[R-G] Liberals, Realists Set to Clash in Obama Administration

[Anthony Fenton]

U.S.:  Liberals, Realists Set to Clash in Obama Administration
Analysis by Jim Lobe*
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45454

WASHINGTON, Jan 17 (IPS) - Just as the foreign policy of U.S.  
President George W. Bush was characterised by a continuous battle for  
control between hawks led by Vice President Dick Cheney and realists  
based primarily in the State Department and intelligence community -  
and, in its last two years, the Pentagon - so the incoming  
administration may find itself split along ideological lines.

President-elect Barack Obama has succeeded in recruiting a remarkably  
broad range of foreign policy advisers, some of whom are being placed  
in senior policy-making positions, and others, particularly  
"greybeards" like former national security advisers Zbigniew  
Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, and Anthony Lake, and former Rep. Lee  
Hamilton, will likely offer their advice on a more informal basis.

That range runs from hard-core realists epitomised by Scowcroft, two  
of whose protégés, Robert Gates and Gen. James Jones, will become  
Pentagon chief and national security adviser, respectively, to liberal  
internationalists, some of whom, including Vice President Joe Biden  
and U.N. Amb.-designate Susan Rice, have expressed strongly hawkish  
views. The latter camp also includes Secretary of State-designate,  
Hillary Clinton, whose loss of the Democratic presidential nomination  
to Obama was probably due as much to her initial support of the 2003  
Iraq invasion as any other factor.

In the last several years, and particularly since the Iraq war went  
south in late 2003, the two groups have been united in rejecting the  
unilateralism and virtually exclusive reliance on the threat and use  
of military force or "hard power" that dominated Bush's first-term  
foreign policy, in particular.

Conversely, they have shared a commitment to multilateralism and the  
use of diplomacy and other forms of "soft power", at least as a first  
resort, in pursuing U.S. interests abroad, although neither one would  
shrink from the use of military power, unilaterally if necessary, if  
the provocation were deemed sufficiently serious.

Because the realists, who are predominantly Republican, and liberal  
internationalists, who are predominantly Democrats, had a common enemy  
in the aggressive nationalists and the neo-conservatives and Christian  
Right leadership that made up the Cheney-led coalition of hawks under  
Bush, their own differences have often been blurred.

Indeed, the spectrum covered by the two groups should be seen more as  
a continuum rather than as two entirely distinct worldviews; Joseph  
Nye, a Harvard professor and a senior State Department and Pentagon  
official under Bill Clinton, called early last year for a "liberal  
realist foreign policy".

Nonetheless, there are differences, and just as Bush had to decide  
which group to side with, Obama is likely to face similar choices on  
specific foreign policy issues.

Liberal internationalists, whose patron saint is former President  
Woodrow Wilson, are much more inclined than realists to believe that  
the United States is a morally "exceptional" nation and that the  
liberal-democratic principles on which its governance is based should  
be actively promoted in other countries, preferably through western- 
oriented multilateral institutions and international law. At the same  
time, some regimes, in their view, are so odious that they should be  
isolated, even removed, unilaterally if necessary.

Realists tend to be more sceptical about U.S. "exceptionalism" (even  
about the role of morality in foreign policy) and the universality of  
liberal-democratic values and the ease with which they can be  
transplanted to foreign nations and cultures. And they generally  
prefer to engage, rather than isolate, morally questionable regimes,  
if doing so would advance U.S. interests.

Their support for multilateral institutions and international law - to  
the extent that nations will actually abide by it - is focused more on  
their role in fostering and protecting traditional U.S. national  
interests, such as preserving stability in key parts of the world,  
preventing nuclear proliferation, and preserving freedom of the seas,  
at the least cost to U.S. blood and treasury, which is a special  
concern at a time of "imperial overstretch".

An obvious difference of opinion between the two groups is likely to  
arise over what to do about Darfur. While both groups will no doubt  
support strengthening U.N. peacekeeping or peace-making capabilities  
there, they are likely to part ways over the direct participation by  
the U.S. military in such an effort.

Clinton and Rice have spoken about enforcing a no-fly zone over the  
region to halt what they have called "genocide". However, Gates, Jones  
and other realists - not to mention the chairman of the Joint Chiefs  
of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen - are likely to oppose any such  
commitment on the grounds that, among other things, U.S. forces are  
already too "overstretched" and that Sudan is peripheral to core U.S.  
interests in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

Similarly, U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, where the Pentagon and Obama  
appear prepared to nearly double the existing U.S. deployment of more  
than 30,000 troops over the next six months, could provoke a serious  
source of contention.

Realists, led by the chief of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. David  
Petraeus, favour co-opting those elements of the Taliban that are  
willing to break with al Qaeda and its allies in the broader interest  
of stabilising the country. But how will liberals like Clinton, who  
stressed her commitment to women's rights during her confirmation  
hearings last week, react to a scheme that may effectively empower, at  
least at the local level, ultra-conservative militants opposed to the  
education of girls?

Similarly, concerns about the security of NATO's principal supply  
route to Afghanistan via Pakistan will likely result in strong  
pressure from the Pentagon to renew once-strong ties with the  
extremely repressive regime of Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov.  
This, too, will pose a major problem for liberal policy-makers in the  
administration.

It is notable in that connection that Biden and Clinton both opposed  
resuming military aid to Indonesia after 9/11 due to its deplorable  
human rights record in East Timor and elsewhere. The leading proponent  
of restoring the relationship was none other than then-chief of the  
U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Dennis Blair, who is now Obama's nominee  
for director of national intelligence (DNI).

The liberal-realist split is likely to be particularly acute in the  
Middle East, the same region over which the realists and the hawks  
clashed most fiercely during the Bush administration.

Like their neo-conservative cousins who also see the world through a  
moralistic prism, many liberal internationalists have tended to be  
particularly protective of Israel (if not of the Likud Party with  
which most neo-conservatives identify) in major part due to the strong  
political backing the U.S. Jewish community has historically provided  
to the Democratic Party.

Particularly since 9/11, on the other hand, realists have seen the  
Jewish state - or, more precisely, the failure to resolve its conflict  
with its Arab neighbours, and especially the Palestinians - as a major  
and growing obstacle to such urgent U.S. goals as defeating al Qaeda  
and containing Iran.

While the two sides are agreed for now that Obama must pursue more  
aggressive diplomacy on all fronts, including direct engagement with  
Iran, realists will be far more inclined to exert serious pressure on  
Israel to make major concessions for peace agreements with Syria and  
the Palestinians.

Worried about the possibility of having to fight a third war in the  
region, the realists are also likely to favour offering Tehran  
significantly more generous incentives to curb its uranium-enrichment  
programme than the liberals, some of whom believe that any enrichment  
programme - particularly one as far advanced as Iran's at the moment -  
poses an "unacceptable" existential threat to Israel.

However these conflicts play out, they are unlikely to be nearly as  
poorly managed as they were under Bush, whose intellectual  
insecurities, lack of knowledge or curiosity about the world, or even  
the process by which policy was made often resulted in victory for  
whatever side - hawks or realists - was given the last chance to make  
its case.

For example, Jones, whose job it will be to ensure that the inter- 
agency process runs smoothly and that all pertinent views reach the  
Oval Office, is reputedly a much more imposing and experienced  
bureaucratic overseer than either of Bush's national security  
advisers, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley. And more importantly,  
Obama, unlike his predecessor, is known to relish intellectual combat  
and aggressively seek out alternative views.

*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/ 
.

(END/2009)