I urge everyone to read Spencer Ackerman's cover story over at TAP, "The Obama Doctrine." By speaking at length with Obama's foreign policy team, he lays out two central tenets of the Illinois' senator's foreign policy vision that differentiate him from both Clinton and McCain: a rejection of fear and an emphasis on "dignity promotion."
As Hayes' points out, the piece doesn't address a few key aspects of Obama's platform that don't necessarily gel with said vision. My only question is why the hell they want to add 90,000 troops to the US Army, refuse to call for a ban of mercenaries, and won’t commit to a full withdrawal. It's also debatable whether military counterinsurgency programs are the best means to meet the needs of the world's dispossessed (I'm skeptical to say the least). But an approach that takes into account local context and human needs is certainly preferable to the Bush line, which pushes democracy as a cure all, and a Commander in Chief who reinvisions our place in the world is long overdue. The Obama foreign-policy team describes it as "the politics of fear," a phrase most advisers used unprompted in our conversations. "For a long time we've not seen much creative thinking from Dems on national security, because, out of fear, we want to be a little different from the Republicans but not too different, out of fear of being labeled weak or indecisive," another top adviser says. Identifying that fear as the accelerant of the Iraq War mind-set is the first step to a new and innovative foreign policy. John Kerry was not able to argue for fundamental change in foreign policy because he was consumed by that very political fear. Obama's admonition to Democrats is much like Pope John Paul II's to the Gdansk shipyard strikers -- first, be not afraid. The only thing I'm scared of: what if the voters reject it?
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Adam Doster, a contributing editor at In These Times, is a Chicago-based freelance writer and former reporter-blogger for Progress Illinois.
