United Liberty
A True Nightmare: Obama Catering to Neo-cons
Wed, 12/10/2008 - 11:00am | posted by Austin Wilkes
Max Boot, a contributing editor of the fervently neoconservative publication The Weekly Standard and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations has stated what progressives and libertarians dread most, that Obama is warming up nicely to neoconservatives in Washington. Some might contend that his appointments thus far have gained more approval from the statist right than from his own party. Maxx Boot in his own words regarding the matter-
As someone who was skeptical of Obama’s moderate posturing during the campaign, I have to admit that I am gobsmacked by these appointments , most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain. (Jim Jones is an old friend of McCain’s, and McCain almost certainly would have asked Gates to stay on as well.) This all but puts an end to the 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, the unconditional summits with dictators, and other foolishness that once emanated from the Obama campaign. His appointments suggest that, if anything, his administration will have a Reapolitiker, rather than a liberal, bent, although Clinton and Steinberg at State should be powerful voices for “neo-liberalism” which is not so different in many respects from “neo-conservativism”. Both, for instance, support humanitarian interventions in places like Darfur and Bosnia.
Unfortunately, Obama is positioning himself to not follow through with The Change in foreign policy that he eloquently spoke about in the campaign, but beyond that, being a candidate perceived to be “far left”, he has neutralized a significant amount of anti-war pressure from the left. By the time the left-liberals see him as a fraud “neo-liberal” rather than a progressive, he will have already established his key foreign policy stances and positions.
Gideon Rachman over at Financial Times has some good commentary over at his FT Blog.
I don’t see the Robert Gates pick as catering to neo-conservatives at all. Gates was put in place after Rumsfeld and is more of a part of Brent Scowcroft/James Baker class of conservatives. He seems to be doing a good job of cleaning up Rummy’s mess and has shown himself to be fairly pragmatic and level-headed as well.
“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.” - Thomas Jefferson
The lines of difference between the neo-conservatives (such as Rumsfeld and Cheney) on the one hand, and the Bent Scowcroft/James Baker types of the so-called “realist” school on the other hand, are rather blurred, the main difference being that the former are eager for more military action, while the latter tend to be more cautious. However, on the essential question of intervention vs. non-intervention, there is essentially no difference. I tend to see people like Gates as being without any particular principles or philosophy, pretty much willing to carry the water for whoever is directing the policy. I would look more to people like Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden, and Jim Jones, among others, to have a particularly strong voice in the new administration. They are really not far from the neo-conservatives, if distinguishable from them at all. Most important, though, is the powerful influence of Zbigniew Brzenzinski, who is the real “brains” behind the Obama foreign policy team. He was the National Security Advisor under President Carter, and one of the founders of the Trilateral Commission. It would be worth one’s while to do a bit of reading and research on Brzenzinski, who can certainly be described as a socialistic internationalist, therefore very much an interventionist.
The important thing to really note about neo-conservatives is that they are not simply interventionists, as in people that want America to do something when war breaks out in parts of the world. Neo-conservatives want the US military to use force to spread democracy, even without provocation.
“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.” - Thomas Jefferson
You are absolutely right, and that’s what makes the neo-conservatives even more dangerous than the establishment’s globalist “neo-realists”, for lack of a better term. The concern Austin expresses is that there may be a bit of a pull or lurch in this direction in the new Obama Administration, which certainly I hope will not be the case. But we’ve been greatly disappointed and betrayed many times before by a new President coming in with great promise, even to move things back a little closer to sanity, only to have exactly the opposite outcome (the current one being but one example).
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