A Test of Obama’s Moral Leadership

WILLIAM A. GALSTON

Sept. 22, 2015

The U.S. presidency, Franklin Roosevelt said, is “pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.” There is every reason to believe that President Obama agrees. He now faces a moment in which he will either meet or fail that test.

The flood of refugees battering Europe is a humanitarian crisis. But more than that, it is a moral disaster, and not just for Europe. I won’t soon forget the images of Hungarians and others treating helpless families as less than human. Listening to Hungary’s prime minister, one wonders how much—if anything—the forces he represents have learned since the fascist Arrow Cross Party ruled the country in World War II. If not resolved quickly, the wrangling over national refugee quotas will dishonor the founding principles of the European Union.

America cannot stand by. Sins of commission during George W. Bush’s presidency contributed to this crisis, and so too have the sins of omission by his successor. The U.S., whatever its intentions, has played no small part in making substantial portions of the Middle East unliveable for millions of people. We cannot say that this is Europe’s problem alone. Nor can we make a token contribution and walk away.

The challenge for the U.S. goes beyond even moral responsibility for current ills. It touches on who we are as a people and what we stand for.

On Wednesday, I will be observing Yom Kippur, which Jewish liturgy calls “a sacred time, recalling the Exodus from Egypt.” Time after time in the Torah, Jews are commanded to remember that they were a subjugated and oppressed people in the land they fled. We Jews are often told to do, or to refraining from doing, something that affects strangers, poor people or excluded groups—because we were oppressed in Egypt.

Most Americans are descended from immigrants who left their own Egypt—wherever it may have been—in search of safety, liberty and a chance to enjoy the fruits of their labors. In his famous letter to the Touro synagogue, President Washington paraphrased the prophet Micah when he promised the Jews of America that “everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig-tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

This has long been the promise of America to the persecuted and oppressed everywhere, and this must be its promise today.

In a recent letter, a group of national-security, international-humanitarian and human-rights appointees from Democratic and Republican administrations urged President Obama to support the admission of 100,000 Syrian refugees on an expedited basis and to provide the resources and administrative support to reach this goal.

That should be the floor of the U.S. effort, not the ceiling. After the exodus of the Vietnamese “boat people” that began in the late 1970s, it took an international conference to produce the agreement among Vietnam, its neighbors and the West on a formula for the safe and orderly departure of these refugees from their native land and accelerated resettlement elsewhere. Beginning with next week’s gathering of world leaders for the United Nations General Assembly, Mr. Obama should jump-start the conversations to convene such a conference at the earliest possible date.

The agenda should be comprehensive. On an urgent basis, world leaders should quickly remedy the funding shortfall for humanitarian efforts; relieve the unsustainable pressure on front-line states, especially Lebanon and Jordan; provide agreed-on routes for refugees to leave Syria and Iraq safely, without falling prey to greedy and unscrupulous middlemen; and establish well-defined procedures for receiving, registering, housing and assisting refugees near their point of entry in Europe.

Building on that foundation, the conference should broker an agreement on admissions goals that includes, but goes well beyond, the nations of Europe. If the wealthy Persian Gulf states refuse to accept significant numbers of refugees, as they may well do, they should be pressed to provide at least material support, commensurate with their resources, for the resettlement plan.

The exodus of refugees from the Middle East and elsewhere is only a symptom of underlying disorders. I am not the first to observe that we are witnessing the evisceration of the state system created in the wake of the Ottoman Empire’s collapse. There is no hope of building a new system—one that allows ordinary people to live securely—without forging agreement among the powers, which include U.S. allies as well as adversaries, who are using Syria and its neighbors as the arena for proxy wars.

This won’t be easy. It may fall to the next U.S. administration to organize the multilateral conversation that will be the necessary though not sufficient condition for a comprehensive agreement. This effort may fail. But in light of the unending humanitarian and political crisis, we have little to lose from making the effort. And we have something important to gain: the honor that comes from fidelity to worthy principle.