WEST POINT, N.Y. — President Obama on Wednesday tried to regain his statesman’s mantle, telling graduating cadets here that the nation they were being commissioned to serve would still lead the world and would not stumble into military misadventures overseas.
Speaking under leaden, chilly skies, Mr. Obama delivered the commencement address at the United States Military Academy.
“America must always lead on the world stage,” he said. “But U.S. 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.”
Under pressure from critics who say the United States has been rudderless amid a cascade of crises, the president said that those who “suggest that America is in decline, or has seen its global leadership slip away – are either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics.”
A day after announcing that the last American soldier would leave Afghanistan at the end of 2016, the president told this latest class of Army officers that the United States faced a new, more diffuse threat in an arc of militancy stretching from the Middle East to the African Sahel.
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