Now That Was What a Liberal Speech About Nuclear Disarmament Sounds Like
Just one quick point about President Obama’s speech yesterday in Prague on a U.S.-led global agenda for nuclear disarmament. Did you ever think you would hear
There is violence and injustice in our world that must be confronted. We must confront it not by splitting apart but by standing together as free nations, as free people. I know that a call to arms can stir the souls of men and women more than a call to lay them down. But that is why the voices for peace and progress must be raised together.
You wouldn’t have thought a 180-proof-liberalism speech would have embraced theater missile defense as a way of getting Russia to help the United States pressure Iran; and as a way of accelerating U.S.-Russian cooperation; andas a way of getting the Iranians to verifiably abandon all but peaceful nuclear energy, which the Obama administration committed itself to helping.
You mighthave expected a 180-proof-liberalism speech to have embraced John Bolton’s Proliferation Security Initiative (which, in fairness, liberal arms control experts have always embraced) in order to subsume it within a broader international framework. But still! This sounds like progressivism that invites conservatives to get on board. Especially all those conservatives who praise Ronald Reagan as a nuclear abolitionist.