[Peace-discuss] Continuity or change?

[C. G. Estabrook]

    Obama's Foreign Policy: No Sharp Break From Bush
    Aides Warn Obama’s Quick Closure of Gitmo Will Be Anything But
    Obama Camp to US: Curb Your Enthusiasm

[Articles from <http://www.antiwar.com/>, complete below.  --CGE]

===

    OBAMA'S FOREIGN POLICY: NO SHARP BREAK FROM BUSH
    by Jim Lobe - November 11, 2008

While much of the world and many of his U.S. supporters are expecting a sharp 
break with his predecessor's foreign policy after President-elect Barack Obama 
takes office Jan. 20, they may be surprised by the degree of continuity between 
the two administrations.

That continuity – which would be made more concrete if, as expected, Pentagon 
chief Robert Gates is asked to remain at his post – has less to do with Obama's 
hesitation in following through on his more sweeping campaign promises than with 
the fact that President George W. Bush, has quietly – if grudgingly – moved key 
U.S. policies in directions that are largely compatible with Obama's own intentions.

Obama will no doubt announce a series of steps during or just after his 
inauguration to reaffirm to his supporters and, in the words of his victory 
speech Tuesday night, "to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, 
from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the 
forgotten corners of the world, [that] our stories are singular, but our destiny 
is shared, a new dawn of American leadership is at hand."

Those steps will be designed to contrast his commitment to multilateralism and 
diplomatic engagement with Bush's fabled unilateralism and reliance on military 
power. They will probably include an immediate and comprehensive ban on the use 
of torture and a promise to close the Guantanamo detention facility at an early 
date. [See below. --CGE]

In addition, Obama will likely move quickly to improve ties with two governments 
toward which Bush proved unremittingly hostile: Cuba, where he is expected to 
repeal Bush-imposed restrictions on the freedom of Cuban Americans to visit 
their homeland and send money to their relatives as a down payment toward 
further normalization; and Syria, where he will dispatch an ambassador to signal 
his interest both in renewing anti-terror cooperation and encouraging the 
resumption of Turkish-mediated peace talks between Damascus and Israel, if not a 
broader peace process.

At the global level, Obama is expected to pledge full U.S. participation in any 
successor regime to the Kyoto Protocol, including binding reductions of 
greenhouse gas emissions. Similarly, he may well announce his intent to gain 
Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and several 
other long-pending treaties opposed by Bush, including the UN Convention on the 
Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of 
Discrimination Against Women. He will also restore funding to another Bush 
target, the UN Population Fund.

He may even indicate a willingness to negotiate a "Bretton Woods II," as 
proposed by key U.S. allies in Europe, that would strengthen global financial 
watchdogs and allocate significantly more power to emerging markets in the Third 
World in international economic agencies long controlled by the West.

In addition to earning Obama great goodwill overseas, all of these steps will 
help dramatize the contrast between his more open and inclusive approach to the 
world and that of his predecessor, whose unilateralism and cowboy image have 
brought Washington's standing among foreign publics to an all-time low.

To be fair, however, that image – so richly earned during his first term when 
neoconservatives and other hawks ruled the roost – is somewhat outdated. 
Chastened by the Iraq war and guided step by halting step by the foreign policy 
realists, notably Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Gates, and his top 
military commanders, who have come to dominate the last two years of his 
presidency, Bush has essentially – if not explicitly – laid the groundwork for 
Obama's "new dawn," especially with respect to key crisis areas that are certain 
to figure near the top of the new president's agenda.

Despite loud protests and repeated efforts by hawks around Vice President Dick 
Cheney to deep-six the process, for example, Bush has stuck by Rice and her top 
Asia aide, Christopher Hill, in making the necessary concessions to keep the 
"Six-Party Talks" to de-nuclearize North Korea alive.

Similarly, Bush broke his own diplomatic embargo on Iran – along with Pyongyang, 
the last surviving member of the "Axis of Evil" – by sending a senior State 
Department official, Undersecretary of State William Burns, to sit down with his 
Iranian counterpart as part of a larger meeting including other permanent 
members of the UN Security Council and Germany last summer. Significantly, Burns 
will serve as the State Department's chief liaison with Obama's transition team.

The administration also appears close to announcing that it intends to set up an 
interests section in Tehran even before Obama takes office. Such a step will no 
doubt make it far less controversial for the new president to open 
comprehensive, high-level talks with Iran without conditions when he chooses to 
do so (possibly after Iran's presidential elections in June so as to avoid 
boosting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad chances of reelection).

