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By Lachlan Carmichael, Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON, D.C.: US President-elect Barack Obama struck both dovish
and hawkish notes Monday when he unveiled a star-studded and
hard-nosed national security team that analysts call pragmatic and
centrist.
Obama has got off to a good start, analysts
said, by naming Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, General James
Jones as national security advisor, Robert Gates as defense
secretary and Susan Rice as ambassador to the United Nations.
But it remains to be seen how well they will gel
as a team and how closely they will toe the Obama foreign policy
line, they added.
“On paper they have all the necessary
attributes: the pragmatism, the experience, the smarts,” according
to Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to both Republican and
Democratic secretaries of state.
“I think what you’ll see is a smart balance
between the limitations of American power and its advantages,”
Miller told Agence France-Presse. “Retrenchment is not so bad, if
in picking your spots, you don’t overreach.”
So, citing information from his contacts, he
expected the Obama team to abandon Bush’s ideas of overthrowing
dictatorships but retain the notion that pre-emptive military action
may at times be required to defend US interests.
He also expected it to promote soft power—the
use of economic, diplomatic and cultural clout to influence the
world rather than brute military force—and be ready to engage US
enemies “in tough and pragmatic negotiations.”
During the campaign, Obama spoke of engaging
with Iran, North Korea and Cuba.
In unveiling his team in Chicago, Obama also
sent a clear signal to US foes that his well-known opposition to the
Iraq war would not mean he would hesitate to commit military force
if US interests were threatened.
“To ensure prosperity here at home and peace
abroad, we all share the belief we have to maintain the strongest
military on the planet,” Obama said.
Analysts took this in stride.
Obama “demonstrated that he is not naive, and
understood that you have to exercise power to keep the world
peaceful or stabilize it,” said George Perkovich, a top analyst at
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“It struck me as about right,” Perkovich
added.
Washington’s European allies, he said, still
look to the United States to be the world’s dominant military
power, as long as it wields its might wisely.
“I think it’s an impressive team and I think
they are astute choices,” Perkovich said.
Perkovich as well as Miller particularly liked
Obama’s decision to appoint Jones and keep Gates, whom Bush named
to replace Donald Rumsfeld, an architect of the unpopular war in
Iraq.
Jones received kudos for his blend of military
and diplomatic experience and Gates for his innovative work on
difficult US military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Miller praised both Clinton’s intelligence and
toughness, but said it was important that Obama’s formal rival for
the Democratic Party presidential nomination be seen to be pursuing
the White House policy rather than her own.
If not, he warned, foreign governments will try
to exploit any divisions.
Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear
non-proliferation expert and president of the Ploughshares Fund,
hailed Obama’s choices as “smart, experienced, credible” but
feared Gates might resist Obama’s calls for nuclear warheads
reductions.
He said the new team agrees however on removing
US troops from Iraq, refocusing military efforts on Afghanistan,
restoring US moral authority worldwide and abandoning some high-tech
weapons programs.
Unlike the other analysts interviewed, however,
Cirincione suspected the Obama team was weighted to the center
right.
Michael O’Hanlon, a national security analyst
at the Brookings Institution, said that, depending on the issues,
Gates and Jones are center to center-right while Clinton and Rice
are center-left.
“I would say it is a centrist team,”
O’Hanlon told Agence France-Presse.
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