An exhausting week of historic top-level Summiting in the USA.

We had President Obama’s historic speech to the UN General Assembly, followed by assorted other speeches of varying distinction.

We had an historic UN Security Council vote on nuclear weapons: .

Then a probably historic G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, complete with the usual globalised rent-a-peaceful demonstrator attacking globalisation.

Phew. Lots of brand new history in such a short time.

Thoughts?

First, the President’s speech. Some good passages, and some not so good or even bad. Its core underlying thought was probably this:

…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 divisions between nations of the South and the North make no sense in an interconnected world; nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War…

… Democracy cannot be imposed on any nation from the outside. Each society must search for its own path, and no path is perfect.  Each country will pursue a path rooted in the culture of its people and in its past traditions.  And I admit that America has too often been selective in its promotion of democracy.  But that does not weaken our commitment; it only reinforces it. 

Hard not to see all that as the surrender of Western/US-led Change to some sort of amorphous "let’s all get along" relativistic Hope?

Michael Gerson in the WaPo thought it dangerously narcissistic:

Twice in his United Nations speech, Obama dares to quote Franklin Roosevelt. I have read quite a bit of Roosevelt’s rhetoric. It is impossible to imagine him, under any circumstances, unfairly criticizing his own country in an international forum in order to make himself look better in comparison. He would have considered such a rhetorical strategy shameful — as indeed it is.

…The speech had nothing to do with the confident style of Democratic rhetoric found in Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy. It insulted that tradition. And no one is likely ever to quote the speech — except to deride it.

Mark Steyn did not like the smell:

Half a decade or so back, I wrote: “It’s a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice-cream and a quart of dog feces and mix ’em together the result will taste more like the latter than the former. That’s the problem with the U.N.”

… When you make the free nations and the thug states members of the same club, the danger isn’t that they’ll meet each other half-way but that the free world winds up going three-quarters, seven-eighths of the way. That’s what happened in New York last week…

Of course, Mark is a notorious reactionary extremist and so just would be unhappy with such a speech. But if you are a rabid opponent of pluralism and freedom in Moscow or Havana or deeper parts of Africa or Tehran or Pyongyang, will you be in a more cheery mood after a speech like that which gives an unmistakeable impression that while the USA will always ‘stand up’ for oppressed people it will be much less inclined under current management to do anything much to help them? Surely yes.

What about that UNSC vote on nuclear weapons? Have you read it? It calls upon, it urges, it encourages, it affirms, it stresses, it reaffirms and so on at great length. Its one demand is that countries do what they are already obligated to do, namely comply with other UNSC Resolutions. No wonder it was unanimous. It said nothing new.

The problem here is very simple.

Once upon a time nuclear weapons were very expensive, so only big powers could afford them. Many other lesser powers sulked as the Bigs imposed ‘non-proliferation’.

Now nuclear weapons are relatively cheap. So the Big Powers are claiming to be keen to get rid of them, just when other powers can acquire them.

By pulling back from the Missile Defence deployments in Poland/Czech Republic, the Obama Administration will have hoped to draw Russia into a sterner stand on these subjects – and against Iran.

Russia, of course, is not planning to get rid of its nuclear arsenal any time soon – especially the amazing Perimeter Doomsday system. And here is a brilliant piece of analysis from Belmont Club:

The most likely reason for Russia’s objections to US missile defense is not that it degrades their vast and unstoppable arsenal, which remains effective in any case, but it reduces the effectiveness of sock puppet proxies who threaten the US.

Russia is not about to threaten the US directly. But wouldn’t it be convenient if others would? And wouldn’t it be even more convenient if the US could not defend against them..?

All of this expensive and unbelievably historic top-level pronouncing and cameraderie leaves us none the wiser.

If (as anyone who has followed it would expect) Iran trundles on towards getting its own nuclear weapon in defiance of ‘world opinion’ (but with many countries enjoying watching Western uncertainty), what if anything will the rest of the world do about it?

Maybe last week was historic.

Because until this week the grown-ups at least pretended to have a credible policy.

And now ..?