The Guardian view on Obama’s Iran speech: combative, passionate – and right
|
Version 0 of 1. President Obama this week took the debate on the Iran nuclear deal beyond the immediate issues that preoccupy his opponents, to declare that the fundamental choice before the United States is between a foreign policy based on careful diplomacy and one dominated by the impulse to impose solutions by force. In his speech, at American University in Washington, he not only made it clear that he will fight with every means at his disposal to prevent Congress upsetting the deal, he also accused his critics of advocating policies that are bound sooner or later to lead to war. This was Mr Obama at his most passionate but it was also Mr Obama at his most rational, laying out how America should behave in a world that it aspires to shape but is far from able to wholly control. Only through skilled diplomacy and through compromises with friends, enemies and those who stand somewhere in between the two could America hope to achieve its aims, he suggested. Those who wanted to reject such diplomacy and such compromises, either because they see international politics in black and white terms, or because all other considerations come second to obstructing a president and a government they do not like, were paving the way toward “some form of war”. In a reminder of the participatory politics of his campaign days, Mr Obama called on ordinary citizens to press their representatives to accept the agreement. Where a bipartisan approach has failed with Republican politicians, he seems to think, it might nevertheless succeed with Republican voters, who will see the common sense their congressmen and senators refuse to see. This attempt to appeal over their heads will infuriate them, even though they are busy spending money in large amounts to mobilise public opinion on their side of the argument. Mr Obama had another audience of ordinary citizens as well this week, the people of Iran, who watched at least some of the speech live on their own television screens. That can only be for the good in terms of Iranian politics, showing Iranians that, even with Mr Obama’s caveats about the consequences if Iran should cheat, an American statesman is forthrightly making the case for a settlement on this critical matter with their country. It is a settlement that is less than peace, but falls short of war. In this respect it stands in a continuum with the agreements that Mr Obama referred to in his speech, like the one that ended the Cuban missile crisis and those, culminating in the non-proliferation treaty and the Salt and Start treaties, that gradually imposed a kind of order on the nuclear arms race. This is a rather rosy account of American policy during the cold war, but the broad conclusion is fair. If the hawks of those days had had their way, there would have been a nuclear war. This account of history will not please today’s hawks, nor will Mr Obama’s charge that an unthinking faith in military solutions led to the Iraq war. That reminds Americans that Mr Obama opposed that war, although, for a supposed peace president, he has since authorised a great deal of military action. But, if there are contradictions in his position, they fade by comparison with the incoherence of the Republican candidates due to debate with each other on Thursday . His arguments should prevail, on their merits, but also because the Republicans have hardly any arguments worthy of the name. |