And after effectively ignoring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for nearly seven 
years, Bush finally re-launched peace talks at Annapolis last November. While 
those talks have made little progress and now, with Israeli elections scheduled 
for February, have no hope of reaching an accord by the time Bush leaves office, 
he will bequeath, as Rice, the effort's most dogged booster, noted this weekend, 
a process that Obama can use to fulfill his promise to make a two-state solution 
an urgent priority.

Even on Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush has helped lay the groundwork for Obama's 
plans to accelerate the withdrawal of combat troops from the former and rapidly 
deploying more to the latter, which the president-elect has long argued, *unlike 
the incumbent*, constitutes the "central front in the war on terror" [i.e., 
Obama remains to the right of Bush on the war in AfPak; emphasis added. --CGE] 
By acquiescing in a still-pending accord with the Iraqi government, Bush has 
also accepted a 2012 deadline for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops – not just 
its combat forces, which Obama has pledged to withdraw by mid-2010. [The end of 
this particular Trojan War Will Not Take Place, however. --CGE]

As for Russia, whose intervention in Georgia last August brought bilateral ties 
to their lowest ebb since the end of the Cold War, Bush, like Obama, has acted 
with relative restraint, particularly compared to the urgings of Obama's 
Republican rival, Sen. John McCain. [Actually, their statements were quite 
similar. --CGE]

And while his insistence on deploying missile-defense systems in central and 
eastern Europe is clearly more provocative than Obama's cautious ambiguity on 
the subject, Bush has also moved in recent days both to address Moscow's 
concerns and lay the basis for a new accord on sharply reducing U.S. and Russian 
nuclear arsenals, something that Obama is expected to make a high priority in 
the early days.

In other areas, Obama's engagement strategy is likely to build on more positive 
achievements by Bush that have not received nearly as much attention as his 
"war-on-terror" debacles: most notably in East Asia, where, to the aggravation 
of the hawks, good ties with China have not only been preserved, but enhanced; 
India, where the new nuclear deal capped a rapidly growing strategic 
relationship; and much of Africa, where Bush's five-year-old, $15 billion AIDS 
program, strongly endorsed by Obama, is given credit not only for saving 
millions of lives, but also for making the region the most Bush-friendly by far, 
according to recent public opinion polls.  (Inter Press Service)

===

    NOT SO FAST: AIDES WARN OBAMA’S QUICK CLOSURE OF GITMO WILL BE ANYTHING BUT
    Posted November 10, 2008

Though newspapers have been reporting all day that President-elect Barack Obama 
intends to move swiftly to close the military detention facility at Guantanamo 
Bay as soon as he takes office, sending detainees to face criminal trials in the 
US, his aides are suggesting that the incoming administration isn’t close to any 
such decision.

According to the Chicago Tribune, foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough says 
Obama shares the “broad bipartisan belief that Guantanamo should be closed,” but 
that there is “absolutely no truth to reports that a decision has been made” 
about how to do that, nor is there even any process in place to make such a 
decision.

The Obama Administration will be under growing pressure to act once he takes 
office, with the ACLU planning a $500,000 advertising campaign to pressure Obama 
to close the base by executive order. But obstacles will make the move 
politically difficult.

After years of detention in questionable conditions under dubious legality, 
trials in US criminal courts are likely to struggle with legal issues. He will 
also face political opposition from representatives in the districts where such 
trials would be likely to take place. Even then, he’ll be left with the question 
of what to do with scores of innocent people being detained there. They may face 
torture if sent home, and resettling them in the US would likely be unpopular 
after years of portraying them as dire threats to homeland security.

===

    OBAMA CAMP TO U.S.: CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM
    Posted November 9, 2008

Less than a week after Tuesday’s election much of the US is still in the throes 
of Obamamania, and the widespread hope and the prospect of change are almost 
palpable. But before America goes off the deep end with expectations of a 
radically different world starting on January 20th, top Obama adviser Robert 
Gibbs has some words of caution.

“We have to remind people that we didn’t get here overnight, and we’re not going 
to get out of it overnight,” warned the would-be White House Press Secretary, 
echoing sentiments from Obama’s victory speech, during which he predicted 
“setbacks and false starts” and adding “The road ahead will be long. Our climb 
will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term.”

At the end of a long day of anticipation and with an impressive electoral 
victory, the reality behind Obama’s words may not have entirely rung true amid a 
chorus of cheering supporters massed in Chicago basking in the win. But with 
Obama’s public condemnation of the Iranian government and even his timetable in 
Iraq, the cornerstone of his primary campaign, looking dead before it starts the 
Obama camp appears to be preparing the public for what others were already 
predicting: a more popular administration, better acceptance abroad, and very 
little concrete change in the direction of America’s foreign policy.

	###