The New Team
Okay, the new national security team is now officially unofficially leaked. We’ll have General James Jones as National Security Adviser with Tom Donilon as his Deputy. And Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, with James Steinberg as her deputy. And Robert Gates will stay on at the Pentagon. Susan Rice will become UN Ambassador.
To be honest, this team sort of raises more questions than it answers. UN Ambassador is a very choice position for Rice. But she’s also the only person on this team who actually supported Obama’s candidacy from the beginning. And from her perch in New York it seems she won’t have much ability to ensure that younger policy operatives who joined her in backing Obama get the kind of mid-career jobs that may define the future of progressive national security thinking. It’s also completely unclear here how the many, many, many subordinate jobs in the Pentagon are going to be allocated under this scheme. And little is known about Jones’ views on most issues — apparently he was willing to make the Israeli government uncomfortable as Bush’s mideast envoy. Nor do we really know all that much about what Robert Gates “really” thinks.
I would only reiterate that I think it’s very possible to overstate the notion that keeping Gates on is in tension with Obama’s record of opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Bush’s pet war was viewed with a great deal of skepticism by the realist faction in the GOP, and Obama has long hinted around at admiration for the realpolitik of the Powell/Scowcroft school of Republicans. In many ways it’s the rapprochement with the liberal hawk faction within the Democratic Party that’s a more novel development, though Ilan Goldenberg rightly notes that all three non-neocon perspectives on national security policy are sort of converging at the moment. Perhaps, then, this is the right way to understand Obama’s team — as a kind of grand coalition of non-neo perspectives aimed at steering us out of the shoals into which Bush/Cheney policies have marooned the ship of state.
55 Responses to “The New Team”
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November 25th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
“Susan Rice, NSA — Not a done deal, but retired Marine General James Jones and Clinton White House alum James Steinberg have emerged as the two top candidates for the national security adviser job, according to numerous press accounts. That would leave Susan Rice, a top Obama national security adviser long rumored for the post, out in the cold. Rice’s prospects may have dimmed because she is one of the few Obama insiders who has been skeptical of a quick withdrawal from Iraq. But centrists, including Brookings Institution fellow Michael O’Hanlon, are still making the case she would provide a valuable counterweight to more dovish Obama aides. It’s likely, though, that she’ll be given a major role in the new administration somewhere else, if she wants one.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15890.html
Did you miss this, or do you simply not believe it?
November 26th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Are all these leaks intentional?
November 26th, 2008 at 12:22 am
Leave it to Michael O’Hanlon to characterize a former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and Commandant of the United States Marine Corps as dovish. O’Hanlon’s level of self-importance and/or self-delusion never ceases to amaze.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Isn’t the key thing here policy, not personnel?
I mean, who cares if Clinton is SoS if she follows Obama’s policy lead? Ditto with Gates - the thing that matters is withdrawing from Iraq.
Seems to me that a lot of the key issues - who’s going to be the Under/Assistant Secretaries, what the relationship between the Executive Office policy shops (NEC, DPC, NSC) and the departments in terms of who calls the shots, etc., to what extent people chosen have agreed to back Obama’s agenda - are still up in the air.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Steinberg supported Obama.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:39 am
I think the cabinet has to be looked at in terms of a first-term second-term game plan. There is so much s–t to clean up from the last eight years — from the economy to the wars — that even if Obama did want to make numerous progressive appointments, it might just as easily do long-term damage to that cause than not. If they failed to bring the situations we are now involved in to survivable conclusions, their hopes for a generation of dominance might go the way of Karl Rove’s similar hopes, four years sooner.
If you take each major issue area and examine the picks Obama has made, you’ll see that he has brought in a moderate representative of an opposing school of thought to the one he articulated in the campaign. That says to the country, “we are going to take a unity approach to solving these issues that threaten to derail our prosperity and security.” If there still are not results, then Obama may go down in four years, but it won’t be an unequivocal loss for progressivism. I
If there is progress on the major challenges, then hopefully Obama will be reelected. If he is, one can hope his standing and position will be such that he can overhaul his cabinet to reflect his true ideological orientation. If he does not do that, then we can certainly comclude that those who are now concerned that his present appointment represent his true views (as contrasted to those expressed in the campaign) will have been proved incontovertibly correct.
