The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

HARRY BROWNE
COUNTER PUNCH
Thursday, December 4, 2008

This week the New York Times ran an an article by David E. Sanger about Obama’s new foreign-affairs team and priorities. The headline declared boldly that there will be “a sweeping shift in foreign policy”.

In a piece that was clearly ‘assisted’, i.e. spun, by Obama’s people, Sanger described the gist of the change: “The shift would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the incoming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed at preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states.” It will be, said an anonymous Obam-ite, “the great foreign policy experiment of the Obama presidency.”

Just in case that stirring ‘vision’–of an expanded and enhanced State-Department-run ‘corps’ looking after the world’s needs–sounded just a little bit familiar, the paper conceded that George W Bush had been talking about just such plans “starting in a series of speeches in late 2005”–i.e. well into what is now being widely re-cast as the relatively benign second Bush term. The implication of the article was that this was just a bit of soft-talk from a slightly chastened post-Iraq Dubya, and he has done nothing to make it a reality.

No, according to the New York Times, making it real will require 20-20 Obama-Vision. “If Mr. Obama and his team can bring about that kind of shift, it could mark one of the most significant changes in national security strategy in decades and greatly enhance the powers of Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state.” Moreover, the nasty right-wingers are sure to oppose it: “Mr. Obama’s advisers said they were already bracing themselves for the charge from the right that he is investing in social work.”

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

The funny thing is, this allegedly significant change in national security strategy, toward ‘social work’, actually comes straight out of Bush’s “National Security Strategy” – not some vague lame-duck version either, but the full-blown and now-notorious document published by the White House in September 2002, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (known as the NSS). Actually, this is funny only in the sense of “let’s all laugh at the New York Times”, because for America and the world the implications are deadly serious.

That 2002 NSS is most famous, or infamous, for codifying the ‘Bush Doctrine’ of military pre-emption and for its bald declaration that no military rival to the US will be permitted to arise. It’s already safe to say Obama will not renounce those positions. But because in autumn 2002 the document – just a few thousand words long – was being read largely as an argument for invading Iraq, the civilian side of its imperial vision was largely overlooked. That part of the vision looks remarkably similar to the one now being sketched by the Obama-Clinton team.

The Bush NSS, clearly guided by Colin Powell, enunciates perfectly well his well-known “you break it, you own it” principle. If the US is going to involve itself militarily in other countries, it has to be prepared to provide some semblance of good governance too. (Or, to put it another way, it gets to decide what exactly constitutes good governance, and what constitutes a ‘failed state’.) According to the NSS, Powell’s State Department was on stand-by, no less than Hillary Clinton’s will be, to go beyond “managing our bilateral relationships with other governments.”

“In this new era,” it declared, the State Department’s “people and institutions must be able to interact equally adroitly with non-governmental organizations and international institutions. Officials trained mainly in international politics must also extend their reach to understand complex issues of domestic governance around the world, including public health, education, law enforcement, the judiciary and public diplomacy.… we must also be able to help build police forces, court systems, and legal codes, local and provincial government institutions, and electoral systems.”

It’s quite a list – shades of “what have the Romans ever done for us?” It offers a positively vice-regal image of State department diplomats transformed into global bureaucrats, bypassing local officials where necessary (they might be the ‘failed state’) and working directly with NGOs and the like. Its ‘vision’ is, of course, baldly imperialistic. It is at the heart of projects such as the embassy-city built by the occupying Americans in Baghdad (and now scheduled under the recently signed security agreement to be returned to Iraqi control next June). It’s hardly ‘social work’.

Whether its world-straddling ambition will ever become reality is another question. For the time being, it offers a political lesson to those willing to learn: the striking degree to which these ideas are now echoed in the line being peddled to the media about the priorities of the new administration underlines the utter continuity between Bush foreign policy, in the depths of its depravity, and what is now on offer from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Their Continuity All-Stars.

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2 Responses to “The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy”

1. jaro Says:
   December 4th, 2008 at 9:54 pm

   Here is a video alex , that I edited and added infowars.com on the screen ,on an address to the nation by stephen harper on dec 3 2003.I posted it on Youtube to raise awareness.To this date Harper has rejected a stimulis package of 2 percent or 30 billion as recommended by the G 20 summit.
   I notced that since the bailouts in the Usa have began they now total 8.3 trillion well its funny that harper has to this date refused a stimulis package from the banks . he has a minority government
   and the 3 parties have turned on him because he has not introduced a stimulis package. I am demanding a referendum to determine who should be prime minister , in my opinion the 3 opposing parties will introduce a stimulis package. Parliment has been suspended until Jan 27 2009.I have a feeling harper is gone unless he introduces a stimulis package ! The only way i feel it could be stopped is if there was a referendum to allow him legitamacy to continue as Prime Minister. I know they can rig elections and pull a dealy plaza as well but what other options are there to stop this banking coup in canada.

   Conservative party 143 seats

   Liberal party 76 seats
   Ndp 37 seats
   Bloq Quebecois 50 seats 163 seats vs 143 seats conservative party

   http://posmedprod.webs.com/canadiannews.htm

2. Mohammed AL-Saedi Says:
   December 5th, 2008 at 6:25 am

   Its the fact that speak for itself, Obama regime is no more than continuation of the previous regime and thats by design. The upcoming regime,Obama, is no less brutally or perhaps is much more than, whats going to be the previous regime, the War criminals regime which have paved the way to the Obama regime by too much blood shades of the innocent people in the United States of America as well as in the rest of the world and in the Iraq in particular. The criminal global elites of the NWO are not willing to allowed any decent person to have the power of the presidency in the White House in the United States of America without they are assured of and guaranteed that the president is totally under their manipulation for no less than 100 precent. When looking at the Obama regime staffs, it would be very easy for intellectual analysts with foresight and foreknowledge to knowledge what Obama regime is going to be and is going to do. Its the corporate interests of the NWO that the upcoming regime is to serve, to implement, to maintain and to take care of.

   Its all about the criminality of the zionism to inflecting the damage on the free world, its about the criminals of the new world order, its about those criminals and the death merchants whose plans to propel the USA into other endless wars, its about those criminals who are selling the weapons and other death equipements, its about those criminals who are dehumanizing people by various means, its about those criminals who are committing massive genocide in the Iraq and its about those criminals who are involved in the massive genocide in the Iraq.

   The criminal global-elites of the NWO are already decided to commit more crimes on the free world, by creating preconditions for igniting wars and by creating circumstances for horror environment around the world, to consolidate their criminal power. The criminal global elites of the NWO whose objectives to depopulate this planet by reducing the number of the population to the minimal and thats by igniting wars, creating death squads, conducting massive genocide on civilians and empowering criminal regime such as in Iraq.