I’m not done with this yet. It’s right and good to give emphasis to the “war is an awful reality” aspects of the Nobel acceptance. Obama clearly meant to make this a provocative speech. But don’t ignore how much of a human rights speech this is. And I don’t mean some “human rights as a pretext for killing more people” stuff, either. I mean tackling the hard issues of placing human rights within the international order. For instance:

Let me also say this: the promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation.

Shots fired! So much for conservative moral vanity. Obama is less concerned with making the U.S. feel good about itself than with acting as a force for good for other people.

But I also know that sanctions without outreach – and condemnation without discussion – can carry forward a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door.

Now we know what to expect for Iran.

In light of the Cultural Revolution’s horrors, Nixon’s meeting with Mao appeared inexcusable – and yet it surely helped set China on a path where millions of its citizens have been lifted from poverty, and connected to open societies. Pope John Paul’s engagement with Poland created space not just for the Catholic Church, but for labor leaders like Lech Walesa. Ronald Reagan’s efforts on arms control and embrace of perestroika not only improved relations with the Soviet Union, but empowered dissidents throughout Eastern Europe. There is no simple formula here. But we must try as best we can to balance isolation and engagement; pressure and incentives, so that human rights and dignity are advanced over time.

Third, a just peace includes not only civil and political rights – it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.

It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive. It does not exist where children cannot aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within.

If ever there’s a point at which counterinsurgency principles and progressive principles are in strategic alignment, it’s this one. Root causes of instability. They aren’t always material, it’s true. But often — more often than not — they are. Or,  put perhaps more precisely, they’re the dry kindling waiting for the spark from extremists and demagogues and murderers. We can never look just to the sources of incitement for an explanation of their potency. The demand for that incitement is the crucial thing. Without it, a failed wallpaper hanger lives a miserable and pathetic life of grievance, hurting only himself.