All of this, it should be noted, presumes that his policies roughly track our perception of the views of his appointees. If he succeeds in a wholesale forced implementation of progressive policies using moderate-to-conservative agency heads as political cover, more power to him. I’m not holding my breath however.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:57 am
I’d be total sated by the notion of Hillary Clinton at State if Obama appointed Samantha Power Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues
November 26th, 2008 at 1:16 am
@D Weman — that link is old news, superceded by most recent leaks.
@MY — there’s a fifth group that’s also being ditched by Obama et al. That’s what I call the “unilateral hegemonists” — the Cheney/Rumsfeld folks who were the major allies of the neocons. They shared with the neocons the urge to remake the world in the 1st decade of the 21st century to cement for as long as possible a unipolar global system. A lot of the traditional military brass, especially in the Air Force and Navy — still trying to fight a Cold War type war, the hunt for peer competitors, etc — as well as big chunks of the defense industry share their world view.
Their heritage can be traced to the “rollback” school and Cold Warriors, dressed up with “better dead than red”, “dominos” and “Evil Empire” black-and-white morality. So there was a lot of overlap between the hegemonists and the neocons in terms of US place in the world and preferred policies, but with decidedly different motivations. The neocons may have thought they could remake the Middle East in the US image. The hegemonists didn’t care about those sorts of niceties since their driving belief is in the primacy of a simplistic notion of power.
In the Nixon-Reagan-Bush41 regimes, the hegemonists allied with the Kissingerian/Scowcroftian realists against the various left strains, but they were on the muscular, hawkish side of that alliance — suspicious of detente, glasnost, etc.
But under Bush43, the realists have divided sharply and publicly from the hegemonists. The Scowcroftian school is much more in a balance-of-power tradition. Accordingly, they have early identified the need to manage the process of America’s inevitable relative decline from a short period of unipolar dominance. So they have tried to promote what they see as US interests in a manner consistent with influencing the shape of an emerging global system which will be characterized by more complex and fluid power arrangements. As the consensus for withdrawal from Iraq has solidifed, the realists have been able increasingly to make common cause with both the somewhat subdued liberal internationalists and the slightly chastened liberal hawks.
That leaves the neocons and the hegemonists to stick together in opposition to the new Admin. I expect them to use the defense budget, and opportunistic alliances with Congresscritters over specific acquisition programs, as one of their most important soap boxes to scream from. And of course they also make common cause over issues like Iran and “appeasement” and the other assorted boogie men, like Chavez and Putin.
Finally, the sixth group, the paleos, will be happy to see some of the redirectioning of US policy under Obama, as well as specific policies like Iraq withdrawal. But they’ll mostly be left on the sidelines where they’ve been for decades.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:21 am
First, an economic team that leaves out only hardcore “creative destruction” libertarians. Now, a national security team that reels in everybody but the neocons. I like the pattern I’m seeing: a coalition that cedes no one but the crazies to the opposition.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:36 am
The “unilateral hegemonists” should indeed be separated from the neocons, despite the fact that the two factions operated in unison under Bush 43.
But are the “paleos” distinct from the isolationists and the GOP “realists”? Aren’t they a combination of the two?
November 26th, 2008 at 1:37 am
mike is right. look for progressive ascendancy later in obama’s admin.
but right now cleaning up the shit has to be the #1 priority.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:38 am
Perhaps, then, this is the right way to understand Obama’s team — as a kind of grand coalition of non-neo perspectives…
In other words you’ve got nothing. Obama’s appointments have been lame and no amount of denial will change that.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:09 am
@JS — I’m not real fond of “isolationist” as a label since it gets hurled as an epithet pretty indiscriminately by hawks of all colors against their enemies on both Right and Left. But yeah, you could call the paleos “isolationists”. Very suspicious of foreign entanglements, whether military adventures or institutions. Some are anti-war, anti-imperialists (e.g. Raimondo and antiwar.com), and others are super-nationalists who think most wars aren’t “good wars” in national interest terms (Buchanan et al). In terms of their political influence on actual policy, we can lump them together.
In the post WWII era, they’ve been pretty well marginalized on the Right by both the unreconstructed Cold Warriors (the “unilateral hegemonists” post-Cold War) and the Kissinger/Scowcroft realists. And given the paleos’ history of battles on the Right, they tend to be suspicious of the realists and not very willing to make common cause with them against the neocons/hegemonists. They assume Obama is going to turn out to be a mainstream international interventionist, just not as crazy as the guys who have been running the show for the past 8 years.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:13 am
The whos don’t matter. The way to set policy is to give a strict set of guidelines to the envoys and have each follow them to the letter. That is how to resolve Israel/Palestine. end the Iraqi Occupation, and achieve a sensible rapprochement with Russia. Obama may indeed be cloaking those aims by these super-centrist appointments. As good an idea as it may be - it’s not as if he could have named Rashid Khalidi Sec. of State.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:16 am
When Matt talks about “Bush’s pet war”, readers should remember that the future Secretary of State and the Vice President-elect voted for the war. While we wonder where Gates stood in 2003, we don’t need to wonder about Clinton and Biden. (Clinton’s husband and Biden both opposed the 1991 Gulf War, for those wondering whether they’ve ever gotten anything right.)
November 26th, 2008 at 2:20 am
Yes, the Emperor is wearing a nice outfit today, isn’t he?
November 26th, 2008 at 3:02 am
Why are people assuming that progressives can’t clean things up?
November 26th, 2008 at 3:06 am
Chris Bowers says that “keeping Gates on would only worsen Democratic image problems on national security, as he would be the second consecutive non-Democratic Secretary of Defense nominated by a Democratic President. The message would be clear: even Democrats agree that Democrats can’t run the military.”
November 26th, 2008 at 3:35 am
nadezhda, it was a technical point: When you talked of a “fifth” and “sixth” group, I believe you were adding to Matt’s enumeration — which Matt borrowed from Ilan Goldenberg, as far as I can tell, according to his post.
If you follow Matt’s link to Goldenberg, you will see that group #1 in his list is the neo-isolationists. So I thought that there was a lot of overlap in having separate groups for isolationists, GOP realists, and paleos — all on the same list.
November 26th, 2008 at 7:00 am
It is probably remarkably naive on my part, but it is my hope that the selections that have been made (Gates in particular) are more a sign of the remarkable self-confidence of the President-elect than anything else. I suffer no illusions that he is anything other than a centrist but I do think he’ll move in a more progressive direction than any President we’ve seen since LBJ. My hopeful belief is that he’s told these people that if they want to be on his team, they’ll follow his policy lead.
Whether I’m write or wrong, I do believe that those who have decided these appointments are indicative of some kind of rightward tilt are judging way to soon. Individuals in powerful positions certainly can and do influence the direction of the administration, but it is the person at the top that sets the standard.
We have had 8 years of a president who was such an irrevocable coward that he couldn’t even stand to be in the same room as someone who might disagree with him - and who did not have the intellectual curiosity to arrive at his own policy positions without elementary tutoring. That’s changed and I am hopeful that it has changed to the extent that the new President, when faced with a balking cabinet member, is able to say “Yes, you will.”
November 26th, 2008 at 7:31 am
Keeping Gates: Another bad move following the decision to have the needless drama of having the Clintons around.
Look, Democrats must send the message: “The national defense is secure in our hands.” You are not a long-term ruling party if you don’t absolutely radiate that sense of security.
Keeping on a Bush appointee at Defense sends the opposite message: “There’s nobody in the whole Democratic Party who can be trusted around the military, so we have to keep this Bush guy. Or the terrorists will win and we’ll all be dead.”
A Republican for the State Department would have made political sense, because Republicans aren’t that diplomatic normally, but a Bush guy for Defense just makes the Democrats look like they just admitted they are limp-wristed about protecting America.
