The last American president

Every U.S. president since Eisenhower in 1953 has spoken of a world without nuclear weapons, but Barack Obama surprised star-struck Czechs with a "new international effort" yesterday. Actually, Obama laid out his plans nearly point-by-point two years ago in Foreign Affairs. Before that, Henry Kissinger set the tone in the Wall Street Journal. And most recently in Newsweek, Kissinger foreshadowed almost exactly what was to be heard yesterday. Obama is also accepting Kissinger's call for a new world order in other ways, esp. with regard to China. Obama is the first U.S. president to voluntarily offer to give up America's dominant position in global affairs and to welcome a multilateral world. As the U.S. and Russia bicker about missile defense and arms reduction, China is quietly boosting its military spending and is unlikely to feel bound by anything anyone else agrees on. Obama's sold-out performance in Prague yesterday can be seen as the farewell tour of the last American president as the world has known him. [Czech Republic United States of America disarmament]