Re: Let.s Go Hillary

[Rudy Fichtenbaum <rudy.fichtenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I don't know whether this article adds anything worthwhile to the debate 
but it tries to look at how foreign policy advisers for Obama and 
Clinton might influence policy.

http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1226/1/ 
<http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1226/1/>


Foreign Policy: Behind Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton 	Print 
<http://towardfreedom.com/home/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1226&Itemid=1&pop=1&page=0#> 


Written by Stephen Zunes
Wednesday, 06 February 2008

Source: Foreign Policy in Focus <http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4940>

Voters on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party are rightly 
disappointed by the similarity of the foreign policy positions of the 
two remaining Democratic Party presidential candidates, Senator Hillary 
Clinton and Senator Barack Obama. However, there are still some real 
discernable differences to be taken into account. Indeed, given the 
power the United States has in the world, even minimal differences in 
policies can have a major difference in the lives of millions of people.

As a result, the kind of people the next president appoints to top 
positions in national defense, intelligence, and foreign affairs is 
critical. Such officials usually emerge from among a presidential 
candidate’s team of foreign policy advisors. So, analyzing who these two 
finalists for the Democratic presidential nomination have brought in to 
advise them on international affairs can be an important barometer for 
determining what kind for foreign policies they would pursue as 
president. For instance, in the case of the Bush administration, 
officials like Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle played 
a major role in the fateful decision to invade Iraq by convincing the 
president that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat and that American 
forces would be treated as liberators.

The leading Republican candidates have surrounded themselves with people 
likely to encourage the next president to follow down a similarly 
disastrous path. But what about Senators Barack Obama and Hillary 
Clinton? Who have they picked to help them deal with Iraq war and the 
other immensely difficult foreign policy decisions that they'll be 
likely to face as president?


     Contrasting Teams

Senator Clinton’s foreign policy advisors tend to be veterans of 
President Bill Clinton’s administration, most notably former secretary 
of state Madeleine Albright and former National Security Adviser Sandy 
Berger. Her most influential advisor - and her likely choice for 
Secretary of State - is Richard Holbrooke. Holbrooke served in a number 
of key roles in her husband’s administration, including U.S. ambassador 
to the UN and member of the cabinet, special emissary to the Balkans, 
assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs, and U.S. 
ambassador to Germany. He also served as President Jimmy Carter’s 
assistant secretary of state for East Asia in propping up Marcos in the 
Philippines, supporting Suharto’s repression in East Timor, and backing 
the generals behind the Kwangju massacre in South Korea.

Senator Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisers, who on average tend to 
be younger than those of the former first lady, include mainstream 
strategic analysts who have worked with previous Democratic 
administrations, such as former national security advisors Zbigniew 
Brzezinski and Anthony Lake, former assistant secretary of state Susan 
Rice, and former navy secretary Richard Danzig. They have also included 
some of the more enlightened and creative members of the Democratic 
Party establishment, such as Joseph Cirincione and Lawrence Korb of the 
Center for American Progress, and former counterterrorism czar Richard 
Clarke. His team also includes the noted human rights scholar and 
international law advocate Samantha Power - author of a recent New 
Yorker 
<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/01/07/080107fa_fact_power> 
article on U.S. manipulation of the UN in post-invasion Iraq - and other 
liberal academics. Some of his advisors, however, have particularly poor 
records on human rights and international law, such as retired General 
Merrill McPeak, a backer of Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, and 
Dennis Ross, a supporter of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.


     Contrasting Issues

While some of Obama’s key advisors, like Larry Korb, have expressed 
concern at the enormous waste from excess military spending, Clinton’s 
advisors have been strong supporters of increased resources for the 
military.

While Obama advisors Susan Rice and Samantha Power have stressed the 
importance of U.S. multilateral engagement, Albright allies herself with 
the jingoism of the Bush administration, taking the attitude 
<http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/02/19/98021907_tpo.html> that “If we 
have to use force, it is because we are America! We are the 
indispensable nation. We stand tall, and we see further into the future.”

While Susan Rice has emphasized 
<http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/southafrica/transcript4.html> 
how globalization has led to uneven development that has contributed to 
destabilization and extremism and has stressed the importance of 
bottom-up anti-poverty programs, Berger and Albright have been outspoken 
supporters of globalization on the current top-down neo-liberal lines.

Obama advisors like Joseph Cirincione have emphasized 
<http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/02/iran_report.html> a 
policy toward Iraq based on containment and engagement and have 
downplayed the supposed threat from Iran. Clinton advisor Holbrooke, 
meanwhile, insists <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080121/berman> that 
"the Iranians are an enormous threat to the United States,” the country 
is “the most pressing problem nation,” and Iranian President Mahmoud 
Ahmadinejad is like Hitler.


     Iraq as Key Indicator

Perhaps the most important difference between the two foreign policy 
teams concerns Iraq. Given the similarities in the proposed Iraq 
policies of Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama, Obama’s 
supporters have emphasized that their candidate had the better judgment 
in opposing the invasion beforehand. Indeed, in the critical months 
prior to the launch of the war in 2003, Obama openly challenged the Bush 
administration’s exaggerated claims of an Iraqi threat and presciently 
warned that a war would lead to an increase in Islamic extremism, 
terrorism, and regional instability, as well as a decline in America’s 
standing in the world.

