Transitional Rumors, International Omens

The big buzz about Obama's foreign policy is that Hillary Clinton is going to be Obama's secretary of state. It seems like a brilliant political move - something you'd expect from a guy who's read Team of Rivals. However, I question the wisdom of such a decision.

Obama needs to be heading into the real world, 2009, not cleaning up old grudges from 2008. Of course Obama, as a politician, is going to want to consolidate his support and prevent an internal struggle that one would expect from a big-tent political party like the Democrats. However, American foreign policy is already losing attention to the economy and it cannot afford to lose any more attention to domestic political maneuvering. To be frank, Obama's foreign policy is not going to work itself out. Once the soft power buzz of his own election wears off (and it will not be long), the President will need to attempt to help keep old allies on board, warm relations with former friends, and carefully engage rivals and enemies. Thanks to American unipolarity, the last two administrations have relied on force and the absence of balancing rivals to assert American diplomatic objectives. America's economic stability contributed to these ambitious foreign policies. With a general decline in relative American power (due more to the rise of others ) and the potential for economic disaster at home, the US will have its work cut out for it abroad.

Managing the complex negotiations to come - and all their attendant trade-offs, treaties, and concessions - will require an exceptional secretary of state. While many foreign leaders respect and admire Obama, once they begin interacting with him at the negotiating table questions of national interest will take precedence. Hillary Clinton is not entirely unqualified to be secretary of state. But she is by far not the most qualified, and claims that her experience as first lady will offer some unique advantage are mostly irrelevant. Firstly, the US already has the soft power namedropping advantage - his name is Barack Obama. Secondly, the first lady functions in a PR role, not as a major negotiator and her friendliness with the leaders of the '90s is not pertinent to today's leadership. Whatever personal connections she formed then, many are with leaders out of office now, or who never had to have Mrs. Clinton tell them anything they didn't want to hear. Memories of the good times will quickly fade when those countries national security and economic concerns go on the line. These personal connections also fail to address the secretary of state's biggest challenge - working with states like Iran, Syria, and North Korea that the US has previously shunned diplomatically.

As for secretary of defense, word is that Robert Gates will be held on for the transition. It's a good call and I hope that those rumors are true. Gates has done a lot to turn around American defense strategy, and given that Obama will be more than busy enough during the transition, it would be good to keep a competent, relatively strategically compatible cabinet member managing things to minimize disruption to American defense policy and distraction from the economic agenda.

Elsewhere, I suspect the Obama administration is keeping a close eye on what's happening in the DRC and Rwanda. The situation is already ugly and may be spiralling further out of control, as neighboring countries volunteer deploying their own "peacekeeping" forces in a scene reminiscent of foreign interventions of previous decades. Obama (not to mention his staff) has said a lot about humanitarian intervention. Given that a humanitarian operation in the Congo is more plausible from an international perspective (no great power like China looming over, and stronger, broadly supported UN presence), it may be the site of this administration's first big humanitarian intervention rather than Darfur.

Other places to watch out for - North Korea. China is taking Kim's disappearing act very seriously, and regime change could drastically alter US plans for the region. From Pakistan, we have the usual bad news and then the (seemingly) unusual bad news. It's worth remembering that the Iranians dislike the Sunni fundamentalist Taliban about as much as we do, and cooperating in stabilizing the region could be one of the fruits of a truly grand (though by no means assured) bargain with Tehran.

Also, this bit of Hayden's assessment of al Qaeda is interesting. Osama is cut off from regular AQ operations and focused more on his own survival - good. But what this should tell us is that we should not prioritize killing or capturing him over the broader effort against al Qaeda. One of the reasons why terrorism cannot be treated purely as a law enforcement issue is that AQ's organizational structure is complex and flexible enough to endure disruptions to its leadership. If we have to go into Pakistan guns blazing to take out someone already out of the organizational loop, we are probably going to create a lot more anti-American Pakistanis without necessarily severely disrupting AQ's ability to conduct a retaliatory attack. This isn't to say getting OBL isn't important, it's just an example of how we need to balance political objectives in the wider strategic context. An attitude that sees killing OBL as the "game over" in the fight against AQ will be disappointing at best and counterproductive at worst.

On another note, congratulations to General Ann Dunwoody, America's first female four-star general.