Obama’s One-Stop Shop for Foreign Policy Advisers
When a new president with little foreign policy expertise goes shopping for experts to man his foreign policy apparatus, where does he go — especially when his campaign mantra has been “change”?
Barack Obama will have the ability to select over 200 people to fill positions in the foreign policy apparatus — not just in the State Department but also in related areas in the Department of Defense and National Security Council. Andrew McCarthy notes that Barack Obama’s appointment strategy might consist of selecting moderate center-left nominees who will need Senate approval to assume office. The next step might be to move leftward with hundreds of executive level appointments: the deputy secretaries, under secretaries, and associates, who are the ones who help craft and implement policies. They in turn hire thousands of other people who do not need Senate approval but who nevertheless control the levers of power.
President-elect Obama has been highly critical of the foreign policy approach of the current president. What might he do to project and protect his image as being a “change” agent?
One place he may go for help is an influential non-governmental organization (these are popular in the liberal sphere): the International Crisis Group (ICG).
The ICG is formally based in Brussels but has offices around the world (Washington, D.C., of course, is a major office). These offices are prominent in various “hot spots” in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East since the stated mission of the group is “conflict resolution.” Indeed, the group might be considered a proto-State Department. It has a roster of foreign policy analysts who travel throughout the world, meeting with political and other leaders to try to bring about “change.”
This group also has ties to Barack Obama. One of its major donors is prominent Obama supporter George Soros, who received a “Founders Award” from the ICG. He also serves on its board and executive committee. Indeed, the ICG was founded by former UN official Mark Malloch Brown, whose involvement in the oil-for-food scandal and close ties to George Soros were controversial enough to merit editorials in the Wall Street Journal and other media outlets.
“Will the president-elect select a group of experts who blame America for the world’s problems?”
That’s rhetorical right? Obama has already blamed our troops in Iraq for “just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.”
Heck…pick a Democrat.
John Murtha- “I will not excuse murder. And this is what happened. There’s no question in my mind about it.
John Kerry- “And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the – of – the historical customs, religious customs.”
Dick Durbin- “If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings.”
Harry Reid- “I believe …that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything.”
Uh…gee Martha Stewart- anyone see a pattern here?
i guess the question for al qaeda & co is, then: do we (1) strike America as hard as possible while they’re in the midst of this financial crisis, or (2) do we forego the spectacular attack, and simply await the inevitable collapse of the kind of political will personified by GWBush?
i guess it depends on how they see the situation. there must be both reasonable *and* histrionic types who believe that the USA is strong enough to deal with all this, so they need a big hit to push them over. on the other hand, there must be many who see how much they would be exposed to USA reprisal even if our enemies’ plans were successful.
then, of course, it might be a political game – a question of which of these factions wins. i do not believe that these countries actually have political factions of any significant depth; i believe they give us this impression because we (and our capital) )are such suckers for the trappings of democracy.
in any case, i’d think there would be a significant number of enemies who might prevail by pursuing 2 lines of thought:
(1) they cannot miss this perfect storm: the babybboomer generation is in their last decade of power and influence (both communists and islamists think generationally, by the way). they now have their apotheosis in the white house. if they hit the US hard, they will then have the following reactions: the babyboomers will be stunned and confused, and obama’s strategy will be discreditted.
either way, the US will possibly have to withdraw forces because it will be very difficult to pay for them. this can be achieved if china & co. come up with a novel way of threatening our T-bills & etc.
of course this will hurt the economies of the enemy countries, but i believe that the threat of revolution in these countries is actually pretty fond – particularly when a distracted US will be in no position to chasten countries that massacre anyone bold enough to threaten the regime. the europeans are of course useless, and even more badly hurt by their decades of cowardice and dependence.
(2) i really think we have to look at the possibility that foreign powers would love – Love – to assassinate president-elect obama. the more i read about the kennedy assassination, the more i think that the obvious lesson is that if you kill the King of Camelot, you – an enemy – will benefit by a complete collapse into wallowing self-pity and paranoia.
and considering the quasi-paranoid divisions caused in this country by 9/11, and especially if the assassins employed their Arab-Muslim robots to kill Obama – the great posthistorical Hope – in the name of apostacy, or some such distracting bulls*it, and then all the goddamn news organizations would be wailing about “why do they hate us!?!?!” and all the libtards would be wailing about the CIA and chickens roosting and fascist Amerikkka, and all the black people could be instantly convinced it was some white conspiracy…
chaos!
i mean, what more ideal environment, what more ideal targets, what more recently-demonstrated reliable responses – what more could a clever, strategically-minded enemy want? how, if they actually could hit us, could they possibly resist hitting us now?
i’m sorry, i hope i’m wrong, but i think something big and bad is coming in the relatively short term.
Haven’t you heard the news? Unfortunately, al-Qaida just made a fatal mistake: Al Zawahiri just refered to Obama using racially-insensive language.
Leftists could care less about the thousands of American “little Eichmanns” who’ve been killed over the years by Muslim extremists…they were just getting what they deserve. But now it turns out that Al-Qaida’s #2 is a bit of racist.
Now, that’s the last straw.
Barack Obama is indeed as self hating American. He is existentially committed to the notion that his own country is responsible for much of the evil in the world. Obama subconsciously, if not even consciously, believes that we should apologize to our enemies for getting them so mad at us. We, after all, supposedly crapped on them. This is particularly true if they are dark skinned people of the Third World. We are now in deep danger—virtually every thug living on this planet will see how much they can push the envelope with Obama.
It’s horrifying awful how the legacy media deceived the voters who voted for Obama. A large percentage of them had no idea about his radicalism. They incorrectly perceived Obama as something of a black Bill Clinton. Buyer’s remorse should soon set in. Unfortunately, it’s too late. Obama cannot be removed from office in the next four years. May God help us. We are royally shafted.
Barack Obama also lacks the education required to be president of the United States. He is poorly read and intellectually shallow. Has anyone actually perused his two autobiographies? They are banal and remind one of the immature writings of a nineteen year old kid who has yet to pass his second year college exams. Can somebody possibly point to even one example of Obama’s alleged intellectual brilliance? Sarah Palin was hammered during her interviews with Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson. Obama, however, is never asked questions by interviewers who behave like pit pulls fighting for a bone. And unfortunately the politically correct John McCain failed to push him to the wall. Obama is the least prepared elected leader of our country in the last hundred years except for perhaps Warren G. Harding.
When should any state be allowed to act outside it’s borders, without the consent of it’s neighbors? If the United States moves toward greater cooperation with the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, how exactly will we be “tied down”? What actions would further international cooperation prevent the United States from undertaking in the future?
Over the past 60 years, much of United States foreign policy has been based on the premise of a zero sum game. Apparently, many of Obama’s advisers reject the notion that international affairs must either be aligned to our benefit or otherwise at our expense.
It appears, that during the course of the presidential race, the Obama campaign may have attempted to pander to and placate the pro-Israel constituency. Now, it seems that the new administration’s foreign policy team could be motivated to broker a lasting resolution between the Palestinian Authority and the Israel; between Israel and it’s neighbors. This is something that the Bush II administration has shown little interest in. Where is the harm in the United States seeking progress on this front?
What good does the demonization of Syria and Hammas serve? Given conditions that in many ways resemble a total state of seige, Hammas has proven capable of keeping the radical elements under control and an ability to deliver their constituency, in the event an agreement ever needs to be enforced.
Power demonstrated a lack of tact and judgement, by referring to Clinton as a monster, then immediately correcting herself: “You just look at her and think, ‘Ergh’. But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive,” said Power. She may not be cut out for the diplomatic corps but with her book on her resumé, ‘A Problem from Hell’, she presents as an expert that is more than qualified to advise the new president.
DT, you’re a moron.
Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard. He taught Consititutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School. One would think he’d have some intellectual brilliance to teach courses at one of the top graduate schools in the nation. And as far as pitbull interviews, I guess you must have missed Bill O’Reilly’s interview with Obama.