Bad move.
November 26th, 2008 at 7:32 am
Isn’t the key thing here policy, not personnel?
I mean, who cares if Clinton is SoS if she follows Obama’s policy lead? Ditto with Gates - the thing that matters is withdrawing from Iraq.
….
The whos don’t matter. The way to set policy is to give a strict set of guidelines to the envoys and have each follow them to the letter.
Experienced and powerful people don’t join an administration just to fall in line and obey. They bring their own views and priorities to the job, and want and expect some autonomy and policy-making influence.
I’d guess that keeping Gates sends a signal that we are going to be in Iraq for at least three more years. The SOFA permits us to stay that long, but it was always possible Obama would stick with his 16 month withdrawal proposal. Since Gates is an architect of the SOFA and worked pretty hard on it, I’d say this vote of confidence means the 16 months is now 36 months.
November 26th, 2008 at 7:41 am
I have to say that I agree with Steve Sailer on this. It is vital that Democrats seize the opportunity of this sizable electoral victory to take full ownership of US foreign policy. Appointing another Republican Daddy to handle the war-making division of government sends a message (again) of Democratic weakness and deference on defense.
November 26th, 2008 at 7:59 am
For what it’s worth, the transition has announced all the Policy Working Groups, including the one on national security, though I’m not sure anyone has noticed. It’s here (and these Policy Working Groups are different from the Agency Review Teams). Not sure how the young Obamanauts did here, though I see some of them on it.
Beaudrot - I’m pretty sure Steinberg initially supported Clinton, not that it really matters.
I will also just say I am not entirely convinced by the “It’s the policy not the personnel” argument. You have to have developed policy views down to a pretty fine level of detail for the personnel who are in a position to shape your views not to play a significant role in shaping them. So who gets the President’s ear and who shapes policy and policy options as it goes up the latter can matter a lot.
November 26th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Re Sailor/Kerwick
I read last week that Gates is not a registered Rethuglican but an independent, even though he has served in Rethkuglican administrations. Thus, he might not qualify as a Rethuglican Daddy.
Re James Jones
Actually, the proposal for Nato troops in the Palestinian territories has previously been floated by Israeli superhawk Avigdor Lieberman. The problem with it is the issue of what its mandate would be.
By the way, there was an oped in todays’ Washington Post by Aaron Miller who agrees with my assessment elucidated in previous threads on this blog that an Israeli/Palestinian agreement is not possible at this time. He advised proceeding on the Syrian Track. Given his intimate involvement with the parties during the Bush I and Clinton administrations, I would trust his judgment on this issue over that of armchair kibitzers like Scowcroft and Brzezinski.
November 26th, 2008 at 8:19 am
I never would have thought about the impact of political appointments on mid-career level employment and, therefore, the future of progressive policy infrastructure - until I began reading Matt and Ezra. I’m sure they’re not the only ones who note this but I am grateful for their writing. This is by far the most compelling reason as far as I can see to be concerned about some of Obama’s appointments. I am not worried about whether or not he can effectively lead a smart group of probable diagnosable narcissists (I believe he can). The high-profilers he appoints are reliably self-interested and therefore much of their behavior can be predicted and modulated by a thoughtful and attentive leader. But… what about the folks they hire to fill the ranks? I’d like to see much more attention paid to this, historically and currently.
November 26th, 2008 at 8:25 am
Word. It’s really a bummer that Obama is selecting experienced and pragmatic people who hold diverse views to his cabinet in a time of crisis. I’d rather see young, inexperienced ideologues get the top spots. No, seriously…
November 26th, 2008 at 9:21 am
I’ve heard Heather Hurlburt go on in the same vein about replacing the IDF with a NATO force in the West Bank and I think they are entirely serious and not just trying to bullshit the Israelis. I think this is likely to be the most boneheaded foreign policy move since Iraq and I’m afraid it’s serious advice.
November 26th, 2008 at 9:40 am
I think the cabinet has to be looked at in terms of a first-term second-term game plan.
Absolutely. Given that Obama had relatively limited institutional support in the early stages of the primary, there are a lot of people with decent seniority in the campaign ranks who might not work in the administration at the same level. That’s just pragmatic: in the media downtime, we’re getting a kind of narrative lockdown on the idea that the Clinton transition was unprecedented in its suckage, so every decision made by Obama has to avoid comparisons to that.
There’s clearly a question of how a Clinton-led State fills its political-appointee ranks: on the one hand, it would be good to have less institutional voices in the second-tier posts, but on the other, you don’t want the flip-side of the John Bolton situation, where someone in a deputy position is busily making the principal look foolish.
I like the pattern I’m seeing: a coalition that cedes no one but the crazies to the opposition.
That was the thinking on Hagel-for-State, but this seems to be a more elegant way to ensure that those neocons who endorsed Obama, presumably hoping for a seat at the table, instead get the door slammed in their faces. I’m looking at you, Cakewalk Ken.
November 26th, 2008 at 9:49 am
For the time being - the next year or two, say - our attention is going to be focused on a couple of important things, primarily a responsible withdrawal from Iraq and a renewed effort in Afghanistan, which needs to be more than just an American troop surge, but the details of which are still being worked out. Maybe a diplomatic push for a peace deal in Palestine.
We just don’t have the money or capcity for much else. What’s notable to me is how much consensus there is, from the center-right to the Democratic left, on these things. Everybody from Gates through Kennedy is more or less on the same page.
That’s why I’m not sweating the fact that Obama’s chosen ability and experience and clout over progressive bona fides. He could have stocked the foreign policy posts with progressives, and for the next year or two anyway, there wouldn’t have been much of a difference.
November 26th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Chris Bowers says
Why should anybody care what Chris Bowers says? I imagine Big Tent Democrat and some Kos diarists are also unhappy about it.
November 26th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Keeping on a Bush appointee at Defense sends the opposite message: “There’s nobody in the whole Democratic Party who can be trusted around the military, so we have to keep this Bush guy. Or the terrorists will win and we’ll all be dead.”
I would be concerned about this if Gates stayed on throughout Obama’s term in office, or if his replacement was also a Republican, but merely keeping Gates in place for a year or two to complete the job he began of ending the Iraq War, and then replacing him with a Democrat when we get to a place where we can begin to think about an affirmative Obama agenda for the Pentagon and our foreign policy, shouldn’t be a problem.
November 26th, 2008 at 9:58 am
This seems like a play-it-safe set of choices which ought to ensure that he doesn’t face any difficult fights on foreign policy while he’s working on his domestic agenda.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see that things change a bit down the road (though maybe not until a second term).
November 26th, 2008 at 10:12 am
What mid-career job did Hillary Clinton have? Or Colin Powell? Or Don Rumsfeld? Maybe policy wonks fantasize that policy is made at the sub-sub cabinet level. It’s like the Mets fan who knows who the shortstop is at the AA affiliate. Doesn’t matter.
November 26th, 2008 at 10:18 am
This seems like a play-it-safe set of choices which ought to ensure that he doesn’t face any difficult fights on foreign policy while he’s working on his domestic agenda.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see that things change a bit down the road (though maybe not until a second term).
I wouldn’t be surprised to see founding memeber of the Misfits, Danzig installed as Secretary of War after a year or so. It will be interesting to see if Obama follows through on his hawkish rhetoric over Pakistan. Bush never caught bin Laden!!!
Hopefully Samantha Power gets a good spot.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Didn’t Gates basically fire some of the AF brass for pushing the F-35 a bit too much (and as I recall, even Rumsfield also canceled a proposed new Army artillery system). All of the constant preparation to avoid Pearl Harbor/Ardennes offensive/Korea and the defense of the Fulda Gap is not cheap. It’s also a few wars out of date.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Gates pushed for and supervised the incredible success of the surge. Of course Obama would want him to stay.
November 26th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Suckers.
Obama foreign policy is going to be headlined on the Daily Show as “Clusterfuck to the next war”.
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