Melvin A. Goodman: President Obama's Timid Use of the "Reset Button"
[Melvin A. Goodman is national security and intelligence columnist for Truthout. He is senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. His 42-year government career included service at the CIA, State Department, Defense Department and the US Army. His latest book is "Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA." ]
President Barack Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, will go down in history as one of America's worst presidents, squandering diplomatic, international and economic assets that were bequeathed to him. As a result of the perfidy of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, Obama inherited a great deal of low-hanging foreign policy fruit that he has been slow and even hesitant to pick.
Two losing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; policies of unilateralism and preemption, and a global war on terrorism that included torture and abuse, secret prisons and extraordinary renditions left US foreign and national security policy in a shambles and created numerous opportunities for creative diplomacy.
President Obama dramatically rejected in his inaugural speech the "false ... choice between our safety and our ideals" and subsequently vowed to press the "reset button" in those bilateral relations that the Bush administration had worsened. Ten months later, we are still waiting for the genuine use of a reset button.
At the same time, the Obama administration is copying too many aspects of the Bush administration's cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism, including blanket claims of national security to stop lawsuits; resisting orders to release photographs of torture and abuse, and threats to stop intelligence-sharing with Britain if a High Court Panel declassified intelligence documents relating to torture allegations...
... The Obama cabinet is reminiscent of the weak Clinton cabinet in 1993, which was responsible for a series of errors in foreign policy that got President Clinton off to a weak start on national security. Clinton's initial choices for secretary of state, secretary of defense, national security adviser and CIA director were inadequate, and all were replaced before Clinton's second term.
Obama's choices also appear lacking, and there is no single adviser who appears to have a strategic command of the foreign policy agenda. As a result, more power is being centralized in the White House where domestic advisers, not international ones, are dominating decision-making on Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Cuba.
President Obama could learn from Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev who resorted to "perestroika" and "glasnost" in order to reduce the Soviet military's domination of resources and allocations and thus invest in the domestic infrastructure.
The Obama administration is spending far too much time and effort on its Afghan policy, when it really needs to address the larger issues of the expansion of military power (which has not led to success vis-à-vis Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan) and the decline in economic power (growing deficits and debts).
We are spending more than the rest of the world on defense, intelligence and homeland security, with few perceptible benefits. The defense and intelligence budgets have more than doubled in the past ten years, and we have no answers for the ethnic conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and no coercive influence over the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea. It is long past time to resort to the far less expensive and far less onerous policy of diplomacy and constructive engagement.
Read entire article at Truthout
President Barack Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, will go down in history as one of America's worst presidents, squandering diplomatic, international and economic assets that were bequeathed to him. As a result of the perfidy of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, Obama inherited a great deal of low-hanging foreign policy fruit that he has been slow and even hesitant to pick.
Two losing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; policies of unilateralism and preemption, and a global war on terrorism that included torture and abuse, secret prisons and extraordinary renditions left US foreign and national security policy in a shambles and created numerous opportunities for creative diplomacy.
President Obama dramatically rejected in his inaugural speech the "false ... choice between our safety and our ideals" and subsequently vowed to press the "reset button" in those bilateral relations that the Bush administration had worsened. Ten months later, we are still waiting for the genuine use of a reset button.
At the same time, the Obama administration is copying too many aspects of the Bush administration's cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism, including blanket claims of national security to stop lawsuits; resisting orders to release photographs of torture and abuse, and threats to stop intelligence-sharing with Britain if a High Court Panel declassified intelligence documents relating to torture allegations...
... The Obama cabinet is reminiscent of the weak Clinton cabinet in 1993, which was responsible for a series of errors in foreign policy that got President Clinton off to a weak start on national security. Clinton's initial choices for secretary of state, secretary of defense, national security adviser and CIA director were inadequate, and all were replaced before Clinton's second term.
Obama's choices also appear lacking, and there is no single adviser who appears to have a strategic command of the foreign policy agenda. As a result, more power is being centralized in the White House where domestic advisers, not international ones, are dominating decision-making on Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Cuba.
President Obama could learn from Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev who resorted to "perestroika" and "glasnost" in order to reduce the Soviet military's domination of resources and allocations and thus invest in the domestic infrastructure.
The Obama administration is spending far too much time and effort on its Afghan policy, when it really needs to address the larger issues of the expansion of military power (which has not led to success vis-à-vis Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan) and the decline in economic power (growing deficits and debts).
We are spending more than the rest of the world on defense, intelligence and homeland security, with few perceptible benefits. The defense and intelligence budgets have more than doubled in the past ten years, and we have no answers for the ethnic conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and no coercive influence over the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea. It is long past time to resort to the far less expensive and far less onerous policy of diplomacy and constructive engagement.