“Sarah Palin was hammered during her interviews with Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson.”
Are you saying she was drunk?
Thank you Scott. Good points all.
None of this is news to me. A year ago I knew about the Soros connection and the ICG’s influence in Obama’s entourage of advisers.
Our external and internal enemies now have a four year window of opportunity to strike at us and cripple us. They have the chance to finally destroy the Jewish State, and we will see if they will boldly grab the ring. Israel right now is in the hands of a left of center government and its population vacillating in a miasma of appeasement and weakness, much as we are.
Let us hope and pray that all of us under the threat of these lethal enemies (Islamic terror groups like Hamas, Hizb’allah, and Iran and Syria) can somehow survive, while our enemies screw up their moment of opportunity and not get it all, but just enough to rouse somnolent and stupid populations from their intellectual and moral torpor.
Obama, our internal enemies, and our external enemies may yet fail in their project to lay this country and its allies low. And in the future we can reverse course and repudiate treaties and policies which are not in our interests and which betray allies. There are a myriad of possibilities in the future. Things can go either way, and it ultimately will depend upon where the will of the people is.
“Hammas has proven capable of keeping the radical elements under control and an ability to deliver their constituency, in the event an agreement ever needs to be enforced.”
Priceless. You all be the judge of the veracity of this and the wisdom of the opinion rendered in the rest of the body of that response.
Pat and Scott,
I saw the O’Reilly interview and thought Obama responded poorly. Not stupidly, but with meaningless drivel that seems to work on certain folk. In other words, Obama didn’t have to think through his responses to O’Reilly any more then his other prepackaged responses, comments, or speeches. Sacrifice, Change, Sacrifice, Hope, Sacrifice, Neighborliness, Sacrifice… He sounds like a self-help guru who can hypnotize an audience into seeing a podium where a bloody alter stands.
There is an element of zero-sum gamesmanship to politics. To use a Clintonian image, when the water rises some ships can’t handle the deep waters while some ships need deep waters or they strike reef.
We are going to have a deep and bitter disagreement regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. Pushing Israel towards a Two-State Solution is pro-Arab, period. The Palestinians have a state. It’s called Jordan. Subjecting an Arab population to the rule of Hamas or Fatah is inhumane (for both the Palestinians for having to live under the corruptions of those parties and for Israelis for having to deal with a population governed by thugs), and yet the Arab World, The US, the UN and many Israelis think this is a solution for the Arab-Israeli conflict. Obama backs the Saudi Peace Plan. Funny, the Saudis have been funding all sorts of anti-Western, anti-Semitic, and anti-Zionist groups around the world and yet Obama thinks their plan for peace is the just solution.
Obama’s circle made clear to me the leanings of the man. From Axelrod, Powers, Ayers, Wright, Pfelger on down, it was clear that Obama would be pro-Arab. I recently spoke for nearly an hour with the man who headed the IT section of the State Department under Powell. This gentleman told me that it was Powell’s opinion that Israel was a sinking ship and it was best for American foreign policy to disengage itself from this ally. Many folk in the State Department, including the gentleman I spoke to, felt this way about Israel. I have no doubt that Obama has the same opinion and that his policy will be a sharp stab in the back of America’s biggest ally. Not that Obama is stabbing anyone in the back. Americans and Jews should have known what sort of man they were voting for if they had judged his alliances. Since they ignored that and instead were charmed by the childishness of his mantra, the stab in the back will come from the US as a government. Obama was always pretty clear about where his views leaned. Every single institution that the Leftists control have steadily declined towards anti-Zionism and anti-Semitic. There is no question that a Leftist government will hold those sentiment.
And Pat, I’ve taken classes at Colombia, UCLA, Berkley and Stanford. There is plenty of intellectual mediocrity teaching on these campuses.
Scott –
The “zero sum game” – is it really controversial anymore that foreign policy was in fact a zero sum game, in which a country was either cannibalized by communism or actively fought it, often with tragic results?
