations

It was telling that the first significant applause that President Barack Obama received during his speech at the US Military Academy at West Point on Wednesday was when he told graduating cadets that theirs would be the first class since 9/11 that may not go to war in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Obama’s commencement address was in fact a foreign policy speech. It was the address of a defensive leader of a nation still reduced and scarred by the folly of its war in Iraq.
But it was not, as some have said, a foreign policy “reset”.

Barack Obama delivers the commencement address, in which he set out the limits of US intervention around the world. Photo: Getty Images

Indeed in restating his criteria for the use of US force, Obama leaned heavily on the speech he gave on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.

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Again he said the US would not hesitate to use unilateral force if its people, its interests or those of its allies were threatened.
In other circumstances though, the bar is set higher.  “When issues of global concern do not pose a direct threat to the United States, when such issues are at stake, when crises arise that stir our conscience or push the world in a more dangerous direction but do not directly threaten us, then the threshold for military action must be higher,” he said.

Future tense: members of the 2014 West Point graduating class listen to Mr Obama's speech. Photo: AFP

This will be  no surprise to critics of his decision to keep out of Syria and to “lead from behind” in Libya, nor to those allies, including Australia, who have been pressured by the US to increase their defence spending in order to ease the burden on the United States' budget-starved military.
In these circumstances, said Obama, the US should create coalitions and support those nations directly involved. Obama also cited the significance of international bodies from NATO and the United Nations to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as “force multipliers” that reduce the need for unilateral US intervention.
None of this will silence critics both from within the interventionist wing of the Republican Party – and increasingly from Washington’s legion of analysts and commentators – that Obama’s allegedly weak foreign policy is increasing global instability and has emboldened Russia and China.
The only new policy detailed in the speech was a call for Congress to back a $US5 billion fund to help combat terrorism and the suggestion that assistance may be increased to moderate elements of the Syrian opposition. Speaking on background, administration officials let it be known that this could include training by Special Forces and lethal military aid.
The Brookings Institution’s Robert Kagan, whose most recent essay was titled Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire, told NPR after the speech that he believed it was the codification of American retrenchment and would make America’s friends and allies feel less secure. “The tremendous emphasis on avoiding the use of force, I think, will resonate around the world,” he said.
Parents in the audience might have welcomed the President’s speech though.
He told the young men and women that since he announced the surge in Afghanistan, four of the school’s graduates had been killed and many more wounded.
“I believe America’s security demanded those deployments,” he said. “But I am haunted by those deaths. I am haunted by those wounds.”