Joe Biden is savvy enough to realize a lot of national security issues have their own logic and their own momentum. An Obama DOD/State/NSC apparatus is therefore likely to make a lot of the same decisions the “neocons” did, because enacting the popular and prevailing nutroots views would be utterly catastrophic.
The problem is for eight years the left’s leaders have been stoking the flames of Bush Derangement Syndrome by saying a muscular foreign policy is immoral and damnable. Joe Biden is trying to head-off the inevitable criticism that will scream out of the left once Obama has to adopt elements of the Bush doctrine — for example, pre-emptive strikes against Iran, among 4 or 5 other scenarios. He’s making a play for wiggle room.
But maybe that’s just my wishful thinking.
