{"id":17457,"date":"2012-12-17T09:57:57","date_gmt":"2012-12-17T17:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=17457"},"modified":"2012-12-17T10:07:26","modified_gmt":"2012-12-17T18:07:26","slug":"hagel-kerry-and-obamas-second-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/17\/hagel-kerry-and-obamas-second-term\/","title":{"rendered":"Hagel, Kerry, and Obama’s Second Term"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apparently there is controversy, even among like-minded non-interventionists, over Chuck Hagel’s rumored nomination<\/a> to be Obama’s next Secretary of Defense. On the one hand, non-interventionists are excited by Hagel’s potential nomination to one of the highest offices in the country. Hagel has opposed the Iraq war, opposed the potential war against Iran while criticizing the economic sanctions, and perhaps most importantly he has admirably challenged the widespread reluctance (dare I say refusal) on the part of Congress to say anything critical of Israel, ever.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>On the other hand, we’re talking about Hagel joining the Obama administration\u00a0<\/em>– the same\u00a0coterie of brutes non-interventionists have been hammering these past four years on everything from expansive Great Game military policy in Asia<\/a>, military surges in the Middle East<\/a>, lawless<\/a> drone wars<\/a>, belligerence toward Iran<\/a>, and unprecedented support for Israel. The vaunted second-term turn towards dovish foreign policies is largely a myth, and so Hagel’s seemingly impending nomination should be viewed with caution. It’s simply not likely that the Obama administration is getting ready to retreat from the distinct foreign policy it has developed in its first term.<\/p>\n

Hagel, as I’ve noted<\/a> a couple times<\/a> in the past few days, has been repeatedly compared to Dwight Eisenhower. “Hagel is essentially an\u00a0Eisenhower Republican<\/a>,” writes<\/a> Scott McConnell at\u00a0The American Conservative<\/em>, “a fiscal conservative, with combat experience in war, roots in the American heartland, and an awareness that it is far easier to get into wars than get out of them.” Sure, and while Eisenhower’s warning of the military industrial complex is a favorite of anti-war commentators, he still was the architect of post-WWII US foreign policy, which laid the groundwork for the imperial path we’ve been following ever since<\/a>, and he did nasty things like overthrow democratically-elected governments and replace them with brutal dictators more subservient to US interests.<\/p>\n

It is a sign of improving times that Hagel may soon be in the same seat Rumsfeld and Panetta previously occupied. But my guess is that the Obama administration is looking at Hagel not as an introduction to a significantly less interventionist foreign policy, but rather as a shrewd political choice to neuter Republican opposition on impending cuts in defense spending. Since Obama’s reelection, the focus has all been on the looming fiscal cliff, and Hagel’s potential nomination might be best understood in that context. According to The New York Times<\/a><\/em>, “in internal discussions, White House officials have said that the challenge of the next few years will be working with Congress to shrink the defense budget and kill some major cold war-era weapons systems. For that, Mr. Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska, is seen as better able to win votes from his former colleagues.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The other mitigating factor in the Hagel-mania should be John Kerry’s seemingly imminent nomination to Secretary of State. Yes, Kerry decided, after-the fact, to oppose the Iraq war and run against the uber-imperialist neo-conservative George W. Bush in 2004. But anyone doubting Kerry’s own imperialist credentials need only look at my blog post from back in June after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which Kerry is the chairman, released a report on what I called “Imperial Balancing<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee just released\u00a0a report<\/a>\u00a0[PDF]\u00a0on US policy in the Middle East. Much of the study describes how Washington will\u00a0maintain key military bases and troop presence throughout the entire region<\/a>\u00a0and how to overcome challenges to maintaining such dominance, which is vital because the region is \u201chome to more than half of the world\u2019s oil reserves and over a\u00a0third of its natural gas.\u201d<\/p>\n

One excerpt stuck out in which the Committee admits that US military presence in the region as well as US support for brutal dictatorships has generated widespread hatred and blowback. According to the report, the challenge is to\u00a0maintain the imperial dominance over the region<\/a>, but avoid\u00a0the messy \u201cbacklash<\/a>\u201d and embarrassing support for \u201chuman rights abuses.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here are some choice excerpts from that report:<\/p>\n

