Obama takes control of US Foreign Policy
I noted for months that John Edwards - who’d been an economic populist for several years - got his message usurped as first Obama then Clinton, then even John McCain started adopting more populist rhetoric.
But credit is due Barack Obama for an even more amazing transformation. He drew fire from McCain and other Republicans for:
(a) sending drones into Pakistan to kill Al Qaida’s leaders;
(b) saying the US should send more troops to Afghanistan, to defeat the Taliban and its Al Qaida allies; and
(c) saying we should talk directly with government officials in Iran.
Yet in all three cases, the Bush administration has eventually come around to adopt Obama’s plans. It’s almost like Bush was so stuck with following Cheney’s foreign policy approaches that he got excited when someone with better ideas came along that he rushed to embrace them faster than a bunny in heat.
It’s a welcome change but bizarre to see. An opposition candidate actually guiding Bush administration policy.
If this continues, Bush will be announcing a troop withdrawal plan from Iraq within the next ten weeks.
July 17th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Thanks for the observation. I wonder if anyone else has seen this trend. Now Bush is sending diplomats to Iran for the first time since 1979… I repeat 1979. I only hope it isn’t an image over content thing. Bush is so consistent regarding image over content that he could just use these actions to claim they failed (since he underfunded or ignored the results) to justify his true agenda.
July 17th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Can you say “turn on a dime”? Only after Obama had left them sitting staring at their navels did McCain’s senior foreign policy advisors, Randy Scheunemann and Kori Schake pick their collective heads up from Iraq and look up to see Kabul burning. They never would have changed their original position on Afghanistan if it wasn’t for it appearing that Obama was the candidate who actually was listening to the senior military officers. The Generals have been saying for several months that Iraq was looking more and more stable while Afghanistan was going wobbly.
As soon as Bill Burns returns from the G5+1 discussions with the Iranians and says there are benefits in continuing to negotiate over nuclear issues, McCain and his foreign policy team will be spouting Obama’s lines.
Obama has now taken a commanding lead on foreign policy and national security issues because he’s made a common sense assessment of the situation and exercised good judgment. McCain, Scheuenemann and Schake are forced to play catch-up and are reduced to saying essentially “me too but even more than him”. I just hope McCain doesn’t have a “Jerry Ford” moment in the debates. For someone who was supposed to have the hammer on foreign policy this campaign has become a joke for McCain. McCain may be as bad a candidate as Dole was in ‘96.
July 19th, 2008 at 6:05 am
In the 1950s, in the wake of Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” plan, Pakistan obtained a 125 megawatt heavy-water reactor from Canada. After India’s first atomic test in May 1974, Pakistan immediately sought to catch up by attempting to purchase a reprocessing plant from France. After France declined due to U.S. resistance, Pakistan began to assemble a uranium enrichment plant via materials from the black market and technology smuggled through A.Q. Khan. In 1976 and 1977, two amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act were passed, prohibiting American aid to countries pursuing either reprocessing or enrichment capabilities for nuclear weapons programs.
These two, the Symington and Glenn Amendments, were passed in response to Pakistan’s efforts to achieve nuclear weapons capability; but to little avail. Washington’s cool relations with Islamabad soon improved. During the Reagan administration, the US turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear weapon’s program. In return for Pakistan’s cooperation and assistance in the mujahideen’s war against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Reagan administration awarded Pakistan with