I have to admit that I feel very conflicted about this week’s State of the Union speech by President Obama. On the one hand, I was greatly impressed with the inspirational and uplifting tone of the speech. The White House went to great pains in advance of the speech to signal that it would be primarily about the economy and jobs, and in that, it did not disappoint. President Obama became Cheerleader-in-Chief and gave a speech aimed at stimulating commerce and industry that promised a new era of innovation and progress. His goal, he said, was to “win the future.” As a fan of future-oriented forward thinking, I’m on board. We were more than half-way through the speech when I realized he had yet to address any significant foreign policy matters. My concerns were unfounded though, as he did move on to note trade agreements, arms control, Iranian sanctions, tensions on the Korean Peninsula, withdrawal plans for Iraq and Afghanistan, relations with NATO and Russia, support for democracy,and a new diplomatic outreach to our neighbors in South and Central America. Even as this seems like a long list, there’s no denying that this was a cursory review of U.S. foreign policy initiatives that left me wanting more, much more. For example, as the Arms Control Association points out in this blog post, President Obama did a nice job of explaining what the U.S. has done in the area of arms control, but he gave little attention to what remains to be done. And this STRATFOR analysis suggests that President Obama missed an important opportunity to prepare the American people for potential crises looming just over the horizon.
Still, as much as I would have appreciated more attention to foreign policy in the speech, I came to realize that far from neglecting the U.S. role in the world, the speech was really all about restoring the American role by strengthening the economic foundation on which our power and influence rests. In that regard at least, I think the speech was a home run.
Photo Credit: CNN
