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Obama Foreign Policy May Not Require a Clean Break
- Text size
Jim Lobe
IPS
November 11, 2008
While much of the world and many of his U.S. supporters are expecting a sharp break with his predecessor’s foreign policy after President-elect Barack Obama takes office Jan. 20, they may be surprised by the degree of continuity between the two administrations.
That continuity — which would be made more concrete if, as expected, Pentagon chief Robert Gates is asked to remain at his post — has less to do with Obama’s hesitation in following through on his more sweeping campaign promises than with the fact that President George W. Bush, has quietly — if grudgingly — moved key U.S. policies in directions that are largely compatible with Obama’s own intentions.
Obama will no doubt announce a series of steps during or just after his inauguration to reaffirm to his supporters and, in the words of his victory speech Tuesday night, “to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, (that) our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.”
Those steps will be designed to contrast his commitment to multilateralism and diplomatic engagement with Bush’s fabled unilateralism and reliance on military power. They will probably include an immediate and comprehensive ban on the use of torture and a promise to close the Guantanamo detention facility at an early date.
In addition, Obama will likely move quickly to improve ties with two governments toward which Bush proved unremittingly hostile: Cuba, where he is expected to repeal Bush-imposed restrictions on the freedom of Cuban Americans to visit their homeland and send money to their relatives as a down payment toward further normalisation; and Syria, where he will dispatch an ambassador to signal his interest both in renewing anti-terror cooperation and encouraging the resumption of Turkish-mediated peace talks between Damascus and Israel, if not a broader peace process.
At the global level, Obama is expected to pledge full U.S. participation in any successor regime to the Kyoto Protocol, including binding reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. Similarly, he may well announce his intent to gain Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and several other long-pending treaties opposed by Bush, including the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. He will also restore funding to another Bush target, the U.N. Population Fund.
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
He may even indicate a willingness to negotiate a “Bretton Woods II”, as proposed by key U.S. allies in Europe, that would strengthen global financial watchdogs and allocate significantly more power to emerging markets in the Third World in international economic agencies long controlled by the West.
In addition to earning Obama great goodwill overseas, all of these steps will help dramatise the contrast between his more open and inclusive approach to the world and that of his predecessor, whose unilateralism and cowboy image have brought Washington’s standing among foreign publics to an all-time low.
To be fair, however, that image — so richly earned during his first term when neo-conservatives and other hawks ruled the roost — is somewhat outdated. Chastened by the Iraq war and guided step by halting step by the foreign policy realists, notably Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Gates, and his top military commanders, who have come to dominate the last two years of his presidency, Bush has essentially — if not explicitly — laid the groundwork for Obama’s “new dawn”, especially with respect to key crisis areas that are certain to figure near the top of the new president’s agenda.
Despite loud protests and repeated efforts by hawks around Vice President Dick Cheney to deep-six the process, for example, Bush has stuck by Rice and her top Asia aide, Christopher Hill, in making the necessary concessions to keep the “Six-Party Talks” to de-nuclearise North Korea alive.
Similarly, Bush broke his own diplomatic embargo on Iran — along with Pyongyang, the last surviving member of the “Axis of Evil” — by sending a senior State Department official, Undersecretary of State William Burns, to sit down with his Iranian counterpart as part of a larger meeting including other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany last summer. Significantly, Burns will serve as the State Department’s chief liaison with Obama’s transition team.
The administration also appears close to announcing that it intends to set up an Interests Section in Tehran even before Obama takes office. Such a step will no doubt make it far less controversial for the new president to open comprehensive, high-level talks with Iran without conditions when he chooses to do so (possibly after Iran’s presidential elections in June so as to avoid boosting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad chances of re-election).
And after effectively ignoring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for nearly seven years, Bush finally re-launched peace talks at Annapolis last November. While those talks have made little progress and now, with Israeli elections scheduled for February, have no hope of reaching an accord by the time Bush leaves office, he will bequeath, as Rice, the effort’s most dogged booster, noted this weekend, a process that Obama can use to fulfill his promise to make a two-state solution an urgent priority.
Even on Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush has helped lay the groundwork for Obama’s plans to accelerate the withdrawal of combat troops from the former and rapidly deploying more to the latter, which the president-elect has long argued, unlike the incumbent, constitutes the “central front in the war on terror”. By acquiescing in a still-pending accord with the Iraqi government, Bush has also accepted a 2012 deadline for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops — not just its combat forces, which Obama has pledged to withdraw by mid-2010.
As for Russia, whose intervention in Georgia last August brought bilateral ties to their lowest ebb since the end of the Cold War, Bush, like Obama, has acted with relative restraint, particularly compared to the urgings of Obama’s Republican rival, Sen. John McCain.
And while his insistence on deploying missile-defence systems in central and eastern Europe is clearly more provocative than Obama’s cautious ambiguity on the subject, Bush has also moved in recent days both to address Moscow’s concerns and lay the basis for a new accord on sharply reducing U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, something that Obama is expected to make a high priority in the early days.
