CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
– EXECUTIVE BRANCH
Updated Dec. 1, 2008 – 11:34 a.m.
Obama’s National Security Team Will Face Multiple Challenges
By Adam Graham-Silverman, CQ Staff
As President-elect Barack Obama announced his national security team, he faced two early hurdles: The Senate must confirm most of his nominees, and they must help him chart a new course on defense, foreign policy and homeland security.
The latter will no doubt be the more difficult task.
Obama on Monday made official his selections of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton , D-N.Y., 61, to be secretary of State; Robert M. Gates , 65, to stay on as secretary of Defense; James L. Jones, 64, retired Marine Corps commandant and Supreme Allied commander, Europe, and commander of the United States European Command, as national security adviser; Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano , 51, as Homeland Security secretary; former deputy attorney general Eric Holder, 57, as attorney general; and Susan E. Rice, 44, former assistant secretary of State and one of his top foreign policy advisers, as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
He said Rice would be given Cabinet-level status.
“The national security challenges we face are just as grave — and just as urgent — as our economic crisis,” Obama said. “We are fighting two wars. Old conflicts remain unresolved, and newly assertive powers have put strains on the international system. The spread of nuclear weapons raises the peril that the world’s deadliest technology could fall into dangerous hands. Our dependence on foreign oil empowers authoritarian governments and endangers our planet.”
Among other immediate tasks, this team will have to figure out how to implement Obama’s plan to withdraw most U.S. forces from Iraq in 16 months and renew focus on the war in Afghanistan.
“As Bob said not too long ago, Afghanistan is where the war on terror began, and it is where it must end,” Obama said, referring to Gates.
The security agreement approved last week by Iraq’s parliament requires U.S. troops out of towns and cities by this summer and a complete withdrawal by the end of 2011. (Obama said Congress should have a chance to review, though not approve, the U.S.-Iraq agreement, which faces a referendum in Iraq this summer.) Obama’s plan would allow for a residual force in the region for training, force protection and counter-terrorism missions.
Praise From Senators
The nominees are not expected to face much opposition in the Obama-friendly, Democratic Senate.
“Given the range of threats that we face — and the vulnerability that can be a part of every presidential transition — I hope that we can proceed swiftly for those national security officials who demand confirmation,” Obama said.
That group includes all but Gates and Jones.
The relevant Senate committees are expected to hold hearings on the nominees in early January, with an eye to floor votes immediately after the Jan. 20 inauguration. When Demcorat Bill Clinton took office in 1993, the Senate confirmed all but one of his Cabinet picks within a day after his inauguration.
Obama’s National Security Team Will Face Multiple Challenges
Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which must approve Clinton and Rice, praised the picks.
“I think they’re excellent selections. I think it will be a strong team,” he said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” adding that the attacks in Mumbai, India, gave a new sense of urgency to approving Obama’s picks.
“Bipartisan support of this team really is of the essence right now,” Lugar said.
Clinton is likely to be the most controversial of the nominees, not for her own views and records but because of her husband’s tangled post-presidency finances.
In order to avoid potential conflicts of interest with his wife’s diplomatic work, former President Bill Clinton has agreed to disclose all past and future donors to the foundation that runs his charitable programs overseas and funds his presidential library. He also agreed to incorporate the Clinton Global Initiative separately from the Clinton Foundation and submit his future work to ethics review.
Lugar said he supports Sen. Clinton’s nomination, but noted that there would be “legitimate questions” about that arrangement during the confirmation process.
“I think the Obama campaign people have done a good job in trying to pin down the most important elements, and at this point hopefully this team of rivals will work,” he said.
“I think they’ve put up a good framework,” Sen. Jack Reed , D-R.I., said, also on “This Week.” “This disclosure, this transparency is the right way to go.”
Both senators endorsed the idea of appointing Bill Clinton as a special envoy to mediate between India and Pakistan in light of last week’s deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which India has linked to a group based in Pakistan.
Sen. Clinton also may face questions about statements she made about Iran during her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, including her threat that the United States would “obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel.
Clinton also voted for an amendment to the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill that urged President Bush to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist group, which Obama said could give Bush pretense for attacking Iran. He was absent for the vote on the amendment.
Reed praised Gates’s selection and dismissed a suggestion that it represented Democratic weakness on military matters.
“I think what it’s sending a message is, at this time of significant challenge internationally, the continuity that Bob Gates brings to the Pentagon, and his good judgment, his good sense, his demonstrated performance is absolutely critical for this moment,” he said.
Obama’s National Security Team Will Face Multiple Challenges
But Reed cautioned against picking a deputy for Gates who would take over the job after he left, perhaps in a year, and thus create two parallel structures. Reed said the No. 2 should, in keeping with tradition, be the operational chief, a “mayor of the Pentagon” who makes the trains run on time.
“I think that’s the model that they’re looking for today. And I think that it is appropriate. Because you do not want two competing centers of power,” he said.
Rice was assistant secretary of State for African Affairs from 1997 to 2001—a job for which she breezed to confirmation despite her young age. She served on Clinton’s National Security Council from 1993 to 1997. She could be questioned about her earlier calls for U.S. military action against Sudan if violence in the Darfur region continued.
Jones was Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, and Commandant of the Marine Corps during his 40 years of service. In 2007, he was chairman of a congressionally appointed commission to investigate Iraq’s security forces, and was appointed a special envoy to the Middle East by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice .
Obama may announce other top security posts soon. Among the reported picks are James Steinberg for deputy secretary of State and Dennis Blair for director of National Intelligence.
Napolitano was re-elected to a second four-year term as Arizona governor in 2006. She earlier had served as her state’s attorney general, winning election to that job in 1998, and as its U.S. attorney.
Holder will now head the Department of Justice, where he has spent much of his career. He served as deputy attorney general from 1997 to 2001, and early in his career spent a dozen years as an attorney in the department’s Public Integrity Section.
First posted Dec. 1, 2008 9:41 a.m.
Comments
For the triumph of evil it is necessary that concerned people, parties and politicians around the world do nothing " I as a concerned citizen of the United States of America and World. I do not justify and like any evil acts of terror and terrorism. As a psychiatrist I can say that as a consequence of occupation, suppression, alienation, degradation, hopelessness, and depression the ordinary people are led to suicide.In the process, some times, they are driven to the evil acts and spread their pain and apathy around as they have resorted to these evil acts over centuries. We should not forget the plight of Kashmiris, Palestinians, and many more people around the world at the hands of state sponsored terror and terrorism as perpetuated by India in Kashmir and Israel in Palestine. These kind of situations result in these heinous and evil acts around the world. Do not expect U.S.A. and president elect Obama to do much about it. It is Global problem and all concerned people, parties, and politicians need to think out of box and address these issues candidly and openly without shifting blame around. I suggest the President Elect Obama assign former President Bill Clinton and present President Bush to resolve the contentious Kashmir and Palestine between the concerned but stuborn parties.
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