Way back in 2007, the blogosphere had a rocking debate over whether the Bush administration was gearing up to bomb Iran.  During that debate, a lot of netroots bloggers basically argued that the Bush administration was perfectly capable of executing a replay of its Iraq rollout. 

Today's New York Times front-pager by David Sanger suggests that what actually happened was a wee bit different: 

President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.

White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country’s only known uranium enrichment plant is located.

The White House denied that request outright, American officials said, and the Israelis backed off their plans, at least temporarily. But the tense exchanges also prompted the White House to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a major covert program that Mr. Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Barack Obama....

The interviews also suggest that while Mr. Bush was extensively briefed on options for an overt American attack on Iran’s facilities, he never instructed the Pentagon to move beyond contingency planning, even during the final year of his presidency, contrary to what some critics have suggested.

The interviews also indicate that Mr. Bush was convinced by top administration officials, led by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, that any overt attack on Iran would probably prove ineffective, lead to the expulsion of international inspectors and drive Iran’s nuclear effort further out of view. Mr. Bush and his aides also discussed the possibility that an airstrike could ignite a broad Middle East war in which America’s 140,000 troops in Iraq would inevitably become involved.

Read the whole thing -- there's a lot to digest. 

Steve Benen asks what would have happened if Don Rumsfeld had been SecDef rather than Gates.  I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that, in all likelihood, the outcome would have been the same.  I suspect even Don Rumsfeld would have been hesitant of making life harder for U.S. troops in Iraq.*

The reason I say this goes back to a bugaboo of mine.  An awful lot of bloggers and IR scholars developed arguments about the nature of U.S. foreign policy based primarily on the U.S. invasion of Iraq.  And, to be sure, it's an important data point.  It was also, however, an extreme outlier on several dimensions.  The political and strategic lay of the land in 2007 was radically different from 2002, and therefore imposed more serious constraints on the Bush administration.  It is also possible, maybe, that some learning took place among U.S. policymakers. 

*One Machiavellian exception -- perhaps Rumsfeld would have been OK with the bombing precisely because it would have made life difficult for U.S. troops in Iraq, thus necessitating their withdrawal -- which I suspect he wanted. 

Both Matt Yglesias and Ryan Powers are going after Condoleezza Rice for the following comments she made in a CNN interview: 

QUESTION: Do you regret your role in the Iraq war? SECRETARY RICE: I absolutely am so proud that we liberated Iraq. QUESTION: Really? SECRETARY RICE: Absolutely. And I’m especially, as a political scientist, not as Secretary of State, not as National Security Advisor, but as somebody who knows that structurally it matters that a geostrategically important country like Iraq is not Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, that this different Iraq under democratic leadership (emphasis added).

Both Matt and Ryan make the argument that since most political scientists opposed the war in Iraq -- and they did -- Rice is out of bounds here.  The CAP boys have half a point, but let's not go overboard.  First, their half-a-point --I agree with Matt and Ryan that Iraq was not a geostrategic threat.  It is worth remembering, however, that Iraq was causing some major strategic headaches at the time of the invasion.  That said, I also think Matt and Ryan are misreading Rice a little here.  In the follow-up to the excerpted portion above, Rice says, "we are at a place now where because of difficult decisions that the President took we have an Iraq that is well on its way to being a multiethnic, multiconfessional democracy."  So what Rice is talking about is the potential benefits of having a democracy spanning the Tigris and Euphrates.  And on this point, Rice is correct to assert that there were/are political science-y reasons for thinking that a stable, democratic Iraq was a Good Thing for the United States and the rest of the world.  Don't just take my word on this -- let's go to Shadi Hamid: 

Middle Eastern states, almost all of them dictatorships, constantly bicker amongst themselves and enter into relatively childish diplomatic rows over perceived and personal slights. There is no common Arab policy to any regional or international problem, because there seem to be little structural incentives to induce Arab leaders to make an effort to agree on big issues. Part of the problem is when foreign policy is largely determined by either one person, or a very small coterie of elites around the royal court, then foreign policy initiatives have less force of legitimacy and are less sustainable because they can always be reversed fairly easily. One could posit - as I will right now - that if Middle Eastern countries were relative democracies, they would be much more willing to cooperate with each other, and would be more willing to play strong, confident leadership roles in tacking difficult regional issues. Turkey, of course, is a good example of how this might look in practice. 

