Obama’s U-turn on democracy and human rights

Speaking specifically about the Middle East and North Africa, the president identified four core interests: defending allies from aggression, ensuring access to oil, attacking terrorist networks that threaten Americans and stopping weapons of mass destruction.

America cares about democracy, human rights and free trade, he said, but “we can rarely achieve these objectives through unilateral American action.”

Though it was unusual for a U.S. president to reject a values-based policy so explicitly, the underlying view was not unfamiliar; former president George H.W. Bush would have found it congenial.

What was striking about it, as my colleague Jackson Diehl pointed out, was how directly it repudiated a doctrine Obama had outlined in a speech at the State Department just 28 months earlier.

In that address, Obama recited a similar list of core interests, but he said those alone could no longer animate U.S. policy. Instead, he said, the United States would champion universal rights and political reform, and not as “a secondary interest.”

On the contrary: Support for democracy would be a “top priority,” Obama proclaimed, “that must be translated into concrete actions, and supported by all of the diplomatic, economic and strategic tools at our disposal.”

The president acknowledged that such a values-based policy would be difficult and would encounter setbacks.

(2013-10-20/washingtonpost)