Obama and the Centre Lane of Foreign Policy

While we're mulling over the news that Robert Gates is staying on as Secretary of Defense and awaiting the announcement of the Obama "national security team" on Friday, a comment from Maria Jacinta on another thread deserves consideration:

"Obama’s foreign policy picks so far are depressing. Gen. James Jones as National Security Adviser? He backed McCain!! It’s a centre right cabinet so far. I recall a comment from Nancy Pelosi–of all people– in the NYT after the election: “The country must be governed from the middle.” Talk about capitulation. The Democrats finally have a mandate for actual change but they don’t want to use it. Govern from the center; appoint Republicans to the cabinet.

Can you imagine the Republicans governing ‘"rom the middle" if they had won? In 2001 Bush acted as though he had a landslide mandate.

Breaking News: Beyond Hillary Clinton

Today's media are likely to be dominated by the celebrity and dramatic value of the appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. All well and good for headlines and viewers, but with respect to foreign policy, almost all of this will be tangential or speculative. Two other appointments, one of which will get little coverage, deserve attention today.

The announcement with most immediate significance is Timothy Geithner, currently New York Federal Reserve Bank Chairman, as Secretary of the Treasury. Although the formula "little-known outside Wall Street" is being used to describe him, Geithner was being touted as a possible choice within days of Obama's election. He is well-respected within financial circles and won praise for his role in the bailout response to the October crisis. He is also an acolyte of Lawrence Summers, Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, further cementing the links between the Democratic Administration of the 1990s and that of 2009.

While Geithner will get attention, given the immediacy of the economic crisis and the overload of business coverage on US television, the naming of retired Marine General James Jones as National Security Advisor is likely to come in under the radar. That's an oversight, because Jones' selection is likely to be a significant as that of Clinton.

A former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Jones was a prime candidate in the first term of the Bush Administration to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was not selected, in part, because of clear differences with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on how to wage the war in Iraq and on broader development of US forces.

Jones' choice, therefore, could be seen as a reaching-out to the military officers and strategists who were close to being ostracised by Rumsfeld and his civilian masterminds. The General should work well with the current Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, whom I think will stay on with Obama for at least the first months of 2009, and he is of course familiar with General David Petraeus, who is now heading US Central Command with oversight of the battles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That, however, raises an interesting question. I think Jones is the only military officer to serve as National Security Advisor, apart from Colin Powell in the last months of the Reagan Administration. Given Obama's red-meat talk on fighting the fight in Afghanistan, can we expect a hard power emphasis coming out of the National Security Council?

Certainly, there are signals that Jones --- despite the lack of public attention to his selection --- will be more of a policy player in the Obama White House than Condi Rice was in the Bush Administration from 2001 to 2005. As sources told the Washington Post, "Obama is considering expanding the scope of the job to give the adviser the kind of authority once wielded by powerful figures such as Henry A. Kissinger."