Obama's Foreign Policy Team Signals Change

By Cernig

Today, to much fanfare and absolutely no surprise, Obama announced his foreign policy team. I've already commented on his overall thinking as revealed by this team, so today I won't repeat myself. But here's what some notable others are saying. Most pundits seem to be honing in on one key concept - transformation - and this bit from David Sanger's NYT article is getting a lot of play:

Yet all three of his choices — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as the rival turned secretary of state; Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander, as national security adviser, and Robert M. Gates, the current and future defense secretary — were selected in large part because they have embraced a sweeping shift of resources in the national security arena.

The shift, which would come partly out of the military’s huge budget, would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the incoming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed at preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states.

Sanger has been one of the most reliable insiders when it comes to faithfully stenographing the Bush administration's preferred spin and it seems he'll be just as useful as a reliable conduit for the Obama admninistration.

Spencer Ackerman (future Pullitzer winner), gets to go first with blogger reaction because in general he impresses me more than any other blogger right now. He notes that the Obama team is a team committed to altering the budgetary and cultural dominance of the military over civilian arms of foreign policy and says this is "A really really extremely good massively awesome idea."

James Joyner, writing for the Atlanticist, agrees - as well he might since he's been advocating for an ability to put more "wingtips on the ground" for years now. He adds that State needs a massive overhaul after years in the DoD's shadow. James is a fairly moderate conservative, who has been getting more moderate recently as the GOP retreats into its Palin bunker, and I don't think he could be more happy with Obama's choices. So far, Obama's going the right way about keeping the Joyner's of American politics onside, which bodes ill for a GOP recovery.

The editors at The Atlanticist, which is the main PR booster for NATO in the US, are especially pleased about Gen. James Jones as National Security Advisor, agreeing with Obama that he is "uniquely skilled" for the position. Then again, the NGO is chaired by the selfsame Gen. Jones.

Steve Benen points to the over-arching strategy: "a sea change when it comes to the influence of U.S. power abroad -- emphasizing prevention, bringing some new fiscal discipline to the Pentagon budget, making a new commitment to diplomacy, bringing stability to failed states to prevent a vacuum filled by terrorists" and all "with a decidedly non-liberal team of officials".

The hard Right are saying its all a bluff. Jennifer Rubin at the wingnut neocon Commentary magazine: "the notion that all of this is going to replace the need for a robust military or become the mechanism for combating violent aggression of the type we witnessed in Mumbai is misguided in the extreme. Shifting from “hard” to “soft” power is the sort of thing that the New York Times thinks is a swell idea, but which bears no relation to the threats we face."

And lastly, Ben Smith at Politico writes: "The choice says as much about Obama's strategic judgment and his temperament as anything else he's done. It says that he's confident he can control the Clintons."

Comments

[smintheus]

What do you make of the tale reported at the NYT (?) that the SOS was not so much offered to Clinton as seized by her? That is, her surrogates spread the false or at least exaggerated story that she'd been offered the job and was considering it, by this means wrong-footing Obama.

It would explain an otherwise strange choice. But it would suggest there'll be a lot of unresolved or unresolveable trouble down the road between Obama and Clinton.

[Steve Hynd]

Hi Smintheus,

I don't swallow it. Obama's already shown he's making his choices no matter what the pressure from any quarter.

Regards, C