On Afghanistan and Pakistan
Rather than a withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, Obama seens a needed build-up of troops there, as well as the removal of restrictions on combat duties placed on some of the NATO forces. While running for the U.S. Senate in September 2004, he said missile strikes against Iran and Pakistan might be necessary to prevent extremists from acquiring nuclear weapons. In 2007, he said reducing aid to Pakistan, and attacking Pakistan proper, would be appropriate in the fight against al-Qaeda. “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act,” Obama said, “we will.”
On the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process
Clearly more sympathetic to the Palestinian plight than most candidates. “Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people,” he told Iowa voters in March. He blames Hamas, the militant Palestinian group, for stalling peace talks, as well as the Bush Administration, which, Obama says, has “neglected for years” the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Obama, however, is just as eager to court Jewish votes by aligning himself unmistakably on Israel’s side first: Our starting point must always be a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel, our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy.” Obama is also non-committal on an actual peace plan.
On Foreign Oil
Obama’s approach to reducing American dependence on foreign oil is conventional: “I intend to enact a cap-and-trade system that will dramatically reduce our carbon emissions,” he wrote in Foreign Affairs. And I will work to finally free America of its dependence on foreign oil -- by using energy more efficiently in our cars, factories, and homes, relying more on renewable sources of electricity, and harnessing the potential of biofuels.” The actual plan, however, as unveiled on his Web site, may be more ambitious than it sounds. It would “require that all transportation fuels sold in the U.S. contain 5 percent less carbon by 2015 and 10 percent less carbon by 2020.” The plan, the Obama campaign claims, “would also reduce the annual consumption of gasoline derived from foreign oil imports by about 30 billion gallons in 2020.” Missing from Obama’s calculation is a baseline: 10 percent less carbon compared to when? In 15 years, for example, Americans will be consuming far more fuel than they do today. Would the overall carbon reduction be derived from the totals of 2020 or from those of 2008? Would the reduction in gasoline consumption, currently at 142 billion gallons a day, be a net reduction from that amount or a reduction from far higher projected consumption figures in 2020?
In Sum
Like virtually every candidate for the 2008 presidency, Barack Obama regards American foreign policy damaged by decreasing moral authority and leadership. Obama blames the Bush Administration’s unilateralism and belligerence at the expense of the more traditional approaches to foreign policy that served the country since World War II: cooperation with other nations, diplomacy through international institutions, including the United Nations, and the use of foreign aid, especially humanitarian assistance, as a tool of diplomacy.
“As President Kennedy said in his 1961 inaugural address,” Obama wrote in Foreign Affairs, “ ‘To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required—not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.’ I will show the world that America remains true to its founding values. We lead not only for ourselves but also for the common good.”
The rhetoric, however, soars higher than the specifics.
