Foreign Policy In Focus compares Obama’s and Clinton’s foreign policy teams.
Obama advisors like Joseph Cirincione have emphasized a policy toward Iraq based on containment and engagement and have downplayed the supposed threat from Iran. Clinton advisor Holbrooke, meanwhile, insists that “the Iranians are an enormous threat to the United States,” the country is “the most pressing problem nation,” and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is like Hitler.
…it may be significant that Senator Clinton’s foreign policy advisors, many of whom are veterans of her husband’s administration, were virtually all strong supporters of President George W. Bush’s call for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. By contrast, almost every one of Senator Obama’s foreign policy team was opposed to a U.S. invasion.
(Here’s a link to a similar piece on Huff post.)
Zunes, the author of the FPIF post, also wrote criticizing Obama’s foreign policy positions, which shows a politician who has some progressive ideas on foreign policy, but has refused to stand up for them consistently. But Clinton’s record is significantly worse, because she is consistent. Her approach to foreign policy, going back to her husband’s administration, has been steadily hawkish and militaristic, and she has a Bush-lite hostility to international law. I’ve seen some Clinton supporters suggest she might be a “stealth dove”; that’s wistful thinking.
No one can predict the future with certainty. But if their records and advisers are any indication, Clinton’s foreign policy will be more militaristic and more belligerent than Obama’s. That will translate into thousands or tens of thousands more needless deaths, both of US soldiers and of the citizens of whatever other countries we bomb and invade. That alone, for me, overwhelms all of the reasons I might prefer Clinton over Obama as a candidate.
That said, Clinton did recently make a significant move to the left on one foreign policy issue.
Last week, The Nation posted an article criticizing Obama’s position on mercenaries in Iraq:
A senior foreign policy adviser to leading Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has told The Nation that if elected Obama will not “rule out” using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq. The adviser also said that Obama does not plan to sign on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of these forces in US war zones by January 2009, when a new President will be sworn in. Obama’s campaign says that instead he will focus on bringing accountability to these forces while increasing funding for the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the agency that employs Blackwater and other private security contractors. (Hillary Clinton’s staff did not respond to repeated requests for an interview or a statement on this issue.) […]
The US Embassy in Iraq is slated to become the largest embassy in world history. […] Obama’s proposed increase in funding to the diplomatic security division would ostensibly pave the way for a protective force composed entirely of US government personnel, but the process of building that force would likely take a long time.
The day after The Nation posted the article on their website, Clinton announced that she was co-sponsoring legislation to ban the use of private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Nation correctly points out that Clinton’s sudden advocacy of a ban is a political ploy — the bill (S. 2398 — pdf link) was written and proposed by Bernie Sanders back in November, yet Clinton only decided to co-sponsor it now, the day after Obama is prominently criticized on this issue. Windows aren’t this transparent.
Obama supporters argue, probably correctly, that before this week Obama has shown more interest than Clinton in addressing the mercenary problem. To which I say: What have you done for us lately?
So what if Clinton is acting like a cynical hypocrite? So do all successful politicians, Obama included. All else held equal, I prefer to vote for the cynical hypocrite who takes a stronger position on private contractors in Iraq. (But all else isn’t equal, which is why I’m still planning to vote for Obama.)
If elected, Clinton won’t do what this bill calls for — which is replacing “at least 48,000” private contractors in Iraq in six months. We don’t have an additional 48,000 trained security personnel, and I don’t know of any plausible plan to recruit and train them in six months. But that doesn’t negate the importance of Clinton staking out this position. Even if Clinton won’t come through with a total ban, the position she’s staked out will increase the pressure on her, if she becomes President, to reign in the private contractors more than she would otherwise; and that she’s forced Obama to defend his position puts similar (but lesser) pressure on Obama, if he wins. Furthermore, if the candidates have to compete with each other by trying to out-left each other on foreign policy issues, then that’s good.
So unlike some other Obama supporters I’ve read, I give credit to Clinton for her sudden support of banning mercenaries.
So if the U.S. removes private security forces from Iraq, how do you propose to replace them?
The commentary you reference towards Iran, engage-and-contain, was summarized as:
The contain-and-engage strategy offers the best chance of testing Iran’s interest in trading away any future nuclear-weapons capability for present security and economic benefits that would accrue to the vast majority of the Iranian people.