The USSR and its KGB were real. The threat it posed was not some McCarthyist hallucination. Its imperialism was real, aggressive, and expansionary. Have you, for example, met people from former Soviet Bloc countries? *They* certainly don’t think it was an illusion. It baffles reason that people should still talk about US foreign policy as though the USSR did not exist, or was just a state like any other state, albeit with its Russian idiosyncracies. What kind of tanks were we fighting against in the recent Iraq War? T-72s.
The Israel-Palestine problem – Bush’s disingagement from diplomacy with Arafat was the most intellectually honest response in many years. For some reason liberal minds believe that inveterate terrorists can be talked out of their projects and offered concessions, even dramatic concessions, inducing them into a centrist bourgeois republicanism more or less in harmony with the international order.
I’m sorry, at this point an opinion like this is not reason and generosity and contrition, it is stupidity or willful blindness.
And HAMAS? You have a sympathetic opinion of balaklava-wearing AK-47-wielding Islamist putchists? Have you read their press, their charter? Do you listen to them? Do you watch them on tv in pick=up trucks, militarizing Palestinian territories?
If nothing else, do you see them offering the Israeli population every excuse not to follow the majority of Israeli citizens’ ordinary desire to live in peace?
Really it’s like we live in alternate realities. I want peace and prosperity, you want peace and prosperity. I see black-masked AK-47 wielding goose-stepping Islamists screeching about liquidating the Jews, and you see well-meaning social activists who are simply drawing attention to their plight, and if they only got the attention they deserved they’d put all that down and become nice grocers and middle-managers and democratic bureaucrats.
Come on man.
Here’s a thought experiment: pretend we, your domestic political opponents, do not exist. Now – look at the world again and tell us what you see.
Will the messiah protect America,or will we be quietly converted to Socialism?
I believe Israel is in great danger. Perhaps the most it has faced since 1948. Its own population for the most part seems unaware of the danger. The ruling party in the government seems to not be as up to the task as it needs to be, ready to give the Golan to Syria – that would be a strategic mistake that WILL cost them their survival.
They are about to be sold down the river by the United States. Interesting that Powell saw the Jewish State as a sinking ship. I wonder what he bases that reasoning on? Does he base it on his support for the Arabs, or does he arrive at that conclusion based on the decline in the Jews’ willingness to fight for their country?
I absolutely do not trust the men and women who will sell the Jews out to protect and defend their own nation. They all share the Euro-socialist/E.U. outlook. If you want to know what that outlook is, get Bat Ye’or’s “Eurabia: the Euro-Arab Axis.” That means we are in very deep trouble down the road, if not in the immediate future. The response of these people: they will apologize to the Muslim terrorists and render obeisance like good little dhimmis. Well, I refuse to be put under the Dhimma. If our leaders will not fight for us, then we will have to take the bull by the horns and fight for our country’s survival as a Constitutional Republic that is exceptional and rare.
Nothing is determined in advance. We may pull back from the brink. But we may also experience another civil war: this time loyal Americans against the collectivist scum who would whittle away our freedom, our Constitution, and our independence as a nation.
Pat J, getting into those schools, for a black man with anything approaching decent grades, especially one with very influential friends, is not hard. Hell, I got into harvard, as did my older brother who was editor of the law review his 3rd year, and who taught at Cornell law for a year. And the man is so dumb he can’t pull his head out of his own ass long enough to run his own life, much less a country. SO forgive me if I am not impressed with that particular line of credentials, that Obama happens to share.
He pubished nothing during his law review stint. Not one thing. Yet we are supposed to believe he wrote 2 books on his own? Whether or not they are well-written-and I don’t believe they are-has little to do with Obama.
The problem with the UN is it is all talk and no action. If they do send in peacekeepers, they are sent with the express orders to do nothing, not even defend themselves. That is not helpful. Leaving the problems of the world to the world’s version of the Ivory towers where all people do it talk, is dangerous. It’s going to be a scary 4 years. Who cares if Europe likes Obama? The problem is the people who look and see him as weak, which all our enemies rightly do.
