![[Brent Scowcroft]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/HC-GN052_Scowcr_BV_20081123170555.gif)
Brent Scowcroft
Posted on 05/29/2009 11:08:12 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
WASHINGTON -- Many of the Republicans emerging as potential members of the Obama administration have professional and ideological ties to Brent Scowcroft, a former national-security adviser turned public critic of the Bush White House.
Mr. Scowcroft spoke by phone with President-elect Barack Obama last week, the latest in a months-long series of conversations between the two men about defense and foreign-policy issues, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Brent Scowcroft
The relationship between the president-elect and the Republican heavyweight suggests that Mr. Scowcroft's views, which place a premium on an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, might hold sway in the Obama White House.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was deputy national-security adviser under Mr. Scowcroft in the George H.W. Bush administration, is almost certain to be retained by Mr. Obama, according to aides to the president-elect. Richard Haass, a Scowcroft protégé and former State Department official, could be tapped for a senior National Security Council, State Department or intelligence position. Mr. Haass currently runs the Council on Foreign Relations.
Other prominent Republicans with close ties to Mr. Obama -- including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who endorsed the Democrat in the final days of the campaign, and Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- share Mr. Scowcroft's philosophy.
"I think most of my close associates have a generally similar view," Mr. Scowcroft said in an interview. "What's the old story about birds of a feather?"
Mr. Scowcroft said his biggest piece of advice for the new administration was that it should make a renewed push to help broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. He also endorsed Mr. Obama's call for diplomatic engagement with Iran.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Then there is North Korea and their recent tests....not sure what Scowcroft has advised in the past.
FYI
hmmmmm..... Very Interesting...
thats interesting
Snowcroft is a heavy weight Republican? Only person I truly like out of the GHW Bush Administration is Dick Cheney who was the only cabinet member to say he would never trust the Russians when Bush #41 was bending over backwards.
Cheney is a heavy weight in Republican circles while I consider Snowcroft, Powell, and the rest of that circle lightweights.
So ZERO reached out to him to get bi-partisan support. Didn’t work because Snowcroft never spoke for the vast majority of Republicans. I would say Dick Cheney speaks for a lot more of us.
/sarcasm
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By E. J. Dionne Jr. Friday, November 28, 2008; Page A29
In electing Barack Obama, the country traded the foreign policy of the second President Bush for the foreign policy of the first President Bush.
That is the meaning of Obama's apparent decision to keep Robert Gates on as defense secretary and also to select Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.
With strong ties to the military and a carefully cultivated image of tough-mindedness, Clinton will protect the incoming president's back from those on the right ready to pounce at any sign of what they see as weakness.
As for Gates, Obama has found the ideal figure to help him organize his planned withdrawal from Iraq, and to bless it.
What's most striking about Obama's approach to foreign policy is that he is less an idealist than a realist who would advance American interests by diplomacy, by working to improve the country's image abroad, and by using military force prudently and cautiously.
This sounds a lot like the foreign policy of George H.W. Bush, and it makes perfect sense that Obama has had conversations with the senior Bush's closest foreign policy adviser, Brent Scowcroft. Obama has drawn counsel from many in Scowcroft's circle, and Gates himself was deputy national security adviser under Scowcroft.
The truth about Obama's worldview was hidden in plain sight in his most politically consequential foreign policy speech. Antiwar Democrats cheered Obama for addressing a rally against the Iraq war in Chicago's Federal Plaza on Oct. 2, 2002. His opposition to the war was a major asset in his nomination struggle with Clinton.
Obama did indeed denounce the impending war as "dumb," "rash" and "based not on reason but on passion." But in retrospect, the speech may be most notable for other things Obama said that separated him from some in his antiwar audience.
Not once but five times did Obama declare, "I don't oppose all wars." The first several paragraphs of the speech were devoted to the wars that Obama thought were justified: the Civil War, World War II -- in which, he said, "that arsenal of democracy . . . triumphed over evil" -- and the battle against terrorism after the attacks of Sept. 11. "I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again," he said.
The thrust of his argument against the Iraq invasion was a classic realist's critique of a war he denounced as "ideological." It would, he said, "require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences." It also would "fan the flames of the Middle East" and "strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda."
Ah....the “stability” crowd.
Too bad their kind of stability means Israel’s destruction.
I used to know an Army vet who utterly despised Scowcroft to the very depths of his soul.
He would never say why, but I’m sure he had a good reason.
Scrowcroft’s influence explains a lot of the infighting in the Bush Administration and the failed policy toward Syria and Iran.
Did he work with the guy? Not much doubt that the guy is in the pocket of the Saudis. More to the point, so is the Bush family.
