Soon after his receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, I read the full-text of President Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the ceremony and then watched its videos on You Tube.
My impression was that he was honest (probably too honest) about the relationship between war and peace as the head of state, arguing: "There will be times when nations - acting individually or in concert - will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified."
As he acknowledged, his winning generated controversies both at home and abroad, but I guess it was the President himself that the decision of the Nobel Prize Committee embarrassed most and he (and/or his speech writers) had to agonize over what he can and should deliver at the ceremony as "the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars."
I believe, however, that such a speech as he made can be done only by the statesman bearing the extremely heavy responsibility, who may make a tough decision about national security the very next moment.
He couldn't have only preached love or virtue as clerics.
I think he was so brave there because, at the place where the term "peace" is praised, he emphasized the role of war.
Some may see the speech as a mere justification of an American just war, but I recall Max Weber 's Politics as a Vocation.
He argues in the book that "it is the specific means of legitimate violence as such in the hand of human associations which determines the peculiarity of all ethical problems of politics."
As he notes, "a cool sense of proportion" or an ability to see realities as they are is the decisive psychological quality of politicians, which then has to be combined with warm passion.
Passion alone is not enough for making a responsible decision.
I understand that the Obama's speech was a reaffirmation of the Weber's argument in terms of a specific matter of the use of force and we should not expect a more idealistic perspective from the sitting president as that is not the attitude he should take.
What I can relate most to President Obama is his view of non-violence and its great figures like Gandhi and King.
As a good example of thinking about non-violence, I sometimes take up the differences between Gandhi and Nehru of their understanding the necessity of military power in independent India.
While Gandhi steadfastly pursued non-violence whatever happend, Nehru did not rule out using the force if necessary.
The former criticized the latter and other National Congress leaders as their non-violence had not been a genuine one derived from within and rather a passive resistance and a mere policy.
However, would it have been really realistic for them to continue non-violence even after winning independence from Britain?
My understanding is as follows: non-violence can be chosen only for a great cause like achieving national independence; the participants for the movement can be united because of such a cause; and because of the cause and the union, non-violence which endangers each life before the force can be carried out; on the contrary, the state is not a movement and the people constituting it just want to live peacefully with their own various values; the government, therefore, cannot force such people to stand up and die with the spirit of non-violence against, say, an outside attack.
In short, national security or defending the lives of the people is the responsibility of the government, so it was rational, I think, that Nehru did not adopt non-violence as a national security means.
By the same token, I agreed with President Obama when he said in the speech that "but as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their (Gandhi and King's) examples alone."
At the very end of Politics as a Vocation, Weber asserts as follows:
Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective.... Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say 'In spite of all!' has the calling for politics.
When I finished reading the speech, the phrase of this "in spite of all!" came to my mind.
The basic idea of sustainability is to look at the long-term effects of one's practices and evaluate whether or not they can continue in the same way. In green thought, this means looking at human economies in all of their complexity and determining whether or not the related ecosystems can continue to thrive and support them.
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