Now, let me stress that the political science consensus on this point is hardly uniform.  Most realists would dismiss the notion that regime type matters all that much.  And even some democratic peace proponents would point out that while consolidated democracies are just peachy, consolidating democracies are often more trouble than they are worth.  That said, however, based on these comments Condi Rice does not need to turn in her APSA card anytime soon. 

It was odd, when Barack Obama rolled out his national security team last week, that no intelligence appointments -- DNI, CIA -- were included Marc Ambinder blogs about some of the difficulties the Obama team is having with this task: 

President-elect Barack Obama is still mulling over whom to appoint to his intelligence cabinet.... Published reports say Obama is considering Adm. Dennis Blair (ret)., for the supervisory post of Director of National Intelligence; As of last week, Blair's nomination was not a fait accompli, although he was still in the running, sources said; some human rights activists have transmitted their disapproval to Obama's team.  Intelligence types who don't have transition connections or insider information noted that the name leaked out at the same time as Obama was said to be considering Gen. James Jones (Ret.) for the post of national security adviser and Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State; when those two announcements were formalized, Blair was not introduced as a member of Obama's national security team.... Sources say that Obama's team is having trouble finding a potential CIA director who lacks politically incriminating links to controversial Bush Administration policies and yet commands the respect of the agency's rank and file. 

Another problem with Blair in particular might be that he's landed on Foreign Policy's "10 Worst Predictions for 2008" list: 

“[In] reality the risks to maritime flows of oil are far smaller than is commonly assumed. First, tankers are much less vulnerable than conventional wisdom holds. Second, limited regional conflicts would be unlikely to seriously upset traffic, and terrorist attacks against shipping would have even less of an economic effect. Third, only a naval power of the United States’ strength could seriously disrupt oil shipments.” —Dennis Blair and Kenneth Lieberthal, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007

On Nov. 15, 2008 a group of Somali pirates in inflatable rafts hijacked a Saudi oil tanker carrying 2 million barrels of crude in the Indian Ocean. The daring raid was part of a rash of attacks by Somali pirates, which have primarily occurred in the Gulf of Aden. Pirates operating in the waterway have hijacked more than 50 ships this year, up from only 13 in all of last year, according to the Piracy Reporting Center. The Gulf of Aden, where nearly 4 percent of the world’s oil demand passes every day, was not on the list of strategic “chokepoints” where oil shipments could potentially be disrupted that Blair and Lieberthal included in their essay, “Smooth Sailing: The World’s Shipping Lanes Are Safe.” Hopefully, Blair will show a bit more foresight if, as some expect, he is selected as Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence. 

Whoops! 

Alex Massie throws some cold water on the idea that the mere act of electing Barack Obama will lead to more cooperation with Europe on key trouble spots like Afghanistan or Iran:

Perhaps Obama really can persuade European public opinion. But since, as matters stand, no-one thinks there's a military solution to the Afghan problem I'm not quite sure what Obama can offer to make the mission any more appealling. Put yourself in Danish or Portuguese or Italian shoes: what's in it for you? Why would you join a mission no-one thinks is winnable? (Maybe a new strategy can change that, but that too is something that remains to be seen.) It isn't simply Iraq; it's the growing perception that many people feel they have little to know idea why, nearly seven years later, we're still in Afghanistan. What are we actually doing there? What can we actually realistically hope to achieve?.... It would be lovely to think that Obama can bring a new period of transatlantic harmony. But it just isn't the case that American interests are necessarily the same as European interests. The Security Card trumped everything during the Cold War but these are changed times. And there were, in any case, always more differences than seemed the case then too, these days they're much clearer to see. A new President may find it difficult to change that. Or, to put it another way, he may need to give something up himself to advance American interests in other areas.

Alex is right to point out the centrality of common security interests to transatlantic security cooperation.  I don't think the divergence of interests is as great as he thinks, however, in part because Obama's strategy allows his to display credible commitments that Bush could not.  On Afghanistan, for example, the problem the Bush administration always had with getting more allied support was the perception among many allies that the U.S. wanted NATO help in that theatre so they could focus on Iraq.  If Obama pursues his graduated withdrawal strategy and expanded soft power capabilities, however, he's going to be able to ask for European help while simultaneously augmenting U.S. forces and resources in the Afghan theater.  States are much more willing to cooperate when they sense a serious commitment by the lead actor.  Contra Alex, I think a lot of European foreign policy elites do see the security and foreign policy benefits of doubling down in Afghanistan -- if anything, events in Mumbai merely reinforce that belief.  Their concern has always been with the lack of U.S. focus and resources in the region.  By committing greater resources -- which has been Obama's message for some time now -- I think he can square the circle with the Europeans.  [Of course, note that this is all highly dependent on the stability of Iraq.  Either Iraq maintains its current level of stability, or Obama must be willing to reallocate troops away from Iraq despite a worsening security situation there.]  I tried to make some of these points last night in a  discussion of this topic on TVO's The Agenda with Steve Paikin, but I was blinded by Jeff Kopstein's hearty California glow.  Nevertheless, true groupies can watch it below: 