This will work if, and only if, the Iranian regime agrees with us that the security and economic benefits that we would offer offset the attainment of atomic weapons. Consider that in another part of the world we have a regime that would rather see it’s populace eat grass and starve to death rather than give up atomic weapons. I personally suspect that Iran is not so much interested in having the West provide any guarantees or security for it, and I also suspect that their desire to obtain atomic weapons is not to secure their borders but to expand them and to commit genocide in what is presently Israel. Finally, I don’t think that the desires of the majority of Iranian subjects is uppermost in the decision making process of the Iranian theocracy.
Basically, this policy presumes that Iran desires to buy that which we wish to sell. I’m not at all persuaded that this is true.
Ron, just to clarify where you’re coming from, didn’t you support invading Iraq? Or am I misremembering?
I don’t believe I was blogging here when the invasion happened. I actually wasn’t blogging much at all back then.
There were 16 reasons given to justify the invasion. Saddam Hussein had defied numerous sanctions, etc., and had tossed the U.N. inspectors out of his country. He’d also treated the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs as if they were so many insects (literally, in the case of the Kurds, spraying them with nerve poison). He did all that he could to block and obscure any information that we had regarding the status of his WMD program and refused to be accountable for that. What income he did manage within the sanctions (and around them) was withheld from his subjects; rather than ensuring that it went for food and medicine, he let them starve and sicken and die and spent it on a military buildup (and personal glorification) well beyond any self-defense needs that he had. Iran and Kuwait will be only too glad to tell you what he could be counted on doing with it given a free hand. He also spent funds on encouraging terrorism in Israel by funding the families of homicidal bombers and other terroristic murderers that died while killing.
Getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a good thing. The policies that were followed during the subsequent occupation were neither well-thought out nor well executed. President Bush’s loyalties to his staff kept him from changing strategies – and the people executing them – as quickly as he should have. But this is no new thing in war. Far more people have died from command and political mistakes in other wars than have died in this one. That’s not good, but it’s not unexpected. Peace has never been done perfectly, and neither has war. Mistakes will be made and people will die from them. It’s going to happen in the next war, too.
The present policies were being called for on the milblogs for at least a year before they were finally put into place. At the time, of course, when I would speak to anti-Administration folks they scoffed, claimed that it was simply another dodge for American corporations and their political lackeys to enrich themselves, and that by definition nothing that came out of the Bush Administration could actually work. They were more interested in discrediting the Bush Administration than actually looking at and thinking about what was being proposed. IIRC, Sens. Clinton and Obama were both guilty of that.
But the new policies are working, and are actually achieving the objective of providing the security necessary for the civilian government of Iraq to organize it’s military and police forces to take over from the Coalition forces and for the civilian government to come to the basic agreements needed to effectively run the country. Most of the checkpoints for the latter that were set by Congress have been achieved. I am of the opinion that the rest of those checkpoints and the overall objective will be achieved in a reasonable time frame, which I personally consider to be about 3 or 4 years. This government cannot rule past 2009, they’ll have to call elections by then, and there will be a change. Sunnis will take a much more active part in the next set of elections and the government will be even more representative than it is now. And there should be more power and authority delegated to the regional governments, making it much more difficult for a strongman dictator to take over (which is one of the main reasons why WE adopted Federalism).
Will more American servicemen and servicewomen die? Yes. Will more Iraqi citizens die? Yes. How many more Iraqi citizens will die if we just up and pull out? A lot more than if we stay until the job is finished, in my opinion. And if you think that the estimation of America is internationally low now, wait to see what it would be if we pulled out before the job is done. Frankly, approval of a particular course of action by countries like Russia and China and Saudi Arabia and Syria and Iran to me is proof that said course of action is precisely what we should NOT do.
Yes, but you did exist back then. :-) At the time, was your position on invading Iraq closer to Clinton’s or Obama’s? And do you think you were wrong, now that you have the benefit of hindsight?
I was not paying all that much attention to Sen. Clinton’s position at that time, and now-Sen. Obama was State Sen. Obama back then and I didn’t give a $hit what he said about it. If Sen. Clinton was for it and State Sen. Obama was against it, then I would have to say I was closer to Sen. Clinton’s position.
But I do remember being very apprehensive about it. After the 1st Gulf War, the question came up as to why we didn’t go in and clean Saddam out. There was a lot of opposition to removing a despot from the other despotic regimes in the region. I guess they were afraid it would set a bad precedent. There were also, more quietly, comments from some of our State Department and military officers to the effect of “So we go in and get rid of him? Then what? It’s not like Thomas Jefferson is waiting to take over.” I was hoping that this advice was going to be listened to. It wasn’t. So while the military invasion went far better than anyone expected (I thought we’d lose 10,000 American soldiers just on the advance to Baghdad), the occupation was flubbed – not militarily, but from a policy viewpoint. And that cost lives on all sides.
