Jan. 20 marked the inauguration of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States. With Obama’s ascendancy, the much-hated Bush administration’s tenure became history.
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The Obama administration, in its first few days, has taken action to reinforce that view. Just two days after taking the oath of office, Obama issued an executive order creating a task force to study the feasibility of closing the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, within the year. He also ordered the shuttering of CIA prisons abroad, and repealed a Bush executive order allowing the use of torture during prisoner interrogations.
The same day, Obama reversed a ban on federal funding for non-governmental organizations outside the United States that offer abortions or abortion counseling.
Upon examination, it is clear many of these actions are for public relations alone. They partially roll back, but do not eliminate, some of the Bush administration’s most despised policies: unending imprisonment, kidnapping, torture, dehumanization of whole peoples, and attacks on women’s rights.
The new Democratic administration’s initial dictates may seem like a new way forward for the United States. They may appear to signal the introduction of more liberal policies, but they do not. None break from the traditional policies of U.S. imperialism that were the norm before the Bush administration. They are a simple return to the pre-Bush status quo, a safety valve for the incredible anger aimed at the Bush administration.
It is only because the Bush administration was so bellicose that these changes seem significant. Democratic and Republican presidents have all presided over the imperialist system without going as far as the Bush administration did over the last eight years. Getting back to basics is not real change. It is more of the same.
Obama dubbed his overall orientation as a return to the country’s “moral high ground.” His administration’s goals are the goals of the dominant sector of the ruling class. It wants to put the worst excesses of the Bush administration and neo-conservatives behind in the hopes of diminishing the growing anti-imperialist hatred of workers and oppressed people all over the world.
Closing Guantánamo is designed to rehabilitate the global image of the U.S. government, which has become synonymous with torture and extreme racism. Obama went out of his way to avoid looking like he was challenging the military that ran the prison. At the announcement ceremony, he surrounded himself with 16 retired generals and admirals who have pushed for the closure of Guantánamo prison on the premise that it impedes the prosecution of the “War on Terror”—a slogan masking the true goals of the war drive in the Middle East and Central Asia. The new administration could close Guantánamo today if it wanted. As it stands, the closure of Guantánamo will do little to reverse to reverse Bush’s “War on Terror” policies. A prison that once held over 600 “enemy combatants,” mostly from the Middle East, now only holds 245. These remaining prisoners likely will be sent somewhere else for detention. The vast majority have no charges pending against them.
The same is true about the Democratic administration’s superficial engagement with the Middle East. On his first full day in the Oval Office, Obama called U.S.-puppet leaders King Abdullah in Jordan and President Mubarak in Egypt, along with pro-imperialist Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The new White House team did this to show their commitment to “peace” in the region.
Yet, the White House did not call the leaders of Hamas in Palestine, or the leaders of Iran or Hezbollah in Lebanon. Why contact leaders either guilty of or complicit with the commission of heinous war crimes and not the victims and their allies?
The engagement with pro-imperialist leaders in the Middle East is a way to show U.S. support for their corrupt regimes in the wake of Israel’s war of aggression on the Palestinians in Gaza. Abdullah and Mubarak, both deeply unpopular throughout the Arab world for their collusion with U.S./Israeli war crimes, are shaky and fear being overthrown. Abbas has lost the little credibility he once had. And Olmert heads the Israeli state, which is fully funded and backed by the U.S. capitalist class. For Washington, “peace” in the Middle East means supplication to U.S. domination.
Just one day later, President Obama went to the State Department to usher in his new foreign policy team, headed by former Sen. Hillary Clinton. Clinton, a hawk who supported the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, and who has repeatedly stressed her refusal to hold talks with Hamas, promised a new regime of diplomacy. She said, “I will do all that I can, working with you, to make it abundantly clear that robust diplomacy and effective development are the best long-term tools for securing America’s future.”
Obama and Clinton later jointly announced the appointment of former Sen. George Mitchell as the new Arab-Israeli envoy and former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke as emissary to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Both are familiar fixtures in Democratic policy-making circles.
They are hardly a group of peacemakers. Mitchell has stumped for the imperialist establishment on diplomatic missions in the Balkans, Ireland and the Middle East. Holbrooke was the main architect of the U.S./NATO war on Yugoslavia that killed thousands, ousted the elected government and forcibly broke up the nation-state.
All of this bluster about new, “robust diplomacy” is meant to contrast with the Bush administration’s policies of outright war.
The question is—what’s new? In Obama’s own words, not much.
“The message we are sending around the world is the U.S. intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism, but we are going to do so consistent with our values,” Obama said. “We are going to win this fight, but we will win it on our terms.”
In other words, the U.S. government will continue its war on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, will seek “regime change” in Iran, will attack the people of Pakistan and will seek to destroy the Palestinian resistance. These are the only “values” of imperialism. But the government will now do so using another, more palatable tactic. A kinder, gentler form of war—called diplomacy.
Every president, including Bush, has had a diplomatic program. The Bush administration actively engaged in diplomacy when it was necessary or preferable. For years, while it threatened Iran with attack, it negotiated with the government about its nuclear program. Of course, this included making demands Iran could not possibly meet, but the sheen of negotiations was there. This same tactic was employed as a prelude to the 2003 Iraq invasion.
Diplomacy for the imperialists is not about forging peace or finding a just solution to conflict. It can never be so as long as the system that employs it seeks to expand and secure markets, territory and influence in the interest of extracting profits for a tiny group of capitalists.
Outright war and diplomacy are two different ways of achieving the same class objective. In the words of German historian Karl von Clausewitz, “war is a continuation of politics by other means.” Diplomacy is just another “means” of pursuing the same core “politics.” What drives U.S. foriegn policy is the interests of Wall Street banks and corporations to maintain their global position in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Even with all the talk of diplomacy, it is already clear that the new Democratic administration will use war and violence to advance the interests and reach of U.S. imperialism. The war on Iraq is still raging, with over 140,000 U.S. troops still occupying the country. Obama has said he aims to send 30,000 more troops to occupy Afghanistan. On Jan. 23, the Washington Post reported that at least 20 people were killed by U.S. air strikes in Pakistan. All this is happening on the new administration’s watch.
A return to the same old “diplomacy” is not a progressive step forward. The ruling class wants a cosmetic change to help pretty up the tarnished image of the United States at home and abroad. This is exactly what the new administration promises to bring, and nothing more.
The working class should not be politically disarmed by the initiatives of the new administration. There are no “common interests” between the people of the world who seek justice and the U.S. diplomatic corps. Whether it is a tank rolling or a diplomat bullying, the objectives of the U.S. war machine and its emissaries are one and the same.