Netanyahu: "What the hell do they want from me?"
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Last night, shortly after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told journalists that the Obama administration "wants to see a stop to settlements -- not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a confidante. Referring to Clinton's call for a settlement freeze, Netanyahu groused, "What the hell do they want from me?" according to his associate, who added, "I gathered that he heard some bad vibes in his meetings with [U.S.] congressional delegations this week."
In the 10 days since Netanyahu and President Barack Obama held a meeting at the White House, the Obama administration has made clear in public and private meetings with Israeli officials that it intends to hold a firm line on Obama's call to stop Israeli settlements. According to many observers in Washington and Israel, the Israeli prime minister, looking for loopholes and hidden agreements that have often existed in the past with Washington, has been flummoxed by an unusually united line that has come not just from Obama White House and the secretary of state, but also from pro-Israel congressmen and women who have come through Israel for meetings with him over Memorial Day recess. To Netanyahu's dismay, Obama doesn't appear to have a hidden policy. It is what he said it was.
"This is a sea change for Netanyahu," a former senior Clinton administration official who worked on Middle East issues said. The official said that the basis of the Obama White House's resolve is the conviction that it is in the United States' as well as Israel's interest to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "We have significant, existential threats that Israel faces from Iran and that the U.S. faces from this region. It is in our mutual interest to end this conflict, and to begin to build new regional alliances."
Netanyahu needed to engage Obama directly, the former official said. "Now that he has done so, and also sent a team of advisors to meet [special envoy to the Middle East George] Mitchell, he has very clearly received a message: ‘I meant what I said on settlements. No natural growth. No elasticity. There will be a clear settlement freeze.'" (Netanyahu sent a team of advisors including minister for intelligence Dan Meridor for meetings with Mitchell in London Monday.)
"Over the past 15 years, settlements have gone from being seen in Washington as an irritant, to the dominant issue," says Georgetown Univeristy Middle East expert Daniel Byman. He pointed out that key figures in the Obama administration -- Mitchell, who headed the Mitchell Commission, which recommended a halt to settlements; national security advisor Gen. Jim Jones -- see the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, home to some 290,000 people, as a key obstacle to getting a peace settlement. "I don't think the logic is hidden," Byman said.
It's not just the administration that's delivering Netanyahu that message, however. Whereas in the past Israeli leaders have sometimes eased pressure from Washington on the settlements issue by going to members of Congress, this time, observers in Washington and Israel say, key pro-Israel allies in Congress have been largely reinforcing the Obama team's message to Netanyahu. What changed? "Members of Congress have more willing to follow the leadership of the administration ... because [they] believe it is in our national security interest to move toward ending the conflict and that it is not a zero sum for Israel," the former senior Clinton administration official said.
"Netanyahu and [Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman are probing, looking for areas they can get space gratis from the United States," says Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force for Palestine. "And they are not finding it."
They want Israel to disappear.
After all, the pali’s are so much more civilized. Will contribute so much more to the good of society. Their literature, their medical inventions, their bomb making, oops.
Hmmmmm!
I fear their thinking is that if there were no Israel the Middle East problem would go away.
Or, if their were no neocons, the Middle East problem would go away.
Scowcroft is a ‘Soft’ power advocate, if I’m not mistaken.
********************************EXCERPT***********************
April 03, 2008 03:09 PM EDT (Updated: April 24, 2008 11:45 AM EDT)
by Larissa Anderson
Joseph Nye says it's time for Americans to redefine their idea of leadership. Nye, the inventor of the term "soft power," is out with a new book titled "The Powers to Lead," in which he argues that in the information age, the old approach of leadership by command, or "hard power," is outdated. He says the most effective leaders know how to balance coercion with charisma ... "hard" and "soft" power ... and they know when and how much to use of each.
He says Americans tend to be too "one-dimensional" in their idea of power and leadership. Here's what he said in a recent speech at the Commonwealth Club of California, featured on Word for Word:
"We tend to think about leadership in terms of what I sometimes call the big man, the man with certain traits, the decider, the decisive person, but that's not the right way to think about leadership. Leadership depends on a leader, followers and context in which they interact."
Is it political suicide for politicians to publicly advocate the use of "soft power"? Do Americans see "soft power" as wimpy? How does someone learn how to balance "hard" and "soft" power? Have any of our leaders used an appropriate balance of these different styles? What are the qualities of an effective leader? What's the most effective approach to leadership -- the best way to get people to do things?
_____________________
Larissa Anderson
Producer
The Powers to Lead (Hardcover)
***********************************
by Joseph S. Nye (Author)
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