 

 

My latest bloggingheads diavlog is up, with Heather Hurlburt.  Topics discussed include the Mumbai attacks, Al Qaeda's networked structure, the politics of fear, my plan to bulk up the State Department -- now with the catchphrase "Bloat, baby bloat!!" -- and a request from readers to name the Drezner-Hurlburt bloggingheads duo.  Go check it out.   

From today's New York Times editorial about Obama's foreign policy team: 

Another failing of the Bush administration was that neither the president nor his two secretaries of state were “closers” who could set a foreign-policy goal (Israeli-Palestinian peace, for instance) and then develop and execute a strategy to achieve it. We have more faith that the Obama-Clinton duo will do so.

Look, there's a lot of fault to find in the current administration, but if the bar for success is closing the deal on an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, well, then every administration in American history has failed.  I have marginally greater confidence that an Obama-Clinton team can move the ball forward on a peace deal.  I have no faith in any American administration to actually achieve real peace in the region anytime soon.    There's a difference between having an ideological affinity for a politician and consuming multiple shots of Kool-Aid within a single minute.  I think this editorial falls under the latter category. As Anton Ego would say, the NYT editorial team could use some perspective.  They should go read this Robert D. Kaplan essay.

As Barack Obama prepares to announce his foreign policy and national security team, I find myself reflecting on something Dani Rodrik blogged about last week: 

If you are bright and are contemplating a potential career in American politics, you go to a top law school--not a public policy school.  This does not seem to have changed much in recent decades despite everything [Harvard's Kennedy School of Government] has done to make itself visible and relevant.

While I'm glad that the Fletcher School can claim at least one cabinet appointment, Rodrik raises an interesting question -- why do law school grads get the foreign policy jobs coveted by public policy school grads?  I can think of a couple of reasons.  The first is really simple -- if you're going to be writing laws, it helps to be a lawyer.  The second reason is simple path dependence.  The original gangsters of the foreign policy community were lawyers.  The best way to get a top policymaking job is to made your mark by serving as a loyal deputy to past top policymakers.  Since people are more likely to hire their own, it's not surprising that lawyers would hire other lawyers.  The second reason is signaling.  Follow this logic:

1. A top policymaking job requires three key attributes:  leadership, discipline, and policy expertise
2. Policy expertise can be earned from various sources -- a public policy degree is one avenue, but hardly the only one
3. A public policy degree, on the other hand, is much more fun to earn than a law degree.  Which means it requires less discipline.
4. By getting a law degree, aspirants to top policymaking jobs are signaling to observers that they can grind their way through a serious amount of drudgery.  
5. Ergo, lawyers with significant policymaking experience are more likely to have the discipline necessary to be good at their jobs.

Commenters are encouraged to proffer more reasons in the comments.  On the other hand, I have no explanation for this: 

Of the first 15 cabinet and White House appointments announced by president-elect Barack Obama... three earned degrees from the nondescript buildings off the Strand that house the London School of Economics. The selections of Peter Orszag as budget director and Pete Rouse and Mona Sutphen to the senior White House staff means the LSE only has two less graduates than Harvard in team Obama. LSE currently has one more than traditional American powerhouse universities Princeton (Michelle Obama’s alma mater); Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Michigan Law School. Mighty Yale can boast only one graduate, Gregory Craig, the next presidential legal counsel, though Hillary Clinton and James Steinberg will triple the score if they end up at the state department.

