Foreign Policy

As kind of a coda to the non-ambassador-to-Iraq-Tony-Zinni episode, I speculated at first about the optics of placing two generals — Zinni and Karl Eikenberry — in the all-important ambassadorships of Iraq and Afghanistan. Laura Rozen got at that in her Zinni post as well, and now a friend, stationed abroad in the Foreign Service, [...]

Over at Democracy Arsenal, Michael Cohen reads a quote from a prospective adviser to President Obama about “achiev[ing] small, concrete outcomes that advance political freedoms in very tangible ways and do[ing] so, without talking about doing so” and observes:
There is simply no better way to undermine US credibility and weaken the country’s moral standing then [...]

Christian Brose, a former speechwriter for secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, has an interesting post up at Foreign Policy magazine’s GOP-in-exile blog, Shadow Government, venting some agita about counterinsurgency and grand strategy. It’s a smart worry, but it seems a bit misplaced. Brose writes:
My concern about the current COIN fixation is that [...]

I don’t know if I believe this, but The Guardian is reporting that President-elect Barack Obama might put out feelers for direct U.S. talks with Hamas.
The Guardian has spoken to three ­people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp. There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, [...]

I’m in one of the two massive ballrooms of the Washington Convention Center, where in a few minutes, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is going to present a tour of the foreign-policy horizon. That’ll kick off a day-long event sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Peace called “Passing The Baton,” outlining the national-security and foreign-policy [...]

When you go on vacation and an international crisis breaks out, you get hounded by protesters.
From a pool report today:
About a half dozen demonstrators had assembled near the security checkpoint fronting the entrance to the $9 million rental home where [President-elect Barack] Obama and his family are staying.

The Obama transition formally announced Jack Lew and Jim Steinberg as deputy secretaries of state just now. On Lew, my pal Mark Kleiman, who knows the guy, remarks, “He’s just one of those people who aren’t even tempted to cut corners, or at least that’s the way he comes across.” Interesting.
But here are two more: [...]

Remember about a month ago, when President-elect Barack Obama announced his foreign policy team, and it looked as if there was going to be a shift of emphasis from the military to the civilian agencies of government, in terms of money, attention and influence? Secretary of State-designee Hillary Rodham Clinton is looking to reorganize her [...]

The New York Times reports that President-elect Barack Obama is “considering making a major foreign policy speech from an Islamic capital during his first 100 days in office,” possibly in Cairo.
As Politico’s Ben Smith points out, this would possibly fulfill an obscure primary campaign pledge to hold a summit with Muslim countries, made during an [...]

The interplay between the outsized personalities on President-elect Barack Obama’s national-security team and his ability to set the agenda looks likely to be a key undercurrent of his entry onto the global stage.