Denis McDonough

What Barack has verbalize is that we can begin immerseing our phalanx immediately, and he call ups that we can do it at chiliad of close one to two combat brigades per month. And at that pace, we could make view the remaining troops out in about 16 months. This is not an ironclad absolute commitment that at the complete of 16 months all of our troops will be out. and he does believe that is the kind of pace that we can do responsibly and safely. (Interview with NPR, June 2008. ) McDonough has argued for a common-good approach to outside policy, saying that the U. S. must address problems exchangeable world(prenominal) warming and p e rattlingwherety by taking approaches that will benefit other countries as soundly as the united States. He has spoken in support of a cap-and-trade dust and inflicted on the U. S. to describe a serious commitment to reducing greenhouse gases. (6) Iraq McDonough opposed the Iraq war from the start and backs Obamas efforts to withdraw t roops slowly from the outlandish, aiming to let all of them out in about 16 months. He argues that relation back and the president failed to plan for the long-term impact of the Iraq war.He would want Obamas administration to craft a thorough proposal that lays out what the U. S. s specific role will be in Iraq oer the next ten long clipping. (7) Intelligence Oversight While at the Center for American Progress, McDonough lobbied for reform of congressional oversight of intelligence. He argued that Congress must stick with vigorous oversight of the 17 agencies because they operate in such secrecy, ensuring that the intelligence community is behaving constitutionally and lawfully while pursuing their aims effectively.(8) Samantha proponent. Q though any(prenominal) analysts live U. S. foreign policy woes as a recent phenomenon, you argue that recent foreign policy missteps by actual U. S. leaders have undefended and exacerbated long-standing structural and conceptual probl ems in U. S. foreign policy. Please explain. Power It is tempting to see Iraq as the source of all our woes nowadays, whereas I see Iraq as the symptom, in whatever pecker, of a number of longstanding trends and defects in American foreign policy. March,6,2008 One example is the US past predis needion to go it alone.Because we have long undervalued what inter national institutions have to offer, we believed that we could go into Iraq, and as soon as we declargond the mission accomplished, we expected to be able to turn the problem over to others, witnessless of how they had been hard-boiled in the run up to the invasion. This thinking is very flawed, but not all that impertinently. In a uni-polar world, the Clinton Administration was able to eviscerate a steering with an instrumental relationship with international institutions, but that is harder with the rise of new powers who are willing to challenge the United States in international bodies.It is besides harder now that the Iraq war itself has exposed so many US weaknesses. In addition, we long saw international authorization as a luxury, something good for global human beings opinion, but not very relevant to US national security. But what we have seen, by revealing our indifference to international legitimacy both in the Iraq war and in the practices carried out in our counter-terrorism efforts the disavowal of the Geneva conventions, prisoner abuse, extraordinary rendition, etc. is that being seen to thumb our roll at international law rattling has pro assemble security ramifications, as much and more quite a little seek to take up arms against U. S. citizens and inte rest periods. Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the course to which special interests dictate the way in which the national interest as a whole is defined and pursued. imagine at the degree to which Halliburton and several of the private security and contracting firms invested in the 2004 political campaigns and received very lucrative contracts in the aftermath of the U. S. takeover of Iraq.Also, Americas important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon brook summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive. So greater regard for international institutions on with less automatic deference to special interests especially when it comes to matters of life and death and war and peace front to be two take-aways from the war in Iraq.Q Elaborate on your differentiation between power and influence as completed metrics for conceptualizing effective foreign policy. Power I think that most of us, in a knee-jerk way, campaign to conflate power with hard power with stinting and military power. At the Kennedy School, Joe Nye gave us the concept of soft power as another component of power. Building on Nyes concept, we would be wise in the 21st century to measure our power by our influence. Influence is best measured not only by military hardware and GDP, but also by other plentys perceptions that we, the United States, are using our power legitimately.That stamp that we are acting in the interests of the global commons and in accordance with the rule of law is what the military would call a compress multiplier. It enhances the U. S. ability to get what it wants from other countries and other players. The third component of influence on with traditional hard power and legitimacy is peoples perception that we know what we are doing, that we are competent. Here, one cannot overdo the devastating one-two punch of Iraq and Katrina in undermining the global publics and the American peoples faith that the U. S. is a competent prosecutor of its avow objectives. Even if you disagreed with the Bush administrations decision to go to war, and thought it would do more harm than good, many people assumed that th is administration, in pursuing this war, would at least know what it was doing. Whatever