 

Now that it appears that Hillary Clinton is going to be the next Secretary of State, the Trickle Down Panic is ensuing.  Namely, if Ms. Clinton is the next SoS, will she be picking her own team to staff the senior positions?  Spencer Ackerman, Greg Sargent, and Steve Benen have already written on this.  Ackerman gets at the nub of the problem: 

Some progressive Obama supporters think the arrival of Clinton at the State Dept. will mean they’ll be frozen out. That would have implications for their advancement in subsequent Democratic administrations. “Basically, you have all of these young, next-generation and mid-career people who took a chance on Obama” during the primaries, said one Democratic foreign-policy expert included in that cohort. “They were many times the ones who were courageous enough to stand up early against Iraq, which is why many of them supported Obama in the first place. And many of them would likely get shut out of the mid-career and assistant-secretary type jobs that you need, so that they can one day be the top people running a future Democratic administration.” In the foreign-policy bureaucracy, these middle-tier jobs — assistant secretary and principal-deputy-assistant and deputy-assistant — are stepping stones to bigger, more important jobs, because they’re where much of the actual policy-making is hashed out. Those positions flesh out strategic decisions made by the president and cabinet secretaries; implement those policies; and use their expertise to both inform decisions and propose targeted or specific solutions to particular crises. The responsibility conferred on those offices, and the expertise developed and deepened by their occupants, shape the future luminaries of U.S. foreign policy. Susan Rice, for example, served as assistant secretary of state for African affairs in Bill Clinton’s second term and is now a leading contender for a top job in the Obama administration. “These are your foreign-policy change agents,” said the Democratic foreign-policy expert.

Sargent names names: 

Among the Hillary people you can imagine going with her to the State Department are old-guard types such as Richard Holbrooke, Jamie Rubin, and Michael O'Hanlon. While some of Obama's foreign policy advisers had served under Bill Clinton, Obama had plenty of fresher faces, such as Samantha Power, who during the campaign strongly condemned the Hillary "conventional wisdom" foreign policy mindset that might dominate should she be elected president.... The question is whether Hillary people at State will muddle what is arguably Obama's overarching foreign policy ambition: Fundamental change in the way national security is discussed in this country and a true and enduring transformation of our own views of what constitutes just and practical uses of our military power abroad. The dynamic bears watching.

As an outsider to this whole process, these concerns strike me as massively overlown, for a few reasons.  First, as I said before, I'm not sure how much of a gap there is between Clinton and Obama on policy substance.  This public but anonymous fretting has more to do with jobs than with policy positions.  [UPDATE:  See this Thomas P.M. Barnett post to get a sense of the inside-the-Beltway anxiety on this point -- or, click on this TNI online essay of mine from earlier in the month.] Second, I'm not sure how large Clinton's coterie will be.  One of the problems her campaign had on the foreign policy side was an overreliance on senior policy advisors -- Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger, to name two of them.  They aren't going into the Obama administration.  Clinton had fewer people attached to her to staff Assistant Secretary of State positions, so I don't think there would be a large crowding out effect (Holbrooke might go in as Deputy SoS -- but I'm not completely convinced that such an arrangement would work for either him or Clinton).  Maybe Lee Feinstein will displace Samantha Power as Policy Planning director, but other than that there won't be much difference.  Third, my hunch is that a lot of Obama's 300 will be headed to the National Security Council staff.  Now, whether they have influence there depends largely on the relationship between Clinton and Obama, but the NSC is another place where future bigfeet start cutting their teeth.  Disgruntled Obama-ites should feel free to comment/e-mail me if they think I misreading the lay of the land. 

Culture11 is hosting a bunch of international relations geeks experts on the foreign policy environment that Barack Obama faces as he assumes the presidency.  They asked for my take -- here's my closing: 

[T]he trend line is disturbing. The distribution of power is shifting away from the United States. The distribution of preferences is also shifting away from America. The Washington Consensus is a dead letter, and American values seem less enticing than they did a decade ago. Simply put, at the end of 2008 the United States generated less respect, less influence, less goodwill, less standing, and less relative power in world politics than it did at any time during the post-Cold War era. It is difficult for a single administration to beat back these kind of gale-wind structural forces. It is worth remembering, however, that five years ago the foreign policy discourse was all about the unprecedented agglomeration of American power. The best thing an Obama administration can do is avoid further overextension – with luck, the “soft power” bump that Obama’s election might generate will provide cover the retrenchment of hard power resources. These resources should be devoted to boosting America’s economic productivity, innovation, and infrastructure. Historically, America’s comparative advantage has been its ability to respond more nimbly to crises than other countries in the world. We’ll see if that historical generality holds for the near future as well.  

