[Peace-discuss] No change; just more criminality

[C. G. Estabrook]

[I like "the failure to appreciate the differences between campaign promises and 
policy realities" -- i.e., lie to get in and then run the same policies, which 
is just what the Obamans have done.  But here they admit it. And this from a guy 
"who headed the left-leaning [sic] national security think tank the Center for a 
New American Security." What a joke. His co-author from the State Department is 
just as bad, but I suppose his dissident views were protected by his tenure at 
the U. of Texas... --CGE]


	Diplomats' book warned of 'fiascos'
	By: Kenneth P. Vogel
	April 27, 2009 06:32 PM EST

President Obama should think long and hard before reversing the foreign policies 
of the Bush administration.

That advice comes not from Dick Cheney but from Kurt Campbell, a national 
security expert Obama nominated last week for a top diplomatic post, and James 
Steinberg, his soon-to-be boss at the State Department.

In fact, it’s one of the premises of a 2008 book co-written by Campbell, Obama’s 
new nominee to be assistant secretary of state for Asian and Pacific affairs, 
and Steinberg, the No. 2 official at the State Department.

In “Difficult Transitions; Foreign Policy Troubles at the Outset of Presidential 
Power,” published last year by the Brookings Institution, Campbell and Steinberg 
conclude that “the tendency to write off the policies of the outgoing 
administration and the failure to appreciate the differences between campaign 
promises and policy realities” are among “the leading causes of foreign policy 
fiascos,” according to a blurb on the institution’s website.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has yet to schedule confirmation hearings 
for Campbell, who headed the left-leaning national security think tank the 
Center for a New American Security, but Steinberg won Senate confirmation as 
Deputy Secretary of State in January.

Steinberg — who advised Obama during the campaign and transition on foreign 
policy issues, including the Israeli peace process and Iran — was paid $25,000 
to write the book and expects royalties from it, according to a financial 
disclosure statement on file with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. It shows 
that he earned $325,000 last year from the University of Texas, where he was 
dean of the public affairs school, plus $70,000 in consulting fees from the D.C. 
public relations firm Glover Park Group and $47,000 in honoraria from groups in 
Japan, India and the U.S.

The ethics office has yet to release Campbell’s disclosure, but one filed by his 
wife Lael Brainard, Obama’s nominee to be Treasury undersecretary for 
international affairs, shows that the couple earned $945,000 in 2008 and this 
year from two Washington-based consulting firms, Campbell & Brainard Associates 
and StratAsia, http://strat-asia.com/about the latter of which advises 
multinational companies doing business in Asia.

Brainard’s disclosure did not list clients from either firm, but Obama’s strict 
ethics policy will bar the couple from working on issues “directly and 
substantially related” to their former clients for two years.

A deputy assistant secretary of defense under former President Bill Clinton, 
Campbell also pulled in $25,000 from Lockheed Martin for one 2008 speech and 
$10,000 from Goldman Sachs for another. And he earned less than $2,500 in 
royalties last year for another book he published through Brookings called “The 
Nuclear Tipping Point.”

“Difficult Transitions” was published before Obama’s victory. While it doesn’t 
single out specific Bush policies worth keeping or delve into how Obama’s 
campaign trail foreign policy rhetoric aligns with geopolitical realities, it 
does point out that both Obama and his Republican rival John McCain distanced 
themselves from a wide range of Bush administration policies.

“Expectations have been raised that an Obama administration would bring a 
substantial departure from current policies on a whole range of issues, such as 
the treatment of detainees, climate change and the conduct of the wars in Iraq 
and Afghanistan,” Steinberg and Campbell wrote.

Obama has already parted ways with Bush’s policies on those issues and others.

A State Department spokesman declined to elaborate on the hypotheses in 
“Difficult Transitions.” And Campbell is “not doing interviews,” according to a 
spokesman for the Center for a New American Security.

Their book also proffers another provocative suggestion — that the uncertainty 
of the new administration makes it likely the 44th president will be tested 
early on the foreign policy and security fronts, possibly by terrorist attack. 
“For terrorist groups in particular, targeting the early months of a new 
administration might be particularly appealing given their interest in the 
politics of disruption as well as destruction,” the pair write

During the campaign, now-Vice President Joe Biden raised eyebrows with a similar 
yet more precise prediction.

“Mark my words,” Biden proclaimed at a Seattle fundraiser in October. “It will 
not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John 
Kennedy. ... Watch, we're going to have an international crisis, a generated 
crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

© 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC