Did Barack Obama wreck nuclear non-proliferation?

Few noticed this statement by Barack Obama, which destroyed the entire basis of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation regime that the US had carefully set up after World War II, to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands.

Obama accidently abrogates America's right to oppose Iran's nuclear weapons

By Barry Rubin


"No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons." Thus spake President Barack Obama in his Cairo speech. After a pause for contemplation, I respond, "Why the Hell not?"

Indeed this statement—like many in the speech (though there are some good ones, too) is so disastrous in its implications that the mind is boggled. A re-boggle occurs when things like this are allowed to pass by among people who should know better as acceptable or even as brilliant statesmanship.

Consider all the things wrong with Obama's sentence:

First, a nation, especially a great power, should certainly decide whether it wants certain nations to hold nuclear weapons. In effect, he sabotaged the United States by saying that it has no right to seek to deny Iran nuclear weapons. So why should there be any sanctions at all? He may not have intended it—but to attribute major policy statements of the president of the United States to ignorance is no compliment—but he said it.

Second, does this mean that a single nation can ally with other nations to pick and choose? After all, despite mythology, the previous Bush administration was extremely multilateral in its policy toward Iran's nuclear weapons. It actually delegated the diplomacy to Britain, France, and Germany who tried but failed completely. So is Obama implying that if you get a UN resolution then that's ok?

Third, it is horrifyingly a repeal of any counter-proliferation policy. The United States thus has no right to pick and choose against North Korea, or Cuba, or Venezuela or just about anyone else from having nuclear weapons.

Yet, of course, Obama is committed to stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons, isn't he? So how can one reconcile this contradiction?

Such statements, which transcend specific declared policies, are signs of an ideology that abdicates America's leadership role in the world, abandoning everything we should have learned from the 1930s and seemed to have learned since December 7, 1941. Obama says, in effect, that America is not moral or wise enough to tell others what they should do (except Israel, of course). Forget about George W. Bush, this is a betrayal of everything Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton believed and practiced.

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton must be spinning in her limousine seat.

Is America a free, successful, democratic country whose stances for freedom and decency give it a right as a "single nation" to fight regimes and movements which are murderous, dictatorial, and brutal?
Well, it's all relative, isn't it (and this is an undercurrent in Obama's world view)? How dare we say that the United States is "better" as a society and government than that which prevails in Iran or Saudi Arabia or Venezuela or North Korea? Doesn't America have its sins? (Yes, but they are far smaller in recent decades and it has worked hard to correct them.)

What, one might ask, does a "single nation" have the right to do, assuming that the nation is the United States? Answer: apologize, listen, and show respect for others.

Incredibly destructive change you can believe in. Yes we can…demolish the influence of the United States, the greatest hope for peace, stability, and progress among the best elements in the world.

Now the greatest hope is either that Obama learns better, he is persuaded by more knowledgeable members of the administration, or November 2012, whichever comes first.

Of course, there is an element of exaggeration in what I've written here. But it is shocking how accurate it is nonetheless. Ignorance, inexperience, and an extremely destructive ideology are very much present.

Here's the best responce of all to Obama's Cairo speech. It comes in private conversation
with an Arab Muslim whose country is ruled by a dictatorship:

"We don't want Obama to act like a Muslim or Arab," he said, "We want him to act like an American."