Dreyfuss: Obama's Foreign Policy Team

This is from the Nation.
I have the same type of evaluation as Dreyfuss but no doubt Dreyfuss knows more about the players than I do so he can speak for himself. It should be pointed out though that Obama's own pronouncements are quite consistent with his choices. It was the Obama high of many on the left which obscured this reality that Obama himself made no attempt to hide. This article does not say much about Obama's courting of Israel as well.


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Obama's Foreign Policy Team
posted by Robert Dreyfuss on 11/23/2008 @ 9:22pm
I hate to say I told you so, but here it goes.
In late September, in this column, I criticized Barack Obama for what I called a "pathetic" debate with John McCain, in which Obama got nearly everything about foreign policy wrong:
"He checked all the boxes. Barack ("Senator McCain is right") Obama couldn't find anything to disagree with the militarist Arizonan about. Support for NATO expansion? Check. Absurd anti-Russian diatribes? Check. Dramatic escalation of the war in Afghanistan? Check. I'm ready to attack Pakistan? Check. (Actually, on this one, McCain was the moderate!) Painful sanctions against Iran, backed up by the threat of force? Check. Blathering about the great threat from Al Qaeda? Check. It went on and on."
I pointed out that Obama went out of his way to say things like: "I believe the Republican Guard of Iran is a terrorist organization." And: "A resurgent and very aggressive Russia is a threat to the peace and stability of the region."
Last July, in a major feature piece for The Nation on Obama's foreign policy, I wrote:
"But in many respects, Obama seems likely to preside over a restoration of the bipartisan consensus that governed foreign policy during the cold war and the 1990s, updated for a post-9/11 world. ... Even as he pledges to end the war in Iraq, Obama promises to increase Pentagon spending, boost the size of the Army and Marines, bolster the Special Forces, expand intelligence agencies and maintain the hundreds of US military bases that dot the globe. He supports a muscular multilateralism that includes NATO expansion, and according to the Times of London, his advisers are pushing him to ask Defense Secretary Robert Gates to stay on in an Obama administration. Though he is against the idea of the United States imposing democracy abroad, Obama does propose a sweeping nation-building and democracy-promotion program, including strengthening the controversial National Endowment for Democracy and constructing a civil-military apparatus that would deploy to rescue and rebuild failed and failing states in Africa, Asia and the Middle East."
So are we surprised that now, as president-elect, Obama is selecting people whose views are coherent with Obama's frequently stated views? Are we surprised that the views of Obama's conservative and centrist advisers are, in fact, coherent with Obama's own? And are we surprised that his choices for his foreign policy and national security appointments are drawn exclusively from conservative, centrist, and pro-military circles without even a single -- yes, not one! -- chosen to represent the antiwar wing of the Democratic party? No, we are not.
What does it mean, then? Do we still believe that Obama was pretending to be conservative and cautious on foreign policy during the campaign, in order to get himself elected? Or is the truth, like Occam's razor, far simpler? Perhaps what Obama (and his advisers) said during the campaign reflects what they really believe.
We could all make lists of people that we might have chosen for secretary of state, defense, attorney general, homeland security, intelligence, and national security adviser. (True, not all of Obama's appointments are certain, yet, but the writing is on the wall.) It's now likely that not one of those posts will be filled with someone who either voted against the war in Iraq as a member of Congress or who, from outside Congress, vocally opposed the war. Not one.
What about Russ Feingold, Barbara Boxer, Chris Dodd, Sherrod Brown, and Jim Webb from the Senate? Where is John Kerry? What about Gary Hart and Al Gore? What about any one of a dozen or more prominent members of the antiwar and progressive caucuses in the House of Representatives, such as Lynn Woolsey, Jim McDermott, or Jim McGovern? What about the generals who, unlike General James E. Jones, didn't campaign with McCain and who spoke out against the war? What about the many prominent experts on disarmament and nonproliferation, like Lt. General Robert Gard, Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, and Peter Galbraith, all of whom serve on the board of directors of the Center for Arms Control? Or Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund, a leading arms control expert? Well, you get the idea.
Here's the likely lineup so far: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and National Security Adviser James E. Jones. For director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, a retired admiral tangled up in the military-industrial complex? Key Obama advisers such as Richard Danzig, a former secretary of the Navy; Tony Lake, a former national security adviser; Susan Rice, an Africa specialist and former State Department official; and Mark Lippert, Obama's top Senate foreign policy aide are likely to get important deputy-level jobs, though Danzig -- who is on record supporting Gates for the job -- may yet get the top Pentagon post.
