Yesterday, US President Obama gave his last speech as President to the UN General Assembly. For the purposes of the current course on World Politics, there is perhaps no better summary of the US vision of its preferred wold order. The most relevant part reads as follows:
I recognize not every country in this hall is going to follow the same model of governance. I do not think that America can — or should — impose our system of government on other countries. But there appears to be growing contest between authoritarianism and liberalism right now. And I want everybody to understand, I am not neutral in that contest. I believe in a liberal political order — an order built not just through elections and representative government, but also through respect for human rights and civil society, and independent judiciaries and the rule of law.
We will be discussing the liberal world order in the coming weeks and it would be useful for everyone to keep these words in mind.
Refugees have never been treated well, so we should not be surprised at how politically controversial they are in the contemporary scene. In the 14th-16th centuries England was flooded with refugees. The political backlash against them reached a high point on 1 May 1517 when a mob attacked the refugees living in London, a day that would come to known as “Evil May Day.” Thomas More, the then deputy sheriff, confronted the mob and William Shakespeare recounted More’s speech. Ian McKellan does a brilliant job of interpreting Shakespeare’s words.
The Book of Sir Thomas More, Act 2, Scene 4
Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another….
Say now the king
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbour? go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,
Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think
To be thus used? this is the strangers case;
And this your mountainish inhumanity.
The US is considering arming Syrian Kurds directly to aid them in their fight to push Daesh (the Islamic State) out of the Syrian city of Raqqa. Such a move would be considered an unfriendly act by Turkey which has moved its own troops into Syria specifically to prevent the Kurds from succeeding. But the Kurds are a more effective fighting force than the Turks and the US considers them more reliable. This decision will reveal a great deal about how the Obama Administration views the best outcome for the US in the Middle East.
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