John Noonan notes this line from President Obama's speech today: "No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed." Over at Power Line, Paul Mirengoff excerpted a few more lines surrounding that sentence:
"In an era when our destiny is shared, power is no longer a zero-sum game. No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold. The traditional division between nations of the south and north makes no sense in an interconnected world. Nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long gone Cold War."
Like Mirengoff, I thought the "nations of the south and north" locution was both curious and nonsensical. While I'm sure this phrase has currency in some corridors, it is curious to me because the last time I remember reading those words was in Iran's mocking response to the Obama administration's request for negotiations released earlier this month. The mullahs said they wanted to discuss:
"Capacity-building for promotion of public welfare, global poverty alleviation, reducing social gaps and bridging the gap between the South and the North."
Come to think of it, the Iranian response is eerily similar to Obama's speech in that they both project a large degree of Kumbaya naiveté. There is a sense in both texts that everything would be right with the world if we could all just come together to settle our economic, political, and cultural differences. Never mind that there are many actors on the world stage that have no real interest in forming new "coalitions of different faiths and creeds; of north and south, east, west, black, white, and brown," as the president put it. That includes Iran, despite what it said in its response to Obama's overtures. The Iranian response also contemplated "creating a world filled with spirituality, friendship, prosperity, wellness and security" that required "creating an opportunity for broad and collective participation in the management of the world." And in both the Iranian response and the text of the president's speech, the United Nations is the appropriate venue to make this utopian vision come about. In Iran's case, this rhetoric is somewhat understandable. The mullah's response was a transparent attempt to appeal to the multicultural and transnational impulses of the Obama administration at the expense of discussing the real issues at hand, including Iran's: nuclear program, sponsorship of terrorism around the globe, proxy war against Israel, and "lethal aid" to America's foes in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, in President Obama's case, there is no tactical explanation. The speech represents, in Paul Mirengoff's words, the president's "sophomorically utopian" view of the world.