As I pointed out in my July piece for The Nation, Rice and Lake -- along with outside advisers Samantha Power and Sarah Sewell -- are on record supporting tough military action overseas in case of humanitarian crisis. Rice and Lake have said explicitly that they favor war against Sudan. Two years ago, they wrote in the Washington Post:
"The United States, preferably with NATO involvement and African political support, would strike Sudanese airfields, aircraft and other military assets. It could blockade Port Sudan, through which Sudan's oil exports flow. Then U.N. troops would deploy -- by force, if necessary, with U.S. and NATO backing.
"If the United States fails to gain U.N. support, we should act without it. Impossible? No."
Clinton, who now seems to be a lock for the State Department, would be likely to hire a passel of hardliners for her own aides, including people like Richard Holbrooke, Dennis Ross, and Leslie Gelb, all three of who serve on the advisory board of the ultra-hawkish group, United Against Nuclear Iran. She'd also draw on relatively conservative officials from the Center for a New American Security, the Brookings Institution, and other Washington thinktanks who are in tune with her own hawkish views on Israel, Iran, and projecting U.S. muscle abroad.
And then there is General Jones.
Out of the blue, in the third presidential debate, Obama cited Jones as someone he trusts on national security. He is an advocate for stepped-up defense spending. And, notes CNN, it's all one big, happy family:
"One person close to the transition noted Jones is a bipartisan figure who has warm relationships with both current Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who may stay on the job for at least a brief period, as well as Sen. Hillary Clinton, who is now on track to be nominated as Secretary of State after Thanksgiving."
Not once, but twice he was asked by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to be her deputy secretary of state. Adds the London Times, in an analytical story on Jones:
"Last year he conducted an investigation on behalf of Congress on the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"'Make no mistake, Nato is not winning in Afghanistan,' he said. He also said that the war in Iraq had caused the US to 'take its eye off the ball' in Afghanistan, and gave warning that the consequences of failure there were just as serious as defeat in Iraq – views publicly expressed by Mr Obama.
"Before Mr Obama travelled to Afghanistan during the presidential campaign he was briefed by General Jones, who in 2007 was appointed by Dr Rice as a special envoy for Middle East Security."
National Review Online calls the idea of Jones at the NSC "a pretty good sign for hawks, a pretty bad sign for doves," which just about sums it up.
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Top Obama Adviser Has Long ties to Neocons.

This is from antiwar.com.
This exhibits the bipartisan nature of US foreign policy. Here is the candidate for change having in his top advisor circle a chap with the highest credentials as a neo-con even being associated with Wolfowitz and a whole group of prominent neo-conservatives that were part of a team. He is also strongly pro-Israel no doubt a reason why he failed in trying to negotiate a peace deal with the Palestinians. He also is strongly anti-Iranian. The US might as well import the rest of the Bush neocon flock as advisors!

Top Obama Adviser Has Long Ties to Neocons
by Michael Flynn
With the 2008 presidential campaign at its end, pundits have begun to discuss in earnest what expected winner Barack Obama's administration might look like. An important piece of evidence is Obama's campaign team, which largely escaped the harsh scrutiny that his opponent's lobbyist-laden team received.
Because of Obama's relative inexperience on foreign policy, it is this part of his team that is getting much of the attention, and one adviser in particular – Dennis Ross, Bill Clinton's Mideast envoy whose record includes supporting the pro-Iraq War advocacy campaigns of the Project for the New American Century and serving as a consultant to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a bastion of Israel-centric policy thinking in Washington.
Generally regarded as a political moderate who has the ear and respect of both Republicans and Democrats, Ross, a former Soviet specialist, reportedly has told friends and foreign officials that he hopes to nab a very senior post in an Obama administration, one that at least covers Iran policy, if not the entire Greater Middle East.
But Ross' record as a Mideast peacemaker during the Clinton years, longtime association with hawkish political factions, and track record promoting a hard line vis-à-vis Israel's Arab neighbors have spurred concern that he would be a less-than-ideal pick for a Middle East portfolio in an Obama administration, which many presume he will be offered.
As one Clinton official, asked about Ross' role in the Obama campaign, told Time magazine earlier this year, "If Obama wants to embody something new that can actually succeed, it's not just a break from [George W. Bush] Bush that he's going to need, but a break from Clinton."
Despite some successes as Clinton's envoy crafting agreements between Israel and its neighbors, Ross' efforts to negotiate an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were a failure. In his writings, Ross has emphasized Palestinian intransigence – in particular, Yasser Arafat's – as being the cause for the failure, although he doesn't exempt Israel from blame.
