On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 7:52 AM, Max Sawicky <[email protected]> wrote: > Good stuff here: > > http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/
One of the recent posts on that blog offers a very insightful perspective on Obama appointments. The basic theory is that only an administration with mainstream or hardline credentials can achieve ambitious progressive goals. Sort of like only Nixon could have gone to China.. http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/node/10720 ----------------------------------------------------snip What do Barack Obama's foreign policy appointments tell us about the future direction of U.S. foreign policy? Less than you might think. Although reading the tea leaves during the transition is a popular Washington pastime (and even us folks outside the Beltway can play), it's next-to-useless as a guide to actual policy decisions. To begin with, why did Obama keep a Bush appointee (Robert Gates) at Defense, put former rival Hillary Clinton at State (despite her lack of genuine foreign policy credentials), and appoint a Marine general whose views on U.S. grand strategy are unknown as his Special Assistant for National Security? It is because he shares their policy preferences and intends to base his foreign policy on their global vision? Hardly. Obama made these appointments to armor-plate his administration against future criticism. He knows that the United States is in deep trouble at home and abroad, and that his first term will involve a lot of tough slogging. The economy will get worse before it gets better, and he has inherited two wars that the United States is probably not going to win in any meaningful sense of that term. Things are likely to go badly once we leave Iraq, and we'll be lucky if we can cut a deal and get out of Afghanistan on his watch as well. If things do deteriorate on either front, the GOP and the neocons would be quick to shout that the "surge" was working, that victory was within sight, and that Obama and the Democrats blew it. Keeping Gates at the Pentagon and putting Jones atop the NSC insulates Obama from this dubious but politically potent line of argument. Similarly, putting Hillary at State reinforces Democratic unity and prevents her from saying that all would be well had the voters chosen her instead. -raghu. -- Q: What's the contour integral around Western Europe? A: Zero, because all the Poles are in Eastern Europe. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
