The Two Forces in Obama’s Diplomatic Team

Right after he became President of the United States, Barack Obama gathered talents from various quarters to form his diplomatic team, and Senator Hillary Clinton and General James Jones were appointed as the secretary of state and United States national security advisor, respectively. Many of the high-ranking officials in their service were the brains for President Bill Clinton when he was in office.

Mr. Obama had two points of consideration for selecting Hillary Clinton to be the secretary of state. One was that she had greatly supported Mr. Obama as a form of political repayment after she lost during the primary election. The other was to fully utilize her training, experience and prestige in the political arena. As Hillary Clinton had accompanied President Clinton on his many visits as the first lady, as well as having been a member of the Senate Armed Service Committee for many years, she had experienced the many changes in global situations and was rather deeply involved in U.S. diplomacy.　

Obama seeks to enhance the National Security Council’s decision-making capability

Mr. Obama’s reason for recruiting General Jones, who had served as the commander-in-chief of the NATO military forces and the commandant of the Marine Corps, was that he is an independent thinker and has the air of a scholar-general, is gentle in nature and steady in his manner and way of handling things.

Gen. Jones graduated from the United States Military Academy and studied international relations at Washington’s renowned Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. After he retired from the military ranks, he joined the boards of directors at Boeing and Chevron. As a military personnel, he once sternly criticized Bush’s impoliteness in the Iraq War and rebuked the hawkish U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for “systematically castrating” the U.S.’s military functions. He had declined to take up the post of commander of the U.S. Central Command and had also declined Condoleezza Rice’s invitation to succeed Robert Zoellick as the deputy secretary of state.

The U.S. National Security Council was first founded in 1947. It started out as a group of secretaries in the earliest incarnation of the White House and developed into an important policy-making organization, comprised of over ten Interagency Working Groups (IWG) and over 200 aides and staff. Its office, however, is not located in the White House, but in a gray administrative building nearby, known affectionately as the Old White House.

According to the Washington Post, Mr. Obama paid great attention to the National Security Council after he came into office. He decided to increase its membership to enhance its policy-making function, revised domestic and foreign policies in order to rectify the serious errors of the Bush administration, and endowed the National Security Council with greater authority.

In terms of responsibilities, the secretary of state focuses on the external and in execution, whereas the national security advisor focuses on the internal and in planning. Both sides must share the work and coordinate with each other under the direct leadership of the president to execute U.S. global foreign policy.

Hillary Clinton wants to be the chief U.S. diplomat

The reality, however, was that the very ambitious Hillary Clinton stated clearly during the State Department’s welcome party that “the U.S. diplomacy has three legs: national defense, diplomacy, and development. We are responsible for two of them.” The State Department under her charge was going to change its old ways of concerning themselves only with politics and nothing else and to extend the scope of diplomacy to areas like the economy, military, politics, law and even culture.

In light of Hillary’s thinking, even if she did not make it public, it was obvious that she wanted the State Department to be above all the other departments in the U.S. that were engaged in foreign affairs, and it should also certainly not be below the National Security Council.

Since taking up the job, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton started U.S. Smart Power diplomatic activities in an aggressive manner. Hillary went on three consecutive whirlwind tours, starting with Japan, South Korea and China in Asia, then to the Middle East, and subsequently to Europe, thereby sufficiently exhibiting the fact that she is not inferior to any man, as well as the loftiness of wanting to become the chief diplomat for the U.S.

In reality, as the right-hand men for the president’s diplomacy, conflicts and friction between the two parallel organizations that were the State Department and the National Security Council had long been known to the world as indispensable interludes in Washington’s political arena.

Many past Secretaries of State had lost their power

In the ‘60s, President John F. Kennedy appointed Harvard University Dean of Faculty McGeorge Bundy as the U.S. national security advisor, causing Secretary of State David Dean Rusk to lose his power. During the Nixon era, Henry Kissinger gained favor in the eyes of President Nixon for his skillful handling of the strategic triangle relation between the U.S., the U.S.S.R and China, to the point that he even had disregard for Secretary of State William P. Rogers. Kissinger was answerable to only one man, and not only was he able to have direct phone access to London, Paris and Bonn, but he had also opened a private diplomatic channel secretly outside of the State Department and had secret diplomatic communications with the U.S.S.R, Northern Vietnam and China.

In order to hide things from the State Department, Kissinger deliberately prepared three versions of his trip to Pakistan to be made public. He treated Rogers’ State Department as a rival and kept Rogers out of key policies. As he had also shut out the other units, the U.S. Central Command had no other choice but to plant a spy in the White House to find out what Kissinger and his gang were up to.

When he was appointed the secretary of state by Nixon in 1973, the wily Kissinger actually merged the appointments of national security advisor and secretary of state into one. He monopolized U.S. diplomacy and delegated the routine duties of the National Security Council to his deputy Brent Scowcroft.

Scowcroft later became George Bush Sr.’s national security advisor. Though Scowcroft had kept a low profile, he had played a far more important role than that of a secretary of state. During the 1963 Tiananmen Square incident, he was the only one in his office who could get on the phone with the Zhongnanhai. He also made a secret visit to Beijing as a special envoy for the president to meet Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese leaders.

Things changed during the Clinton era as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger were both relatively low profile. Berger would have lunch or breakfast once every week with Albright and Secretary of Defense William Cohen. When he went on visits, the State Department would send people to accompany him, and when Albright went on her visits, she would be followed by people sent by the National Security Council. Both of them made a pact not to chide each other publicly and to reprove oneself when necessary. If either side made a slip, they were to inform one another in private beforehand.

As for the George Bush Jr. era, everyone could see that Secretary of State Colin Powell was not as close to and trusted by the president as Condoleezza Rice was. It was no wonder that he resigned from office even before his term was up.

Who will be the U.S.’s leading diplomat?

The spotlight is now on Clinton and Jones. How will things be between the two of them? Jones will undoubtedly play the part of Kissinger, and so he expressed that he would follow Scrowcroft’s example and be an “honest broker” and avoid employing methods that strained relations as in the past. However, he also said that there will be “dramatic changes” in his National Security Council compared to the past and his function would extend into the areas of energy, climate changes and even to the construction of nationwide infrastructure. This means to say that the scope of his functions and power would overlap with Hillary Clinton’s, which will inevitably cause a relapse of the division and frictions between the White House and the State Department. Which of them will take the lead in the new power struggle between the two organizations and be the top diplomat would depend on the extent of Clinton’s and Jones’ run-ins with each other, and even more so on President Obama’s skills and resolve.