New U.S President Barack Obama gave a first class inaugural speech Tuesday that will do much to restore the long-tattered image of the United States around the world. However, Obama may have seriously undermined the bold new initiatives he plans for the Middle East region by neglecting Jesus' famous teaching that new wine should be preserved in new bottles.
For the new wine, or spirit, of Obama's policies to reduce tensions around the world has been entrusted to an exceptionally old-fashioned national security team, particularly with regards to the Middle East.
Incoming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will take office with no experience or particular recorded interest in improving U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, which should be a sine qua non of U.S. policymaking in this new era. The inexperienced Obama urgently needs Saudi, Egyptian and Jordanian input to rapidly prep him on the complexities and security challenges he will face in dealing with the Arab world and those who seek to destabilize it. Clinton's record gives no hint that she has ever recognized the crucial importance of listening to those highly experienced and constructive voices.
It is, in this regard, a worrying sign that Clinton, as had been widely expected (and as we predicted in these columns) has vouchsafed such extensive trust in veteran negotiator Ambassador Dennis Ross, making him her key point man in dealing with Iran as well with the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Ross, as we have noted before, was notorious in the past for trying to sideline and silence serious U.S. Foreign Service Officers whose experience exceeded and whose judgment contradicted his own. However, those are precisely the kinds of voices that Secretary Clinton will not to hear if she is to avoid coming undone in Middle East.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, for all the welcome tactical innovations he introduced to cut down the needless and aimless slaughter of innocents by unchecked U.S. air power in Iraq, continues to rely on those same discredited tactics in Afghanistan. His eagerness to commit at least 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan is already clear. It will scarcely benefit Obama and the American people if they vacate Iraq at long last only to immediately plunge into another and even more futile and needless conflict in Afghanistan instead.
Also, the new National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, while experienced, widely respected and judicious, appears to lack the force of personality and boldness needed to rein in secretaries Clinton and Gates and make sure they conform to their president's overriding agenda.
Finally, Clinton brings to Foggy Bottom her boundless enthusiasm for spreading democracy on America's terms that looks at first sight not much difference from that of former President George W. Bush.
Obama is sincere in his desire to provide new wine at the table of U.S. policymaking. But he has already made a grave error in imagining that this new wine can be effectively served in old bottles that were shaped in past and obsolete times.
© Middle East Times 2009