Other participants in those negotiations have pointed their finger at Ross. In their book Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace, Daniel Kurtzer, who is also an Obama adviser, and Scott Lasensky cite a number of anonymous officials who were critical of Ross.
Said one Arab negotiator, "The perception always was that Dennis [Ross] started from the Israeli bottom line, that he listened to what Israel wanted and then tried to sell it to the Arabs. … He was never looked at … as a trusted world figure or as an honest broker."
Likewise, a former Clinton administration representative told the authors, "By the end, the Palestinians didn't fully trust Dennis. … [T]hey thought he was tilted too much toward the Israelis."
Ross got his start in high-level policy-making working under Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon during the Carter administration. Wolfowitz – who is better known for his role pushing the Iraq War after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and for his controversial tenure as World Bank head – tasked Ross with helping draft a study assessing threats to U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf. The 1979 study, titled the "Limited Contingency Study," concluded that aside from the Soviet Union, a key threat to the region's oil fields was Iraq.
In his 2004 book the Rise of the Vulcans, James Mann writes that this study, the Pentagon's "first extensive examination of the need for the United States to defend the Persian Gulf," would go on to "play a groundbreaking role in changing American military policy toward the Persian Gulf over the coming decades."
When Wolfowitz was tapped to head the State Department's Policy Planning Staff after the election of Ronald Reagan, he included Ross in his team of assistants, which, according to Mann, would go on to become, over the next two decades, "the heart of a new neoconservative network within the foreign policy bureaucracy."
Other Wolfowitz team members from that time included I. Lewis Libby, a Washington lawyer who later became notorious as the disgraced former chief aide to Vice President Dick Cheney; James Roche, President George W. Bush's Air Force secretary who resigned after being implicated in the Boeing tanker leasing scandal; Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to the UN and post-invasion ambassador to Iraq; Alan Keyes, the perennial Republican presidential candidate; and Francis Fukuyama, the "end of history" theorist and erstwhile neoconservative ally who turned against the faction after the Iraq invasion.
Ross' close association with neoconservatives has deepened over the years, becoming especially pronounced in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He supported the invasion of Iraq and, during the run-up to the 2008 presidential elections, repeatedly teamed up with writers from groups like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to craft hard-line policies toward Iran.
Ross served as the co-convener of WINEP's Presidential Task Force on the Future of U.S.-Israel Relations, which issued the June 2008 report "Strengthening the Partnership: How to Deepen U.S.-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge." The report was signed by a number of former Democratic and Republican policymakers, as well as by several neoconservatives, including former CIA director James Woolsey and Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman who co-founded the rightist pressure group Empower America.
Interestingly, several other advisers to the Obama campaign added their names to the document – Anthony Lake, Susan Rice, and Richard Clarke.
Ross also helped produce the 2008 report "Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development," which was published by a study group convened by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a group led by several former legislators.
The lead drafter of the report was AEI's Michael Rubin, an outspoken proponent of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. Other participants included hawkish arms control analyst Henry Sokolski; Michael Makovsky, a former aide to Douglas Feith; Stephen Rademaker, who worked under former UN Ambassador John Bolton in the State Department; and the neoconservative Hudson Institute director, Kenneth Weinstein.
The report argues that despite Iran's assurances to the contrary, its nuclear program aims to develop nuclear weapons and is thus a threat to "U.S. and global security, regional stability, and the international nonproliferation regime," a conclusion that stands in contrast to the CIA's November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which found that Iran had ceased its nuclear weapons program.
Like the WINEP study, the report argues that "Cold War deterrence" is not persuasive in the context of Iran's program, due in large measure to the "Islamic Republic's extremist ideology." Even a peaceful indigenous uranium enrichment program would place the entire Middle East region "under a cloud of ambiguity given uncertain Iranian capacities and intentions."
Among the report's proposals are undertaking a major military buildup in the Gulf; pressuring Russia to halt weapons assistance; and, if the U.S. agrees to hold direct talks with Tehran without insisting that the country first cease enrichment activities, setting a predetermined compliance deadline and be prepared to apply increasingly harsh repercussions if these are not met, leading ultimately to U.S. military strikes.
Calling the report a "roadmap to war," Inter Press Service's Jim Lobe writes, "In other words, if Tehran is not eventually prepared to permanently abandon its enrichment of uranium on its own soil – a position that is certain to be rejected by Iran ab initio – war becomes inevitable, and all intermediate steps, even including direct talks if the new president chooses to pursue them, will amount to going through the motions. … What is a top Obama adviser [Dennis Ross] doing signing on to it?"
(Inter Press Service)