The United States must carefully shape its military\u00a0presence so as not to create a popular backlash, while retaining the\u00a0capability to protect the free flow of critical natural resources and\u00a0to provide a counterbalance to Iran. Earlier American deployments\u00a0in Saudi Arabia and Iraq generated violent local opposition. What\u00a0the West views as a deterrent against aggression could also be misconstrued\u00a0or portrayed as an occupying presence.<\/p>\n

…The United States should preserve the\u00a0model of \u2018\u2018lily pad\u2019\u2019 bases throughout the Gulf, which permits\u00a0the rapid escalation of military force in case of emergency. The\u00a0Obama administration has adopted this architecture by retaining\u00a0only essential personnel in the region while ensuring access\u00a0to critical hubs such as Camp Arifjan [in Kuwait], Al Udeid [Qatar], Al Dhafra [in the UAE],\u00a0Jebel Ali [in the UAE], and Naval Support Activity Bahrain. An agile footprint\u00a0enables the United States to quickly deploy its superior\u00a0conventional force should conflict arise, without maintaining a\u00a0costly and unsustainable presence. Sustaining physical infrastructure\u00a0and enabling functions such as intelligence, surveillance,\u00a0and logistics, while keeping certain war reserve materiel\u00a0forward positioned, is more important than deploying large\u00a0numbers of U.S. forces.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and I added:<\/p>\n

Preserving the model of \u201clily pad\u201d bases peppered throughout the Gulf, which are afforded to Washington because it bribes undemocratic regimes with money and weapons, is how Washington maintains overweening power over the most geo-politically vital region in the world. This has been US policy since WWII, as\u00a0a\u00a0Top Secret National Security Council briefing<\/a>\u00a0put it in 1954, \u201cthe Near East is of great strategic, political, and economic importance,\u201d as it \u201ccontains the greatest petroleum resources in the world\u201d as well as \u201cessential locations for strategic military bases in any world conflict.\u201d After Obama administration failed in its efforts to maintain a large contingent of US forces in Iraq, following their predecessors launching of a criminal war there, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta\u00a0said he envisions about 40,000 troops<\/a>\u00a0will be stationed in the Middle East going forward.<\/p>\n

Not only does this lead to US support for all kinds of repression and state terror, but it is detrimental to US security in the long term. The \u201cbacklash\u201d the Committee is so worried about cannot be avoided and the veritable\u00a0garrisoning of Iran\u2019s surroundings<\/a>makes the Islamic Republic\u00a0more guarded<\/a>, which\u00a0amplifies\u00a0tensions<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0increases the likelihood of unnecessary conflict<\/a>.\u00a0The alternative, minding our own business, is incomprehensible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So while Hagel could potentially bring a stronger realist, willing-to-criticize-Israel voice to the higher echelons of the Obama administration, I predict he will not bring appreciable change. The Obama administration, in some ways, has already exhibited more foreign policy restraint than their predecessors\u00a0in some<\/em> important ways. There is much to criticize Obama for on, say, Iran or Syria policy – but both cases have been colored by his apparent reluctance to get bogged down in another massive ground war and occupation in the Middle East. That is already a departure from the war-mongers in the Bush administration, many of whom now are calling for bombing Iran and intervening directly in Syria. Hagel, himself no anti-interventionist, won’t change that one way or the other.<\/p>\n

The Obama administration’s central foreign policy goal of maintaining global hegemony through unaccountable aggression and\u00a0imperial policies the world over will proceed in the second term. Hagel or no Hagel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apparently there is controversy, even among like-minded non-interventionists, over Chuck Hagel’s rumored nomination to be Obama’s next Secretary of Defense. On the one hand, non-interventionists are excited by Hagel’s potential nomination to one of the highest offices in the country. Hagel has opposed the Iraq war, opposed the potential war against Iran while criticizing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-17457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17457"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17465,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17457\/revisions\/17465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17457"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=17457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}