But things are looking up. Unless Clinton or Obama become President AND decide to actually keep their campaign promises. That’ll screw it up, IMNSHO. And here we are. So – if the U.S. removes private security forces from Iraq, how do you propose to replace them?
Ron, I think security should be provided by Federal government employees. The private security forces should be gradually replaced with US military (a process I suspect will take over six months).
This will require a significant drawdown of the total number of US forces in Iraq, but I consider that a feature, not a bug.
Ron, I think security should be provided by Federal government employees. The private security forces should be gradually replaced with US military (a process I suspect will take over six months).
As an overall philosophical point, I prefer to privatize functions as much as possible and utilize government employees as little as possible. That has the added effect of reducing the overall number of governmental employees and the size of the government in general, as well as decreasing the amount of money the government controls. I consider THAT a feature, not a bug.
OTOH, some jobs you can’t farm out. There apparently have been some excesses. I’d prefer to see if the excesses can’t be controlled through proper management before we resort to using government employees to do the job.
This will require a significant drawdown of the total number of US forces in Iraq, but I consider that a feature, not a bug.
What do you think the effect of significantly drawing down the total number of US forces in Iraq would have?
BTW, I posted paragraph 1 of post 3, and then added the rest. I suspect post 4 was in response to my initial post 3, not my extensive edit thereof. Am I correct?
If, and only if, you can show where these private employees will have accountability to laws, I might consider this. Until then, IMO, this is about the worst thing that can happen for the US and for the world. Based on what’s been happening, I don’t think that’s likely, and I think the only way we can start earning back the trust of the rest of the world is to stop using lawlessness to “win.”
I agree that accountability to law is of the greatest importance. Overall, I think that having the government hire private corporations to perform it’s functions is the best solution. For example, road building and maintaining is a governmental function. But the Federal government hires private contractors for the most part, it does not maintain a huge workforce of government employees to build and maintain the Interstate system. OTOH, we do not hire private contractors to be our ambassadors.
Whether that’s the best solution here is certainly debatable. I’m not up to speed on the exact nature of the abuses that these contractors are accused of. I know that I’ve heard that they’ve shot and killed people. In and of itself, in the environment they are operating in and given the jobs they are doing, that’s not surprising. The question is whether or not they should have done so; whether they exceeded their authority or their protocols. I don’t want any actual misdeeds on their part hidden, and I don’t want proper action on their part distorted into misdeeds in order to support someone’s political agenda. Then, finally, as you say they should be accountable. I am open to being persuaded that this is an area where my default assumption does not necessarily apply, but I want to be confident that what I’m told are facts, not allegations.
Consider that in another part of the world we have a regime that would rather see it’s populace eat grass and starve to death rather than give up atomic weapons.
Are you actually talking about North Korea? Their admittedly racist and evil government lived in fear of US invasion. Iran also has problems in this area, but we could always stop talking like we want to attack them again and see what happens.
See also here.
(I should probably spell out that the most powerful nation Earth has ever known was, and technically still is, at war with North Korea. See research claims here.)
I know that the North Korean regime claims that this is their rationale for damn near destroying their economy and half of their subjects to get nuclear weapons. They also claim that Kim Il Jung scored something like 10 holes in one the first time he played golf. I’m surprised they haven’t claimed that Elvis is alive and running a kimchee joint in Pyongyang. I think their history with Japan and China and their paranoia with South Korea drives their actions a lot more than anything that they legitimately have reason to think we’ll do. We’re a little busy elsewhere.
I’ve just waved a magic wand and put you in charge of the North Korean government. You may not change the form of the government. You do know, magically, that no nation will attack you without the approval of the US. Do you want nukes? I have to say that if you answer no I will fear for your sanity.
Iraq: A Hopeless Cause
It has been far to long and I am sick and tired of our country fighting a war we don’t need. With all the problems in our country, why are we concerning ourselves more with others. It has been 4 1/2 years too long and we need to take action NOW!!!! The Bush Administration needs to take a closer look at their Bible, “remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:5) While America has been paying attention to every other country, the U.S. has been experiencing economic problems, unemployment, a stalled housing market, and a growing deficit. Every day we fight this war all of those problems listed worsen, and as they worsen our country fails it’s citizens more and more. If we don’t end this war now it will never end. The world is moving to fast for us to waste time on meaningless conflicts.
If I can’t change the form of government I don’t want the job.
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