Senator Clinton, meanwhile, was repeating <http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/4802> 
as fact the administration’s false claims of an imminent Iraqi threat. 
She voted to authorize President Bush to invade that oil-rich country at 
the time and circumstances of his own choosing and confidently predicted 
success. Despite this record and Clinton’s refusal to apologize for her 
war authorization vote, however, her supporters argue 
<http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/22/6527/> that it no longer 
relevant and voters need to focus on the present and future.

Indeed, whatever choices the next president makes with regard to Iraq 
are going to be problematic, and there are no clear answers at this 
point. Yet one’s position regarding the invasion of Iraq at that time 
says a lot about how a future president would address such questions as 
the use of force, international law, relations with allies, and the use 
of intelligence information.

As a result, it may be significant that Senator Clinton’s foreign policy 
advisors, many of whom are veterans of her husband’s administration, 
were virtually all strong supporters of President George W. Bush’s call 
for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. By contrast, almost every one of Senator 
Obama’s foreign policy team was opposed to a U.S. invasion.


     Pre-War Positions

During the lead-up to the war, Obama’s advisors were suspicious of the 
Bush administration’s claims that Iraq somehow threatened U.S. national 
security to the extent that it required a U.S. invasion and occupation 
of that country. For example, Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security 
advisor in the Carter administration, argued 
<http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DI13Ak01.html> that public support 
for war “should not be generated by fear-mongering or demagogy.”

By contrast, Clinton’s top advisor and her likely pick for secretary of 
state, Richard Holbrooke, insisted 
<http://www.usembassy.it/file2001_01/alia/a1011102.htm> that Iraq 
remained “a clear and present danger at all times.”

Brzezinski warned that the international community would view the 
invasion of a country that was no threat to the United States as an 
illegitimate an act of aggression. Noting that it would also threaten 
America’s leadership, Brzezinski said 
<http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DI13Ak01.html>that “without a 
respected and legitimate law-enforcer, global security could be in 
serious jeopardy.” Holbrooke, rejecting the broad international legal 
consensus against offensive wars, insisted 
<http://www.casanato.org/library/23feb03_it_didn%27t_have_to_be_this_way.doc>that 
it was perfectly legitimate for the United States to invade Iraq and 
that the European governments and anti-war demonstrators who objected 
“undoubtedly encouraged” Saddam Hussein.

Another key Obama advisor, Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment, 
argued <http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/iraq_report_final.pdf> 
that the goal of containing the potential threat from Iraq had been 
achieved, noting that “Saddam Hussein is effectively incarcerated and 
under watch by a force that could respond immediately and devastatingly 
to any aggression. Inside Iraq, the inspection teams preclude any 
significant advance in WMD capabilities. The status quo is safe for the 
American people.”

By contrast, Clinton advisor Sandy Berger, who served as her husband’s 
national security advisor, insisted 
<http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/berger2.htm> that “even a 
contained Saddam” was “harmful to stability and to positive change in 
the region,” and therefore the United States had to engage in “regime 
change” in order to “fight terror, avert regional conflict, promote 
peace, and protect the security of our friends and allies.”

Meanwhile, other future Obama advisors, such as Larry Korb, raised 
concerns about the human and material costs of invading and occupying a 
heavily populated country in the Middle East and the risks of chaos and 
a lengthy counter-insurgency war.

And other top advisors to Senator Clinton – such as her husband’s former 
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright – confidently predicted that 
American military power could easily suppress any opposition to a U.S. 
takeover of Iraq. Such confidence in the ability of the United States to 
impose its will through force is reflected to this day in the strong 
support for President Bush’s troop surge among such Clinton advisors 
(and original invasion advocates) as Jack Keane, Kenneth Pollack, and 
Michael O’Hanlon. Perhaps that was one reason that, during the recent 
State of the Union address, when Bush proclaimed that the Iraqi surge 
was working, Clinton stood and cheered while Obama remained seated and 
silent.

These differences in the key circles of foreign policy specialists 
surrounding these two candidates are consistent with their diametrically 
opposed views in the lead-up to the war.


     National Security

Not every one of Clinton’s foreign policy advisors is a hawk. Her team 
also includes some centrist opponents of the war, including retired 
General Wesley Clark and former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

On balance, it appears likely that a Hillary Clinton administration, 
like Bush’s, would be more likely to embrace 
<http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/4811> exaggerated and alarmist reports 
regarding potential national security threats, to ignore 
<http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/4803> international law and the advice of 
allies, and to launch offensive wars. By contrast, a Barack Obama 
administration would be more prone to examine 
<http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/4901> the actual evidence of potential threats 
before reacting, to work more closely with America’s allies to maintain 
peace and security, to respect the country’s international legal 
obligations, and to use military force only as a last resort.

Progressive Democrats do have reason <http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/4886> to 
be disappointed with Obama’s foreign policy agenda. At the same time, as 
The Nation magazine noted 
<http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080121/berman>, members of Obama’s 
foreign policy team are “more likely to stress ’soft power’ issues like 
human rights, global development and the dangers of failed states.” As a 
result, “Obama may be more open to challenging old Washington 
assumptions and crafting new approaches.”

And new approaches are definitely needed.

/Stephen Zunes/ <http://www.stephenzunes.com/>/, a //Foreign Policy In 
Focus/ <http://www.fpif.org/>/ analyst, is a professor of politics and 
international studies at the University of San Francisco./



--
Rudy Fichtenbaum
Professor of Economics
Chief Negotiator AAUP-WSU
Wright State University
Dayton, OH 45435-0001
937-775-3085