Obama and Israel/Palestine: The Significant One-Liner

It is only one sentence, tucked away at the bottom of a story in the Washington Post on a completely different topic, a phone call from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Barack Obama. It is only one sentence, but it is far more important than any controversy over the selection of Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel.

The story notes that the statement of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal that he is ready to talk to Obama with "an open mind" and that the election of an African-American President is a "big change". It then gives the response from Obama foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough:

"President-elect Obama said throughout the campaign that he will only talk with Hamas if it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel's right to exist and agrees to abide by past agreements."

That position is no different from the one taken by the Bush Administration. Indeed, it is no different from the American position from 2006 when Hamas rose to power in the Gaza Strip.

In May of this year, I listened to another Democratic foreign policy specialist predict that a President Obama, soon after he entered office, would shift American policy and recognise Hamas as a legitimate actor in the Middle East peace process.

That exchange is now a distant --- possibly obsolete --- memory.

Great Election 2008 Moments: Joe Biden's Gesture to the Disabled

Just found out about this. Campaigning in Missouri, Vice Presidential candidate Biden wanted to give a name-check to State Senator Chuck Graham. Only one problem: Graham has to use a wheelchair.

[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=C2mzbuRgnI4[/youtube]

Obama, His Chief of Staff, and the Middle East (Part 2)

The item on Barack Obama's selection of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff has sparked a good deal of discussion. Some readers have noted the welcoming of Emanuel's appointment by Israeli media, in particular the headline in Ma'ariv "Our Man in the White House".

I cannot find an English translation of the Ma'ariv story, but a reader has pointed me to the summary in Al Jazeera magazine. While noting from the outset that Al Jazeera is likely to have a far different perspective from most of the Israeli media, it does offer some interesting quotes. The most striking comes from Emanuel's father in Ma'ariv, 'Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House.'

I'm still not convinced that Emanuel's appointment is that significant for the Obama Administration's Middle East policy. Few Presidents have taken foreign policy advice from their Chiefs of Staff, and I don't sense that Obama is going to prefer Emanuel to, say, the Secretary of State or National Security Advisor.

It's striking, though, how much play this story is getting in the Middle Eastern press (though, interestingly, the English-language Jerusalem Post was much more muted, merely recycling the quotes from Ma'ariv) and how non-existent the Israel-Palestine angle is in the US and British media's coverage of Emanuel's appointment One has to wonder if the Obama team realise that the issue is so charged that a tangential appointment causes consternation throughout Middle Eastern communities and, consequently, how expectations --- positive and negative --- are already being formed.

Who Will Be Advising Obama on Foreign Policy?

Our colleague David Milne of the University of East Anglia has an excellent opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times asking, "Should Obama be relying on academics for advice on foreign policy?"

Obama's foreign policy picks

Presidential campaigns are generally discouraging for foreign policy intellectuals. Not only do the candidates pander in folksy vernacular to hockey moms and Joe Six Packs, but the clever ones favored by university professors often fare badly on election day.

The cerebral Adlai Stevenson, for instance, was trounced by former Gen. Dwight Eisenhower -- twice. When an avid Stevenson supporter gushed that the Illinois governor was certain to "get the vote of every thinking man in the U.S.," Stevenson replied, "Thank you, but I need a majority to win."

The anti-intellectual strain among American voters has not gone away in the years since then. Consider how Al Gore's professorial debating style turned off voters in 2000 and John Kerry's fluency in French aided George Bush's 2004 reelection campaign.

But when the race is over, the populism of the campaign gives way to something quite different. As soon as the transition begins, presidents-elect invariably turn to academics for foreign policy inspiration. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson turned to McGeorge Bundy of Harvard and Walt Rostow of MIT for their insights on international relations. Richard Nixon landed arch-realist Henry Kissinger from Harvard and accorded him unprecedented responsibilities as national security advisor. Jimmy Carter brought in Zbigniew Brzezinski from Columbia to serve as his national security advisor. George W. Bush hired Condoleezza Rice from Stanford and Paul Wolfowitz from Johns Hopkins, and both have made their marks on world affairs.

Hiring hotshot academics from the nation's top universities is a peculiarly American practice. In no other nation on Earth do elected leaders take political scientists so seriously. For better or worse, British prime ministers are unlikely to look to Oxford or Cambridge for diplomatic inspiration. The French talk an intellectual game, but the Grandes Ecoles produce bureaucrats, not grand strategists.


So which academics are likely to be hovering close to their cellphones during the next few weeks? Although she resigned from the Obama campaign in March 2008 for describing Hillary Rodham Clinton as "a monster," Harvard's Samantha Power looks a good bet for a high-level position. Power made her name with the Pulitzer Prize-winning "A Problem from Hell," a powerful indictment of the West's inability to prevent genocide through the 20th century. A self-described "humanitarian hawk," Power believes that U.S. foreign policy must be driven by a moral impulse, beginning with a strong response to ongoing ethnic cleansing in Darfur.

Princeton professor G. John Ikenberry is another potential appointee. Ikenberry describes his big idea as "liberal order building." He believes that America must retain its position of "liberal hegemony" through adherence to a "loose rule-based international order." In a nutshell, Ikenberry's message is that Washington must revert to the farsighted diplomacy of alliance- and institution-building practiced by Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

There are many other academics who have advised the Obama campaign and might also figure in his administration. These include Sarah Sewell, a human rights specialist from Harvard who collaborated with Gen. David H. Petraeus in rewriting the Army and Marine counterinsurgency field guide; Susan E. Rice, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served as President Clinton's assistant secretary of State for African affairs; and Anthony Lake, a Georgetown professor who served as Clinton's national security advisor. All three have sound academic credentials and substantial experience.

The good news is that Barack Obama's intellectuals are fine scholars who have produced some thought-provoking books and articles on the best way to deploy American power. The bad news is that Walt Rostow and Paul Wolfowitz were also fine scholars who had produced interesting books and articles on the best way to deploy American power.

So how might this new generation of foreign policy thinkers avoid the mistakes made by their predecessors?

Well, one problem has arisen in cases in which the academic in question has a cherished "theory" to test, and therefore misreads evidence to suit intellectual preconceptions. Through the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, for instance, Rostow believed that the thesis presented in his 1960 book, "The Stages of Economic Growth" -- that all nations are driven by economic self-interest in peace and war -- rendered North Vietnam's infrastructure critically vulnerable to American bombing. "Ho Chi Minh has an industrial complex to protect," he explained. "He is no longer a guerrilla fighter with nothing to lose."

But Rostow was wrong. North Vietnam's leadership was willing to absorb serious damage to further the overarching goal of reunification. Rostow failed to appreciate the power of nationalist ideology.

Similarly, Wolfowitz theorized throughout the 1990s that liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein would lead to the eventual democratization of the Middle East, a region better known for its authoritarian regimes than for participatory politics. It is perhaps too early to declare that the thesis was entirely wrong. But the last five years have not been encouraging.

Power's and Ikenberry's ideas are thankfully less ambitious in scope than those of Rostow and Wolfowitz. Both believe in multilateral diplomacy and in the efficacy of speaking with one's enemies, and both favor nuance over black-white solutions. So is there anything to worry about?

Well, maybe. Power's call to arms in Darfur is laudable, but only as long as the overstretched U.S. military does not assume the preponderant burden in confronting the Sudanese Arab militias. The Clinton administration burst with moral purpose when it arrived in the White House. It took a well-intentioned but disastrous intervention in Somalia to denude Clinton's foreign policy of its altruistic core, leading to indecision and drift further down the line.

Ikenberry's belief in strengthening "liberal" institutions has led him to endorse the proposal that the U.N. Security Council should add six new members to make it more representative of world opinion. To streamline decision-making, Ikenberry further supports the abolition of veto rights in favor of a simple three-quarter "supermajority" rule.

Making the United Nations more democratic and effective is desirable. But as Harvard's Niall Ferguson has pointed out, giving up American power at that much-maligned institution has its own perils. Truman built institutions multilaterally, but he was careful to ensure that NATO and the Marshall Plan served America's national interest first and foremost. It is doubtful that Ikenberry's proposal passes that test.

One historical parallel may be instructive. Few presidents have mined the elite academy more than Kennedy. But Kennedy's foreign policy instincts often were superior to those of his ivory tower hires. His caution on Vietnam, for example, made him far more prescient than either Bundy or Rostow. Pragmatic, well-schooled politicians often have a feel for what will fly that surpasses the most brilliant theorists.

Obama's principled opposition to the 2003 Iraq war suggests that he too may possess diplomatic instincts superior to those around him. So, although there are clear benefits to be gained from consulting with social scientists, Obama will do well to follow his own counsel. The making of foreign policy requires a cognitive flexibility that too often eludes academics with theories to prove.

Russia to Obama: Ball's In Your Court

In a nationally televised address on Wednesday, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev greeted the President-elect with the message that, if the Obama Administration proceeded with the development of missile defence sites in eastern Europe, the Russians would deploy short-range missiles in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania.

The US and British media framed Medvedev's statement as a "brisk warning", "a warning shot", and "chilling words". The New York Times tut-tutted, "Mr. Medvedev and his power-broker-mentor Mr. [Vladimir] Putin seem to be more interested in talking tough and drawing lines in the sand than in exploring Mr. Obama’s intentions."

David Clark, who heads the Russia Foundation thinktank, defined the headlines: "The missile deployment is all of a piece with Russia planting its flag in the Arctic and [former president Vladimir] Putin going hunting bare-chested in Siberia, to, at the other end of the spectrum, active military operations in the Caucasus."

The reaction, whether in panicked headlines or calmer analysis, is incomplete to the point of being unhelpful. For the Russian leadership was not reacting to Obama's plans but to those of his predecessor. A quick reminder: it's the Bush Administration that had been putting the challenge with its pursuit of the missile defence bases, manned by American troops, in Poland and Czechoslovakia. This, in turn, has been part of a wider political-military initiative, including American attempts to get Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. Bush and his advisors, however, left Obama with the burden of a half-completed project. The bases have not yet been established, and the attempt at NATO expansion collapsed spectacularly with the Russian-Georgian conflict in August.

So Moscow, far from facing an American fait accompli, has a window for a counter-move. Medvedev and Putin could have hung back, waiting for a signal from the President-elect. Instead, possibly judging that the Bush Administration in its last days would press ahead with the base plan, possibly judging that Obama isn't clear on his own position, the Russians have chosen to press the issue.

It's a logical step which deserves a more considered analysis than the New York Times' demand that "they stop trying to bully their own people — and everyone else". The Washington Post's simplistic exposition that "Moscow Alarms East More Than West" , with its undertone of sensible New Europe, empty-headed Old Europe, does not get to grips with the US challenge to Russia in its former sphere of influence and, more specifically, the summer shake-up caused by Georgia's ill-fated challenge to Moscow.

Indeed, Russia could exploit this week's revelations that Georgia used far more cluster bombs in South Ossetia than was previously thought. It could note that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is facing street protests challenging his rule. Most importantly, it could make its latest move with the knowledge that the US Government, far from being on the front foot in its global ambitions, will be facing immediate economic challenges.

In that context, it was telling that there was no reaction from President Bush to the Medvedev speech; the White House spokesman merely offered the non sequitur, ""We have made it clear that missile defense is designed to protect us all from rogue states."

What was even more telling, however, was President-elect Obama's response to this first foreign-policy challenge. How many references to Russia in his 19-minute press conference yesterday? None.