its objectives were again, objectives many of us found suspect or insufficient to warrant the use of military force we expected this group of experient lords to pursue those aims competently, to prepare properly, and to bring adequate resources to bear.We all know now that experience does not retell into competence. The war in Iraq has thus undermined our hard power by overstretching our military and sending us into deficit. It has undermined our sensed legitimacy because weve ignored the will of the international community and committed grave acts of torture, crimes against clementity, and other terrible sins in the conduct of the war itself. But, life-and-deathly, as my colleague Steve Walt has put it, we also no longer look like the country that put the man on the moon.Nor does the rest of the world see us, currently, as the country that turn Europe from two world wars, that devised the Marshall Plan, that helped bring d sustain the Wall. As a result, our ability to get what we want whether were talking about ending Irans nu suck up enrichment program, halting genocide in Darfur, reforming the UN, or even securing international buy-in for the effort to stabilize Iraq our influence has eroded such that we are unable to actually achieve our policy objectives Q You see the U. S. as being more isolated today than it has ever been.Though there have always been America-firsters among policy makers, why do you think this is especially dangerous now? Power Traditionally, American isolationism comes about in spurts as the result of very vocal domestic constituencies who believe that engagement with the rest of the world is bad for U. S. interests. Although today there are some in this country who would like to see the United States come home after its bungled misadventures abroad, most Americans understand that the nature of the global marketplace, as well as the glob al threats, make this impossible.Yet we are in a percentage point of relative isolation one that stems less from ascendant Copperhead isolationism at home and more from the way other countries calculate their interests as they relate to the United States. So, in a sense, those countries are retreating from the United States, or else than the United States retreating from them. Its the reverse of what we have seen in the past. What you have are a number of countries -even those with which the United States has long been aligned who believe that a very close association between themselves and the Bush administration undermines their intimate domestic standing.So we see longstanding allies of the United States pushing back against Washington, asserting freelance views on everything from global warming and international justice to troubled war zones like Afghanistan, where the U. S. desperately need the support of its western partners in attempting to stabilize that country. So w e are the recipients of isolationism now, you might say, rather than the crafters of it. Q The focus in discussions of U. S. foreign policy is often on the executive branch, but you place great responsibility on Congress and journalists, and even the public, in relation to U. S. foreign policy. Why? Power The longstanding habit of governments is to pursue their national interests to pursue their economic and security interests. That is what governments are for. That is what states are for. The only occasions in which regard for human rights and human consequences are injected into foreign policymaking historically are occasions when the Congress has insisted upon it or when the stir up has either shamed the Congress or shamed the Executive Branch into entertaining a broader beat of interests which include regard for human consequences abroad.The reason this becomes especially important in the 21st century in an era of asymmetric threats- is because our systematic neglect of huma n rights in the formulation of our foreign policy over the years has engendered great resentment. Our abuses in the conduct of the so-called war on terror, too, have enhanced terrorist recruitment, supply vitriolic anti-Americanism and, arguably, make it more difficult for us to summon resources from other countries to deal with threats.Human rights abuses have supplied oxygen to the minority of those who hold the United States in such contempt that they want to take matters into their own hands and kill Americans. Its very important, for our national security in the long term, and of course on principle, that human consequences be integrated into our foreign policy, but its very unlikely historically that this will be make in a top-down fashion.So if the American people or particular constituencies care about particular issues say Afghanistan, Guantanamo, or Darfur unless they actually give voice to that concern, whether for its own sake or because they believe that those cris es will come back and haunt the United States if they are not dealt with, the only way that the public is going to see their interests in those issues internalized by senior policy makers is if they make it vocally and painfully clear to policy makers that there is a strong domestic political constituency for a change in course. Q You posit that both the self-image and global image of the U.S. have eroded. How can the U. S. again be seen as a force for good in the world? Power Its probably going to be a long and blowy road to replenishment. A crucial step for the United States is to really begin to think in wrong of do no harm and actually ending some of the more egregious aspects of its approach to counter-terrorism. First, in the do no harm camp end the practice of extraordinary rendition, where US agents willfully ship terrorist suspects in our chains to countries that we know torture, for the explicit purpose of evading domestic checks on US abuse.Second in the do no harm ca mp close Guantanamo and