Mixed Reaction to Obama Foreign Policy Speech

Barack Obama used a speech at West Point military academy on Wednesday to set out his vision for America's foreign policy, promising to use 'collective action' and avoid using military force for the sake of it.

The President was rebutting critics at home and abroad who say his handling of recent foreign crises has been weak, but the speech has had a mixed reception in Washington, as our correspondent Lorna Shaddick reports.

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Script:

UPSOT anthem

The US will still lead the world, Barack Obama told the serried ranks of cadets in dress uniforms at West Point.

But it won't necessarily do so by sending people like them on to the battlefield:

SOT - America must always lead on the world stage.// But US military action cannot be the only or even primary component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail. // Instead we must mobilise allies and partners to take collective action.

Some Obama supporters say this policy of 'judicious restraint' may not be very stirring, but is ultimately a sensible approach along the lines of American public opinion.

And, they say, the President has clear foreign policy priorities - here's Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution:

It's pretty clear where Mr. Obama's heart is. He knows he's already committed to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, he's already committed to the Asia Pacific rebalance, he's got a few other things on his plate that he wants to keep at a higher level of importance.

But some critics such as the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas, have written that the address was so middle of the road, it avoided any specifics and set out no rationale for what the US should be doing, while a former aide to George W Bush characterised it as 'partisan and defensive'.

A recent poll for NBC and the Wall Street Journal showed that 47 per cent of Americans want the US to play a less active role in international affairs.

Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says Mr Obama will follow their opinion:

SOT - My reading of Obama from the beginning has been, he's always going to look for the dead centre, in a way, on foreign policy, which he doesn't really care about, I think. So on foreign policy he's always going to look for the dead centre of where the American public is. And I think he tried to find that dead centre in his first two years.

This speech wasn't the muscular riposte to Presidents Assad and Putin that some had hoped. But this is a president who wants to be remembered as a leader who ends wars, not starts them.

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