Secretary of State or Secretary at War
By Steve Markom on December 1, 2008 at 6:28 PM in Current Affairs
(Please welcome Steve Markom as a new writer for NoQuarter. Steve is a longtime reader here, and has been a wonderful e-mail penpal with me. We share a deep affection for and appreciation of AMC’s Emmy-winning “Mad Men,” and I’m hoping to entice Steve to write reviews when AMC reairs the series so you can follow along, with Steve’s very insightful commentaries — especially worthwhile because Steve knows the Manhattan advertising area like few others, and can tell you all about it. – nasuS)
There are times when newly elected Presidents use cabinet selections as window dressing and then rely primarily on close advisors to formulate and execute policy.
For those who recall the Nixon Administration that certainly was the case when it came to the State Department and foreign policy. While William Rogers had been Nixon’s Secretary of State during his first term, Nixon relied heavily on his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger to determine and to execute foreign policy initiatives – most famous of those was Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy to achieve détente with the USSR and to open Red China. Kissinger was allowed to undermine Rogers and did replace him in Nixon’s second term.
There are many questions about how influential Colin Powell was in formulating foreign policy during Bush’s first terms with Cheney, Rumsfeld, and advisors such as Wolfowitz driving foreign policy for the U.S.
So what was Obama’s motivation for selecting Hillary Clinton to be his Secretary of State? The political answer is clearly to keep her from being a potential opposition force to him in the Senate and for his second term re-election. Obama and Clinton had very different points of view during the campaign, with Clinton being very critical of Obama when it came to issues regarding the Middle East for instance and Iran. So it is reasonable to ask: Will Clinton be the primary foreign policy force or is Obama already planning to undercut her influence and authority?
One troubling clue came out late last week when it was revealed that Samantha Power had been retained and added to Obama’s State Department transition team. Power, one of Obama’s foreign policy advisors when the campaign began, had been supposedly fired by Obama when she publicly called Obama’s opponent Hillary Clinton “a monster.”
Now Power is charged with hiring people to work for the “monster” and will likely work for Hillary herself. Clearly this is not the choice of Hillary Clinton. So does it signal Obama’s intention to run foreign policy directly out of his office and in a direction that may not be consistent with Hillary Clinton’s positions?
Hillary Clinton is a strong advocate and supporter of Israel and has a unique understanding of the intricacies of Middle East diplomacy from her husband’s administration and his late attempts to bring an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
Israel is already viewing Obama with much skepticism and the latest polls giving Benjamin Netanyahu a greater lead shows the concern Israelis have with Obama and his past associations and actions.
The selection of Power, along with her anti-Israel positions , to the transition team only serves to increase those concerns. They are also policies not shared by Clinton. If Power is influential in building the Middle East State department team, then we could be viewing people who Clinton will not have agreement with and people who could be running policy around her and directly through the White House.
Does Obama share Power’s views on Israel and if not why was it necessary to go back on his firing of her to create a potential conflict with his newly announced Secretary of State?
Another clue to how Obama may run foreign policy was the selection of Obama’s close foreign policy advisor Susan Rice to the post of U.N. Ambassador. As important will be Obama’s making that post a Cabinet level position and thus reporting directly to him.
Also we should recall that Rice was a strong advocate of Obama during the primary campaign and in an interview with Tucker Carlson said in responding to the infamous 3 AM phone call ad:
RICE: They`re both not ready to have that 3:00 a.m. phone call. The questions is and what Barack Obama raised is, when that phone call is received for each of them for the first time, who’s going to make the right judgment? Who is going to make the right decision?
On the critical foreign policy issues of the day, whether it was a decision to go to war in Iraq or the decision to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt and beat the drums of war with Iran, Hillary Clinton has made the same wrong judgment as John McCain and George W. Bush. Barack Obama has made a very different judgment.
With the long awaited announcements today of Obama’s national security team and of Hillary Clinton to Secretary of State there will be too many questions after the press conference which we will not have answers for until Obama’s administration begins in January.
Supporters of Israel have no question about where Hillary Clinton stands after her years as U.S. Senator for New York. However there are unresolved issues regarding Israel with Barack Obama based on his past associations and statements made by some of his strongest foreign policy advocates such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft. There are signs that the 77% of American Jews who voted for Obama may soon be facing buyers remorse and Hillary may be regretting leaving the Senate finding that she may doing battle within the Obama Administration.
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