Obama’s Curious UN Farewell Address
President Obama’s U.N. speech looked critically at the U.S. role in world and
admitted capitalism’s shortcomings, a contrast with Obama’s previous bluster
about “indispensable” and “exceptional” America, notes Joe Lauria.
By Joe Lauria
The Barack Obama of 2008 reemerged at the United Nations on Tuesday, bookending
his presidency with an uplifting address somewhat critical of American power and
calling for an end to economic inequality at home and abroad.
The speech revealed the president that Obama might have been – and that many
people had hoped for – if he had successfully confronted the American Deep
State. But he waited until his farewell U.N. address, much like Dwight
Eisenhower did with his Farewell Address in 1961 warning about the MilitaryIndustrial Complex, to say what he really thought without having to suffer the
full consequences inside the Beltway.
Obama didn’t mention the word “exceptional” once as he has in his past U.N.
speeches, and he kept his distorted criticism of Russia and China to a minimum.
(He briefly tried to say the U.S. was not behind the Ukraine coup.) Last year,
bashing Beijing and Moscow was the main point of an address steeped in
hypocrisy.
We saw an earlier glimpse of this outspoken Obama in his wide-ranging interview
with the Atlantic magazine last April, in which he expressed his frustrations
with obstacles put in his way by the Washington foreign policy elite. But at the
U.N. he went full bore. He uncharacteristically criticized his own country
before both allies and perceived enemies for the way the U.S. had at times used
its power in the world.
“Power hasn’t been unipolar for most of history,” he said. “The end of the Cold
War has allowed many to forget this. America’s adversaries and some of its
allies believe all problems are caused by and can be solved by Washington. Too
many in Washington believe that too.
“I do not think that America can — or should — impose our system of government
on other countries,” he said. “As leaders of democratic governments make the
case for democracy abroad, we better strive harder to set a better example at
home.”
Challenging Capitalism
While asserting that the United States has been, on balance, a force for good,
Obama recognized that there are legitimate complaints about how the recent era
of “globalization” has affected many people around the world and he cited
shortcomings of modern capitalism.
“Twenty-five years after the Cold War the world is less violent and more
prosperous and yet there is uncertainty and strife,” he said.
A world in which “one percent of humanity controls as much wealth as the other
99 percent will never be stable,” Obama said. Advanced communications have made
vast numbers of people painfully aware of this, and legitimately resentful, he
said.
“Expectations rise, then, faster than governments can deliver, and a pervasive
sense of injustice undermines people’s faith in the system” he said, adding that
this problem can’t be fixed by going back to planned economies but he
acknowledged that the “excesses of capitalism” are not the answer either.
There is another path, he said. “It doesn’t require succumbing to soulless
capitalism,” but instead “we must recognize that closing the inequality gap and
bringing economic growth that is board-based” is what’s needed.
He called for rebuilding trade unions and “investing in our people and
strengthening safety nets so people can take more risks.” This wasn’t charity,
he said, but what was necessary to create a stable world economy with the
requisite foundation of social justice.
Obama offered a defense of the U.S., but he dispensed with the usual verbiage
about “indispensable nation.” While the U.S. had made mistakes, he said, it had
worked to create higher standards for the world banking system to rein in the
“excesses of capitalism.” It is rare to hear a U.S. president mention the word
“capitalism,” let alone in such a negative light.
“While open markets and capitalism have raised standards of living around the
globe, globalization combined with rapid progress and technology has also
weakened the position of workers and their ability to secure a decent wage,” he
said.
“In advanced economies like my own, unions have been undermined, and many
manufacturing jobs have disappeared. Often, those who benefit most from
globalization have used their political power to further undermine the position
of workers.”
He said “global capital is too often unaccountable — nearly $8 trillion stashed
away in tax havens, a shadow banking system that grows beyond the reach of
effective oversight. …”
“I understand that the gaps between rich and poor are not new … but technology
now allows any person with a smart-phone to see how the most privileged among us
live and the contrast between their own lives and others.”
Obama’s concern seemed to be how to avoid a world-wide revolt.
Surreal Tone
But the speech took on a surreal tone when contrasted with the reality of
Obama’s eight years in office. Listening to the thoughtful elements of his
address, some might have wondered why the President hadn’t acted in accord with
these concerns throughout his two terms in office.
Instead, Obama was a president who bailed out the bankers and jailed the
whistleblowers. While the Wall Street bankers whose reckless behavior crashed
the world’s economy skated from accountability (along with Bush administration
officials who rationalized torture), Obama used the Espionage Act more times
than all his predecessors combined to prosecute people inside the government who
tried to expose wrongdoing.
Obama was a president who upheld the neoliberal economic order; signed a bill
that would allow the military to make arrests on U.S. soil; engaged in his own
disastrous “regime change” in Libya; and supported the establishment of a
Salafist principality in eastern Syria that would turn into the Islamic State.
He was a president of drone strikes against civilians; and coups in Ukraine and
Honduras; a president who continued NATO’s march to Russia’s borders; oversaw
vast illegal surveillance of American citizens and a president who backed a
global trade deal, the TPP, that will complete the corporate coup d’état (though
he bizarrely said at the U.N. that it would protect workers’ rights and the
environment.)
If this address was any indication of what’s to come, Obama will become very
successful — as an ex-president.
Joe Lauria is a veteran foreign-affairs journalist based at the U.N. since 1990.
He has written for the Boston Globe, the London Daily Telegraph, the
Johannesburg Star, the Montreal Gazette, the Wall Street Journal and other
newspapers. He can be reached [email protected]
at @unjoe.
and followed on Twitter