War on terror
The offshore prison camp at Guantanamo that resonated so strongly in George Bush’s presidency could be near its end. On Wednesday President Barack Obama circulated a draft of an executive order to shut down the camp ”as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order”.
The order also calls for an end to the widely condemned military trials of al-Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo to allow the new administration to conduct a full-scale review of the military commissions system.
Military judges ordered a 120-day suspension of the trial of the former teenage soldier Omar Khadr, due to start on January 26 and suspended pre-trial hearings for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other accused in the 2001 attacks in the United States. Human rights groups viewed the order as the beginning of the end for the widely condemned system of military tribunals and the regime of indefinite detention at Guantanamo.
Iran
The new administration is willing to talk to Iran ”without preconditions” and will work towards the abolition of nuclear weapons, the White House said this week.
The foreign policy agenda that appeared on the White House website declared: ”Barack Obama supports tough and direct diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.”
The Bush administration made direct talks between the US and Iran conditional on Iranian suspension of its uranium enrichment programme.
The Obama initiative represents a distinct break from that policy, as part of a fundamental shift in diplomatic approach. The Obama agenda said the new administration would ”talk to our foes and friends” and not set preconditions.
But any talks with Iran will put on the table the same deal that the international community has been trying to get Tehran to accept for the past four years: extensive economic and diplomatic help if uranium enrichment is suspended, further economic pressure and diplomatic isolation if it is not.
Iran has resisted this carrot-and-stick approach thus far, despite four sets of UN sanctions, but western diplomats hope that direct engagement by Washington will help break the impasse by opening up the possibility of a ”grand bargain” addressing other regional and international issues.
”In carrying out this diplomacy, we will coordinate closely with our allies and proceed with careful preparation,” the White House said.
Nuclear
The other notable shift in US foreign policy is the announcement of a strategic decision to move towards a ”nuclear-free world” through bilateral and multilateral disarmament.
According to the agenda ”Obama and [vice-president Joe] Biden will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it”. It is a long-term goal. The US will maintain a ”strong deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist”, but begin to take steps on the ”long road towards eliminating nuclear weapons”.
The development of new nuclear weapons will be stopped, a sharp change from the policies of the Bush administration, which pushed for a new generation of warheads, and the new administration will work with Moscow to take US and Russian missiles off their current hair-trigger alert, while seeking ”dramatic reductions in US and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons and material”.
Meanwhile, the administration aims in its first term to secure all ”loose” nuclear material around the world. There are US programmes already under way to shift fissile material from former Soviet bloc countries, where security is often slack, back to Russia for conversion to less dangerous, low-enriched nuclear fuel.
Energy security
Washington plans in the next 10 years to reduce US dependence on oil through a $150-billion investment in renewable and alternative energies, hoping to ”create millions of jobs along the way”. Obama also plans to make the US a ”leader” in the global effort to combat climate change at the head of an international partnership, presumably a reference to the UN process to find a successor treaty to the Kyoto accords.
Israel-Palestine
There is little comfort for the Palestinians in the strategy laid out yesterday, which combines the promotion of a two-state solution with strong support for Israel’s security, described as ”our first and incontrovertible commitment in the Middle East”.
The US ”will never distance itself from Israel”, the policy document declares, adding that it backs Israel’s ”right to self-defence” in the case of the 2006 Lebanon war, and does not mention the recent Gaza incursions. Achieving a two-state settlement will be ”a key diplomatic priority from day one”.
Afghanistan
The Obama administration confidently asserts that it will ”finish the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan”, a remarkable claim in view of predictions by generals and diplomats that the struggle could take a generation.
The new agenda confirms that Obama will increase troop levels in Afghanistan, but does not give numbers. The expected increase is up to 30 000, doubling the current US force there. The administration will ”press” Nato allies to do the same, a request that may well create tension with Europe early in Obama’s term.
The new administration will, meanwhile, ”dedicate more resources to revitalise Afghanistan’s economic development” but demand a crackdown by the Afghan government on corruption and the opium trade. Efforts by the coalition partners in Afghanistan to do that have so far made no progress.
Washington will increase non-military aid to neighbouring Pakistan, though making the government in Islamabad ”accountable for security in the border region”. Again it is not clear how this will be done. To date Pakistani military operations against jihadists in the tribal areas have been bloody but ineffectual.
Iraq
In a measure of how far the debate on Iraq has moved in recent months, the war does not even rate a separate heading in the new foreign policy agenda, only a phrase promising the incoming team ”will end the war in Iraq responsibly”.
Clean government
President Barack Obama told his White House staff they could expect ”a clean break with business as usual”, including a tightening of the rules on lobbyists working in government and a salary freeze for aides earning more than $100 000.
”During this period of economic emergency, families are tightening their belts, and so should Washington,” Obama told about 50 of his senior staff members and the press.
Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff and the most senior aide, earns $172 000 a year, as do several other White House personnel.
The president said he would extend from one to two years the period that government officials must wait before they can work on issues they previously lobbied on. He also announced a ban on staff receiving gifts from lobbyists, and promised an improvement in public access to government documents.
”Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this administration,” he said. Americans, he went on, ”deserve a government that truly is of, and by, the American people … We need to make the White House the people’s house.”–