In other areas, Obama’s engagement strategy is likely to build on more positive achievements by Bush that have not received nearly as much attention as his “war-on-terror” debacles: most notably in East Asia, where, to the aggravation of the hawks, good ties with China have not only been preserved, but enhanced; India, where the new nuclear deal capped a rapidly growing strategic relationship; and much of Africa, where Bush’s five-year-old, 15-billion-dollar AIDS programme, strongly endorsed by Obama, is given credit not only for saving millions of lives, but also for making the region the most Bush-friendly by far, according to recent public opinion polls.
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November 11th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
fukked
November 11th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
FIND ANYONE WITH THIS SEARCH TOOL
http://acme-people-search.com/1225330720HEVD
November 11th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
This is a fascinating article. Jim Lobe is a very well respected observer of geo-politics, even among the Truth movement. This is the first I’ve heard of this parting of the ways of Bush from Cheney, but the division characterized by Rice and Gates from those hotheads is not news.
If Lobe is correct, this is like having a bullet knock your hat off. Are we really backing down from disaster an inch from the precipice? Am I going to have to think better of Bush, even thank him?
I’m willing.
I also credit InfoWars for having the maturity to post this story, even though it in some ways runs counter to the theme of “beware the puppet”.
I’ve noticed that a number of sensible and prudent voices on the radio program lately are not joining that chorus, viz. Mike Rivero, Bev Harris, and Michel Chossudovsky, who have all said, as if not knowing it was strange, that they “like Obama”.
So if I don’t immediately sell all my stock in the American Dream, at least I’m in good company.
November 11th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Actually this isn’t new news, a writer from News Week, Fareed Zakaria wrote an article in August talking about this very same things. You can find the link here:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/151731/output/print
it’s a very good article that talks about much of the same things in that this one does.
November 12th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Hold on a second, I thought the premise of the article was that Obama was going be like Bush. You know, same as the old boss. But I actually read the article. Looks like Pres-Elect Obama will have an entirely different approach to foreign policy than Bush.
– Improving relations with Cuba…long over due. The Soviet Union hasnt been is business for 20 years. What are we scared of: Creeping Communism?
– A Bretton Woods II! That’s huge. No doubt the Central Bank survives under Obama, but at least there will be a discussion of our currency. And, I cant believe we’re going to the Amero. I know its the plan, but I think we win that one, even with a another false flag terror attack. We’re going that route. Americans because of the truth movement will stand against it.
–Any one still out there diggin’ that unilaterial, cowboy image?
–Talks with Iran? It would be better than trying to lie our way into a war.
–How ’bout the recognition of a Palestinian State. Bush did nothing. Would this be the death of Israel? No, it would just be fair.
–As far as the war in Iraq, there is no doubt there will be “some” difference.
Why am I saying this? Certainly not to praise Obama, heaven forbid, but to point out that at some level there certainly is a pretty big difference between Pres. Bush and Pres.-Elect Obama.
I mean the guy isnt going to be joining the Washington DC chapter of We are Change any time soon, but I’m just not buying that Obama is a neo-con.
My god, I heard Alex say he was going to stop working on his JFK doc and start working on an Anti-Obama one. I’m sure he could do it, but right now it’s bad timing and, quite frankly, bad form. He’s our Pres-Elect, and he’s has not committed the crimes, for which others should literally hang.
In wrestling, when you were getting thrown, sometimes your best defense is to “roll through.” That is, use the momentum of your opponent to roll him all the way through to HIS back.
Here, fighting Obama directly is bad strategy. One thing everybody has to admit is that this election drew everyone to the net for their news. Never has there been such interest in politics. With that, it doesnt take one long to start surfing for alternative news and finding people like Alex Jones. If we sitting over here trashing Obama before most feel he’s gotten a chance, it’s just not going to work.
If on the other hand, the truth movement stays focused on the fraudulent banks and the Federal Reserve, 911 truth, INTERNET FREEDOM, gun ownership and all the really important issues that people care about, then we have a much better chance at actually making a difference.
Causing further division is simply not gong to work. This is not a suggestion to compromise or let up…it is a matter of strategy and credibility.
People, we are awake ones. That cares with it a special responsibility. Remain calm. Dont let ‘em see u sweat. Smile. Alex, relax. We love you and I personally respect you so much…but, my friend, dont fall for the Jerome Corsi red herring.
Roll through.
November 12th, 2008 at 1:15 am
So basically Obama is saying “Hey, let’s have fun destroying America together!”
November 12th, 2008 at 1:21 am
Look – in this article – infowars links to and supports a blatantly satanic website – we’re onto you, Jones… click the link under the headline – full of satanic cults! Double-think, anyone?
http://www.infowars.com/?p=1613
November 12th, 2008 at 4:27 am
Obama is the roman emperor Septimius Severus 193ad-211ad an African,he will destroy the U.S and usher in the holy roman empire!hail ceaser!welcome back to the Roman Empire sleepyheads, 2008 and still history repeats itself,just as we been here in many lifetimes before.The elite keep records on their geneology for thousands of years,they know who can caste the spell on the masses.
November 12th, 2008 at 6:13 am
Slim: who are you!
November 12th, 2008 at 10:36 am
#8, steve. We’ve been living in the holy roman empire since the en action of the 14th amendment, stripping states of their rights, placing US citizenship over state, and focusing power in the federal realm. Wake up buddy. just cause he is black means nothing and is a non issue. He’s totally controlled by the people who controlled the holy roman empire, the papacy and the Jesuits. Google the “black pope”