Team of Non-Ideologues Posted by James Lamond

In order to avoid the now clichéd  "team of rivals" label, lets call Barack Obama’s foreign policy team the “team of non-ideologues."  As the foreign policy line-up was announced today we saw the main foreign policy and national security positions go to Jim Jones as National Security Advisor, Hillary Clinton at State, Susan Rice at the U.N., and Robert Gates staying on as Defense Secretary.  This team is made up of variety commanding individuals, all with differing experiences and world views.  These picks, along with Tim Geithner at Treasury and Eric Holder at Justice, may very well represent how Obama plans to govern.  That is from a logic-based, pragmatic, and responsible approach.

As Dan Froomkin says,

The foreign policy team "suggests the return of spirited policy debates to a White House that has been largely devoid of them for the last eight years.  Rather than simply hire a new brand of loyalists -- or replace one gut player with another -- Obama is making it clear that he wants his thinking challenged and wants to hear opposing views before he reaches his decisions."

For the last eight years the Bush administration has run policies based on gut feelings and ideology- resulting in the damage to the world and the economy that we see today.  The ideologues and hardliners inside the Bush administration maintained the absolute belief in the power and importance of spreading democracy, free markets, and the supremacy of America over other countries.  The absolute pursuit of these beliefs rather than addressing challenges on an individual basis with nuance and pragmatism has led to the disaster we see today.

As retired Maj. Gen. William L. Nash said:

"Open and serious debate versus ideological certitude will be a great relief to the military leaders... The joke was that when you leave a meeting, everybody is supposed to drink the Kool-Aid. In the Bush administration, you had to drink the Kool-Aid before you got to go to the meeting."

With his new foreign policy team Obama has created a team of independent minded personalities (this includes Gates who has been an independent and pragmatic voice inside the Bush administration).  Obama even said,

"I assembled this team because I am a strong believer in strong personalities and strong opinions. I believe that's how the best decisions are made. One of the dangers in a White House, based on my reading of history, is that you get wrapped up in group-think and everybody agrees with everything and there's no discussion and there are no dissenting views. So I am going to be welcoming a vigorous debate inside the White House."

There is no equivalent to the neoconservative influence that dominated Bush’s first term or the hardliners like Cheney, who continue to influence the administration’s policies. 

Essentially, this is a team of non-ideologues with different experiences and world views.  These different perceptions allow for all sides and of an arguments to be heard, and prevent any one philosophy from prevailing.  All the principals are dedicated to renewed American leadership, redeployment out of Iraq, refocusing on Afghanistan-Pakistan, a shift of U.S. resources towards diplomacy, and engagement with Iran. 

This is also the fulfillment of Obama’s promise to govern as a “post-partisan” president without the baggage of the ideological battles of earlier generations. 

Comments

[Peace]

It appears that Obama will copy from JFK when it comes to realtions with cabinet members. He, like JFK, will ask for their advice and opinions but will not always accept their reccomendations. Obama has mentioned many times that he alone sets policy and not cabinet members, this seems to be a copying of the JFK leadership model.

[Dan Kervick]

"Non-ideological" can be a useful term, which I sometimes use myself. And it might fit Jones and Gates. But I certainly don't think Clinton could be characterized as non-ideological. My worry is that she is still deeply committed to aggressive promotion of the foreign policy ideology of the Clinton administration: the strategy of permanent democratic enlargement, involving aggressive, ideologically-based intervention in the domestic affairs of other countries along with not-infrequent military "nudges". The program has promoted NATO expansion as a tool of political transformation, dangerous changes in international law, and the other ideology-based agendas for spreading the American neo-liberal way far and wide. Several accounts have reported that she was much more aggressive than Bill Clinton about intervention in Kosovo, to take one example of her ideological commitments. And she has a track record of tilting toward the use of force and threat as a Senator in the promotion of American "ideals". Of course, I doubt people on a site called "Democracy Arsenal" would have much of a problem with this particular transformational ideological agenda. But I do.

I see the Clinton pick as a mainly political decision that Obama was forced to make for the sake of party unity and the satisfaction of some of Clinton's still grousing and disgruntled supporters. He probably had no choice from a political point of view. If he hadn't found a way of bringing Clinton into the administration, then she and her email list would probably have started to run against him for the 2012 nomination almost from day one.

Unfortuantely, I fear it is a decision he may live to regret from a policy point of view.

[Zathras]

Hillary Clinton's appointment as Secretary of State is an unforced error on President-elect Obama's part.

Politically speaking, it ignores the sea change in Democratic party politics wrought by Obama's own election -- no Democratic challenger to him in 2012 will be credible with the rank and file unless he is seen to fail miserably, and if that happens having put Clinton in his Cabinet won't help. However, the major thing wrong with this appointment is that Clinton is not even close to being the best person for the job. She's failed more than once as a manager of less difficult organizations than the Department of State, has no meaningful experience with either diplomacy or foreign policy decision making, and evidently intends to inflict on her defenseless department a large part of her campaign entourage.

More important to effective foreign and national security policy making than a team of glittering big names is an orderly process for making and implementing decisions. Weak links in important positions do not contribute to such a process, nor do office holders anxious to "have their moment in the sun" or to "establish their legacy." Obama will have reason to regret having made this appointment.

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