Folks, ICG..
Why not take a look at the Sandy Berger shop STONEBRIDGE…China lobbyists and he has 3 from there on staff now. Mona Sutphin, Jeff Bader, Ken Lieberthal,, and others… bad news
The intellectual dishonesty amid the faux elegance of these policy wonks is stunning. How do these people live with themselves?
Scott, you didn’t happen to be an foreign policy advisor for Carter did you?
Scott Gunsaullus,
“When should any state be allowed to act outside it’s borders, without the consent of it’s neighbors? If the United States moves toward greater cooperation with the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, how exactly will we be “tied down”? What actions would further international cooperation prevent the United States from undertaking in the future?”
1. What if those “neighbors” are, for example, authoritarian regimes? By your logic, aren’t you saying that authoritarian or quasi-democratic governments should be allowed effective veto power over our foreign policy? Apply your thinking to Mexico and how it might affect us in regards to the drug wars going on down there, illegal immigration, etc.
2. I guess you’ve been asleep for the past 40 years. Take a look at the countries currently represented in the UN and on the ICC, then tell the rest of the class how many of them you’d actually like to live in.
Pat J:
You confuse education with credentials. My late uncle was a carpenter from the Canadian prarie with a high school education. He book shelves were filled with the great philosophers, literature and history. He was an educated man.
President-elect Obama is certainly an intelligent man but he is not well read beyond the law. He is trained and he credentialed but he demostrated his lack of historical knowledge throughout the campaign. Remember, his flub on Roosevelt meeting with our “enemies?” He either thought that Roosevelt met with Hitler, Mussolini or Tojo or he did not know who made up the main allied powers. He also didn’t know when World War I happenned. He said that people born in 1922 went through two World Wars. These are just two examples. He also speaks no foreign languages. How do you get a degree in international relations without learning how to speak another language?
By 1975 most univeristies abandoned their historic mission of educating and dropped core curriculum. Since then it is rare that a person emerges from college as an educated person.
George Bush went to Yale and Harvard. He was a history major. George Bush is an educated man.
Hammas has proven capable of keeping the radical elements under control and an ability to deliver their constituency, in the event an agreement ever needs to be enforced. Their moderate elements fire rockets into Israel?
Mr. Lasky misses one critical point. He and I would probably concur that Obama is still unqualified for the presidency based on his past work history–which is practically nonexistent. He basically has no resume.
And for precisely this reason, he needs to get fossils from Clinton and Carter to serve. He just simply doesn’t know anyone. OBAMA HAS NO TEAM. You don’t rub elbows with too many qualified people working as a “community organizer” and, in this sense, we can argue that he is technically admitting he is unqualified, too. After all, he came from the same place from whence he won’t pick people to serve BELOW him in the executive branch.
23. jerryofva:
————-
You made perfect sense up until when you referred the idiot-in-chief as an educated man.
OBAMA WILL ABANDON LEFTISTS
What is Moveon and Kos to do given political reality in America and the practical nature of their savior:
http://greensrealworld.blogspot.com/2008/11/democrats-and-radical-left.html
This “Pat” character is a typical authoritarian. These colleges are the biggies, therefore everyone from them is brilliant. I’ll bet he has an Apple computer.
Historian, we don’t need blog pimps here. Either make a cogent comment, join PJM, or go pimp your blog somewhere else.
Never fear Obama is here.
Of course the One will outsource the advising. He has to pay back all that foreign investment into his campaign.
The One is smart (book), will it equal good judgement.
Biden says you will be suprised.
never fear Obama is here.
I see today that Britians Foreign Minister has asked Obama to embrace the “NEW MULTILATERALISM”.I suppose thats the new code word for “give us veto power over US Foreign Policy.”
It’s a good thing, I think, that Obama is looking to non-government (though still leftist illuminati) groups to help in his choices. No more rehash of the same, please
I see no one has mentioned his amalgamation of Afrocentrist views and Orientalism both having deep roots in anti-western ideologies.