Be sure to check out Dan Nexon's take as well.  And, if you want some escape from international relations, Kyle Smith has a sharp essay explaining why 30 Rock is such a subversive and effective takedown of Sex and the City. 

Scott Helman quotes me going against the grain in his Boston Globe story today.  Here's his lead: 

If President-elect Barack Obama taps Senator Hillary Clinton to be his secretary of state, he would be giving her oversight of an area where the two former rivals diverged sharply during their prolonged primary battle: foreign policy. From their first clashes in the summer of 2007 through spring this year, Obama and Clinton fought bitterly over who had a deeper understanding of the world, exchanging sharp words over their international experience and their views on diplomacy, military strikes against terrorists, the right approach toward Iran, and the genesis of the Iraq war. It is the one arena in which Obama and Clinton articulated significantly different visions. On a host of other issues - taxes, healthcare, jobs, free trade, investments in renewable energy - their positions were often indistinguishable.

And here's my quote: 

Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University, however, disputes the notion that Obama and Clinton differed significantly during the primary race on foreign affairs, arguing that on issues such as diplomacy, their heated rhetoric belied a broad similarity in approach. "A lot of the foreign policy skirmishes between the two were more about style than anything else," he said.

Looking over Helman's evidence, I stand by my quote.  In my memory, Obama and Clinton bickered more over health care than foreign policy (though they clearly bickered about both), and their sharpest disagreement was about the Iraq decision in 2002/3.  They had to disagree on something because it was a primary and they needed to differentiate themselves.  That does not mean there is a lot of daylight between them on substantive policy questions.  Readers are encouraged to tell me if they think my assessment is wrong.  I have two additional thoughts abut Hillary as SoS:

1. Because of her rock star quality, I suspect she would be a diplomatic force multiplier.  Countries will be more appreciative of a visit by Hillary Clinton than they would if Richard Holbrooke, Bill Richardson or John Kerry were coming to town. 
2. Based on her management abilities to date, I fear for the denizens of Foggy Bottom.  The State Department is a whopper of a bureaucracy, and I don't know how well she'll do at managing it. 

UPDATE:  Politico's Ben Smith has a good story on the nausea a Clinton appointment is creating among some Obama supporters.  He quotes this Matt Yglesias post claiming that, "the specific policy area at issue seems to be one in which the two of them aren’t all that well-aligned," but, again, the biggest difference is over a decision made six years ago.  Smith also quotes Robert Kuttner saying it's a bad idea -- and since Kuttner is one of my anti-predictors, I'm now warming to the idea.  In a follow-up blog post, Smith adds, " there was ever a campaign that took the complaints of liberal bloggers seriously, it was ... well, not Obama's."  Heh. 

My latest bloggingheads diavlog is with the National Security Network's Heather Hurlburt.  We chat a little biyt about the election and some on the current contours of the global financial crisis.  The real value-added, however, is Heather's advice to seekers of administration positions: 

 

Check out the whole conversation.  Longtime readers of danieldrezner.com, who have served in political appointments in the executive branch, are encouaged to proffer their own advice in the comments. 

That's the question I ponder in my latest Newsweek International essay.  Shorter Drezner: Obama has a better chance at doing this than many realists believe -- but he can partly thank George W. Bush for this.  Go check it out. 

Over at Inside Higher Ed, Scott McLemee asked a bunch of people -- your humble blogger included -- to recommend the book that the next president should read before taking office.  I went old, old school: 

I’d probably advise the president to read the uber-source for international relations, Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Too many people only read portions like the Melian Dialogue, which leads to a badly distorted view of world politics (the dialogue represents the high-water mark of Athenian power — it all goes downhill after that). The entire text demonstrates the complex and tragic features of international politics, the folly of populism, the occasional necessity of forceful action, the temptations and dangers of empire, and, most importantly, the ways in which external wars can transform domestic politics in unhealthy ways.

 I was torn between Thucydides and Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, but I figured -- correctly -- that Obama was already familiar with that work. I'll put the same question to you that Scott put to me:  what one book would you recommend to the president-elect? 

It's easy to overlook this sort of thing, but the Bush deserves a lot of credit for trying to facilitate the transition process to the next president.  Doing things like fast-tracking FBI background checks and the like will hopefully prevent a repeat of 2001, when key #2 and #3 subcabinet positions had yet to be filled.  The sclerotic pace of staffing key positions in the government has been a bipartisan lament for some time now.  It's good to see that the process has improved since 2000.  Marc Ambinder has more on this.