A World of Troubles: Obama at the United Nations

In his rookie address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama famously announced “a new era of engagement.” After the tumultuous Bush years, his reception was rapturous, even giddy (remember that Nobel Peace Prize?). Five bruising years later, the president’s dreams of a harmonious, cooperative world have been torn into shreds from Crimea to Syria. This week the aging prize-fighter-in-chief climbs back into the ring at a time of great peril. He must convince both foreign and domestic audiences that the world is not spinning out of control and that the United States is determined to keep it that way.

At home and abroad, pessimism about the state of the world runs high. As it should. Syria is collapsing, Iraq is fragmenting, and Libya is disintegrating. Authoritarian leaders are tightening their grips from Cairo to Moscow, while Palestinians and Israelis murder each other. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is running rampant over the debris.

Meanwhile the return of geopolitics mocks Obama’s hope for multilateralism. Relations with Russia have indeed been “reset”—back to the Cold War, apparently. The United States keeps trying to “pivot” to Asia to deter Chinese imperialistic ambitions, but the Middle East briar patch and Moscow’s revanchism keep pulling it back. As if these headaches were not enough, the world looks to Washington for leadership in confronting the most horrific outbreak of Ebola in history, with 1.4 million lives on the line. And beyond these headlines lurks the greatest existential threat to humanity: the planetary disaster of global warming, which continues unabated.

This parade of horrors calls for more than another thoughtful speech. The president needs to come out swinging. He needs to define—starkly—what is at stake. And he needs to show he has the spine to respond. The speech should drive home that he has a game plane to: