[R-G] Obama Foreign Policy May Keep Some Bush Initiatives

[Anthony Fenton]

Obama Foreign Policy May Keep Some Bush Initiatives (Update3)

By Ken Fireman and Viola Gienger
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Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- President-elect Barack Obama is committed to a  
foreign policy of intense diplomatic engagement with allies and  
adversaries alike and an international approach to curb nuclear  
proliferation and terrorism.

He will move to implement pledges to accelerate the U.S. troop  
withdrawal from Iraq, build up American forces in Afghanistan and ask  
allies to play a bigger role in the fight against a resurgent Taliban,  
advisers say.

Obama, 47, has cast his foreign policy approach as pragmatic rather  
than ideological, focused on diplomacy and partnerships and not hog- 
tied to Iraq. He calls it a more modern strategy for the boundary- 
blind threats of the 21st century.

``To all those watching from beyond our shores, our stories are  
singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American  
leadership is at hand,'' Obama said in his victory speech in Chicago's  
Grant Park. ``To those who would tear the world down: We will defeat  
you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you.''

In a number of areas, there is likely to be continuity with the  
policies of President George W. Bush.

China, Russia

Obama has described a middle path on China much like Bush's, seeking  
expanded contacts while pressing for economic concessions. He has  
criticized Russia for supporting breakaway Georgian territories while  
eschewing confrontational measures such as expulsion from summits of  
the Group of Eight economic powers.

While Obama has promised greater engagement in the search for a Middle  
East peace, he will likely be forced to wait until both Israelis and  
Palestinians sort out internal political conflicts.

What much of the world may find surprising about Obama's foreign  
policy is that it will mark a far less dramatic shift in substance  
than many anticipate -- because Bush has moved in the same direction  
during his second term.

Analysts point out that Bush has struck a deal with North Korea to  
contain its nuclear-arms development effort, accepted the idea of a  
timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, embraced talks with  
some elements of Afghanistan's Taliban rebels and contemplated opening  
a diplomatic outpost in Iran.

Daunting Problems

``The Bush administration has, without acknowledging serious error,  
tacked away from many of the hallmarks of what it professed to believe  
in 2003 and 2004,'' when it pursued a unilateralist approach, said  
Andrew Bacevich, an international relations professor at Boston  
University. ``The change that Obama will bring is not going to be as  
great as many people imagine.''

Obama will face a daunting array of problems when he takes office Jan.  
20: the fallout from a global financial crisis, two wars, the  
persistent threat of terrorism, the nuclear aspirations of hostile and  
potentially unstable regimes, a resurgent Russia, a rising China and a  
festering conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

CIA Director Michael Hayden, in a message to agency employees this  
morning, said Obama and his advisers will ``see the full range of  
capabilities we deploy'' to counter those threats in expanded  
briefings by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell and  
other intelligence officials.

New Russian Missiles

Obama had barely been declared the winner when Russia illustrated its  
expanding role. President Dmitry Medvedev today said Russia would  
deploy new missiles in Europe to counter a U.S. shield in Poland and  
the Czech Republic ``if necessary.''

Medvedev said he would place a short-range missile system designed to  
carry conventional warheads in Russia's Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad,  
wedged between Poland and Lithuania. The Russian leader addressed  
lawmakers in his first state-of-the- nation address since succeeding  
Vladimir Putin in May.

If the challenges are high, so are the expectations of change, all  
over the world.

``The new leader of the U.S. must discount this idea, `If there is a  
problem we go in and bash them and force them to submit to us,''' said  
former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in an Oct. 22  
interview. Obama, he said, will be ``much more likely to bring about''  
such a shift than his defeated Republican rival, John McCain, would  
have.

Russian parliamentarian Sergei Markov, an ally of Prime Minister  
Vladimir Putin, voiced a similar view.

`Spoiled America'

``Obama is a rejection of the spoiled America of this century, and the  
rest of the world wants that,'' Markov said. ``If the old world order  
was Washington stamping its feet, the new world order will entail more  
cooperation with a range of countries,'' a view Obama is open to, he  
said in an interview.

If much of the world will welcome Obama's approach, others are more  
hesitant. Chinese leaders aren't expecting big changes because Obama  
buys into a U.S. consensus that China is ``a one- party system that is  
fundamentally against American interests,'' said Shen Dingli, director  
of the Center for American Studies at Shanghai's Fudan University.

Indian leaders, who enjoyed a warming relationship with the U.S. under  
Bush, may also be wary of departure from that policy. And Israeli  
leaders will watch Obama to see how far he goes to accommodate  
adversaries such as Iran.

The Iranian regime, as well as al-Qaeda leaders, may view Obama's  
emphasis on engagement and negotiation as a sign of faltering U.S.  
resolve, said Danielle Pletka, an analyst at Washington's American  
Enterprise Institute and a former staff member of the Senate Foreign  
Relations Committee.

Perception of Weakness

``What we think of as multilateralism and internationalism is  
perceived as weakness by some,'' Pletka said. ``The problem is that  
those who perceive it that way are most likely to try to take  
advantage of it.''

There is wide agreement that Obama will embody a perceptual change in  
America's face to the world -- partly because he will be the first  
black president, partly because of life experiences that include a  
Kenyan father and a boyhood spent in Indonesia, and partly because he  
isn't Bush.

``The basic difference is going to be style,'' said Edward Walker, a  
former U.S. diplomat who is now a scholar at the Washington-based  
Middle East Institute.

``Obama is a much more open person, somebody that will at least listen  
to others, will have an interest in what they have to say,'' said  
Walker, who served as assistant secretary of state for Near East  
affairs and U.S. ambassador to both Israel and Egypt under President  
Bill Clinton. ``We've gotten a reputation of never listening to  
anybody.''

Early Test

One early test for Obama, analysts said, is whether he can leverage  
his popularity abroad to win more European cooperation on Afghanistan,  
both to commit more troops and allow them to serve in the most  
dangerous parts of the country.

He certainly means to try, said Ben Rhodes, one of Obama's senior  
foreign-policy advisers. ``You'll see more from the United States on a  
set of issues, but Obama is also going to want more from our allies,''  
Rhodes said in an interview.

Rhodes said the president-elect has repeatedly made clear that ``he is  
not going to anchor our national-security policy in Iraq. What you'll  
see is what he's outlined throughout the campaign, and that is a  
reorientation of American foreign policy away from that focus.''

Obama has pledged to quicken the pace of withdrawal by pressing Iraqis  
to take on more financial and military responsibility faster. He has  
talked of pulling out most U.S. combat troops within 16 months,  
leaving behind a residual force to train Iraqi troops and conduct  
counter-terrorism missions.

``We're not going to defeat terrorist networks that operate in 80  
countries through an occupation of Iraq,'' the Illinois senator said  
in an Oct. 22 news conference.

Afghan Conflict

Attention and resources would be shifted to Afghanistan and the  
militant sanctuaries along its border with Pakistan, where Osama bin  
Laden may be lurking. Obama has said he would send at least two  
additional combat brigades, or about 7,000 soldiers, to bolster a U.S.  
force of 32,000 in Afghanistan.

The Bush administration has given its blessing to sending three new  
brigades to Afghanistan and has repeatedly asked NATO allies to  
increase their participation, with only limited success.

Obama also has said he would outlaw the use of torture and close the  
prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that critics say has stained America's  
global reputation.

``He has discussed tangible shifts on some of the core rule-of-law  
issues in the war on terror,'' Rhodes said. Such a change ``would send  
a fairly powerful signal to the world about the way in which America  
is going to prosecute the war on terror under an Obama administration.''

Forced by Failure

Rhodes agreed that the Bush administration has moved toward positions  
espoused by Obama in several areas, adding that the shift has been  
largely forced by failure.

``Events have kind of drawn them in this direction because, frankly,  
there were approaches being taken that weren't working,'' he said.

Pletka, who is critical of Bush's second-term shifts, agreed that ``on  
a number of issues we can expect a good deal of continuity.''

She said her most hopeful scenario for an Obama administration is that  
he opts for such continuity and moves quickly to dispel any  
``misperceptions'' abroad about his toughness.

Her worst-case analysis is that ``it's the second Carter  
administration,'' a rerun of a presidency in which U.S. weakness and  
irresolution ``set in motion a series of events that have seismic  
implications.''

Breaking With Bush

Bacevich sees a different problem: that Obama's policies don't  
represent a sharp enough break with Bush.

Obama remains committed to U.S. global military primacy and ``the  
proposition of a global war on terror as the proper response to  
Islamic radicalism,'' even if he thinks the central front is in  
Afghanistan rather than Iraq, said Bacevich, whose son died in Iraq.

``That's a difference in emphasis, but it doesn't seem to suggest a  
difference in strategy,'' he said. ``And that exemplifies the fact  
that even though there will be change, it won't mark a sharp break  
from the past.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Ken Fireman in Washington at kfireman1 at bloomberg.net 
; Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger at bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: November 5, 2008 11:04 EST