The Address of Non-Strategic Importance

You have got to be kidding me. President Obama’s West Point speech was prophetic in ways he never imagined. The commander-in-chief tried to use the commencement address to quell worries over a foreign policy that has produced nothing but controversy and little results. While addressing West Point Cadets the “enemy” chosen by Obama actually served as an introduction to America's grand strategy for climate change. The nation’s existential goal, therefore, is “to energize the global effort to combat climate change, a creeping national security crisis that will help shape your time in uniform,” the commander-in-chief told his new Army Officers at West Point. Apparently, the new second lieutenants will spend their careers fighting the weather.

Weather may seem an odd foe for the military. But for a progressive president, it’s the perfect choice.

Obama can’t be accused as a saber rattler because he does not want the military to fight anyone—he wants the military to help people. Lest anyone forget, weather is not a person or a country. Hence he risks offending almost no one. Making climate change a national security matter also helps Obama to press for other statist agenda items-from green energy to clean water to clean air to adopting the right-to-protect doctrine. Unfortunately, as an organizing principle for national security, climate makes a terrible “enemy.” It is enormously complex and unpredictable. The unpredictability of how climate change will play out on the global stage ought to dissuade any strategist from regarding it as an organizing principle around which one need not worry. Basing strategy on climate would be the ultimate Obama foreign policy faux-pas.


Noting the cadet response he received following his speech Obama may well know that the reference to climate may be just like the rest of the address: knowingly empty rhetoric. But it does lead to a conclusion devoid of complexity and capriciousness-this speech and the uninspiring ideas in it will soon be forgotten.