actually passageway its prisoners through internationally respected legal processes. And third, restore habeus principal sum to those detainees who are in US custody. To strip a group of individuals no matter what blood some number of them have on their hands of the most fundamental constitutional rights sends a signal to the rest of the world that there are two messs of human rights that we believe in one robust set that Americans get to enjoy, and another much diminished set that those perceived as hostile to us get to enjoy.There are also two sets of individuals tortureables and untorturables. So a first step in our rehabilitation is to rid our conduct of these colossal blemishes on the American character. The second is embedding U. S. antipoverty, anti-disease and democratization policy initiatives within international institutions as part of a grand vision of what the United States actually does stand for which is trying to match that people enj oy the kind of freedom from fear and freedom from want that Franklin Roosevelt promised Americans many years ago.The turn on of actually making people secure in their homes is far too steep a nucleus for one country to handle. We must articulate a vision for human security and then channel US resources through international institutions, which themselves must become more rigorous and accountable. This will over cadence enhance US standing, but more importantly, it will force other countries who have delighted in Bushs misfortunes but put little on the line themselves to patrol the global commons to pick up the slack.Introduction Sen. Barack Obamas (D-IL) foreign policy agenda has emphasized multilateralism and reinvigorated diplomacy to advance U. S. interests. He has pledge to take steps to end the war in Iraq soon after taking office, to negotiate with the leading of U. S. adversaries like Iran and Cuba, and to revamp the U. S. approach to free trade to bolster labor and en vironmental protections. Obama has attracted as advisers a number of top foreign policy experts who served under President Bill Clinton.Those advisers tend to be more independent from party orthodoxy on foreign policy issues, analysts say. Obamas top advisers were opposed to the U. S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, although a number of prominent Democrats, including rival Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), supported the action at the time. Obamas advisers generally appear to agree with his belief that it is important for the United States not just to talk to its friends but also to talk to its enemies. A new(a) Foreign Policy Vision Obama was elected to the Senate in 2005 and serves on the Foreign Relations Committee.Prior to that, his professional experience was primarily confined to Illinois, where he served as a state legislator representing a Chicago district, and to begin with that, a community activist. He has cited his personal background-his Kenyan-born father and a youth spent in In donesia-as crucial to the development of his world view. Like other presidential campaigns, Obamas draws on a long list of advisers on foreign policy matters. The most senior include several ranking Clinton administration officials, the Brookings Institutions Susan E. Rice, former national guarantor Adviser Anthony Lake, and former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig. This is a team thats very reflective of Obama, who has made it pretty clear in his speeches and statements during the campaign that he believes that diplomacy has been undervalued over the past few years and that the United States shouldnt fear to negotiate, says Derek Chollet, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security who advised John Edwards presidential campaign.If Obama wins the general election in November, his foreign policy and economic agendas will surely break with the legacies of the Bush administration, experts say. Whether its our approach to torture, or climate change, or how were dealing with Iran, to Iraq, to the sum East peace process youre going to see significant changes, says Chollet, who is not connected to the Obama campaign. Obama advocates a market-based cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions, and has said the United States should invest $150 billion over ten years to advance clean-energy technology. Obama has also been an outspoken critic of the Iraq war, which he opposed from its outset in 2002. He has said he will withdraw troops from Iraq and refocus U. S. military efforts against theme in Afghanistan and Pakistan.National Security Advisers Obama has stressed his commitment to winning the battle against Taliban forces in Afghanistan. He has also vowed that he would pursue al-Qaeda elements into Pakistan, with or without government permission, if he had strong intelligence the group was planning an attack on the United States. Obamas leading national security advisers include Denis McDonough , senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, is t he national security coordinator for Obamas campaign. McDonough was foreign policy adviser to former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle. McDonough has been outspoken on energy and environmental policy.In June 2007, McDonough urged the Group of Eight (G8) to take action to combat climate change, and warned that current levels of development assistance are woefully insufficient to help underdeveloped nations deal with climate change. McDonough has also said that the United States should do more to promote the development of our domestic clean energy orbit industry. McDonough said on a Brookings Institution panel in May 2007 that it is far past time for the United States to institute a cap-and-trade system mandating very aggressive reductions in greenhouse gases, with the goal of an 80 percent reduction over 1990 levels by 2050