President Obama made his first visit to an Executive Branch agency on his fourth day in office. He made it (horrors!!) to the State Department and that has caused a stir of comment in the media. Apparently, at least recently, Presidents have made their first such visits to the Defense Department.
What are we to make of this alleged “break with tradition”? However, before examining that, understand that this tradition was clearly not broken by mistake. It was a forceful, practical and philosophical statement by the new President.
During the Bush administration, with the Neoconservatives in power, it made sense that the first visit would be to the Pentagon. After all, the Neocons disparaged everything that had to do with diplomacy. They saw diplomacy as irrelevant in their idyllic, US-run “unipolar world”. They saw international organizations, like the UN and Nato and alliances with individual nations as counterproductive to their basic conviction that unilateral military power is the first tool to be used in the conduct of foreign policy.
In short, under Bush, neoconservative foreign policy held that the views and needs of our friends and allies were irrelevant in the context of our own national imperatives. That attitude is what got us into Iraq and it is at the root of what has gone wrong in our overall Middle East policy. We so alienated our old friends and allies that they refused to support us militarily, politically, economically or psychologically.
The realities of Iraq have shown clearly the folly in pursuing that policy. It really doesn’t matter how militarily powerful you are, it’s hard to succeed without friends and allies.
Nevertheless, under Bush and the Neocons, the military held preeminent influence in the executive branch of the US Government, not just in military matters, but in foreign policy as well. President Bush would underline that fact in his “first visits” to the Pentagon, as would any of his predecessors who accepted the primacy of the military establishment in the US Government’s foreign policy.
President Obama apparently broke tradition by visiting the State Department first and in the process of doing so established some additional new markers.
In his comments at State, the new president underlined his commitment to seek an equitable solution in Palestine. If there is to be such a solution, the United States will have to get involved and remain involved to the bitter end, despite the inevitable frustrations that such negotiations will bring. The United States will equally have to be even-handed, recognizing the needs of both Palestine and Israel.
In addition, the president appointed former Senator George Mitchell as our new Middle East envoy. That is a total break with the past eight years. Mitchell, a skilled and proven negotiator, has taken no public position on the Palestine issue except to say that the ongoing 60 year conflict has to stop. If he is to be effective, he will have to be even-handed. And he has started out well. He is the first such envoy who not started out without being known to be partisan on either side.
The Bush administration didn’t get serious about Palestine until far too late in the game. When they finally did, they were viewed on the basis of their policies and participation as pro-Israel at the expense of the Palestinians. The positions taken by the Bush administration during the Gaza incursion underlined the position that they would act only to defend Israeli activities. In pursuing that policy, they totally alienated the Muslim world.
The important fact is that change is here. The new president has made it clear that in matters of foreign policy, the military, appropriately, will become of secondary importance to the State Department.
Additionally, America will get involved in the Palestine issue. If the Palestinians and the Israelis are to find their way to peace, it will be only with the assistance of an honest broker. The choice of George Mitchell over the other rumored candidates gives promise that our approach will have as its goal the construction of a fair and evenhanded agreement that will guarantee peace and security in the region. Without such an agreement, it is unlikely that America will reach even its most rudimentary goals in the region.
All of this is a clear indication that under President Obama, America will return to a realistic foreign policy and that in doing so, it will seek once again to return to a practical and moral position which will allow it to offer itself as an honest broker in the search for equitable peace in the Middle East.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff.
