Reply #28: A nice write up on what Senator Kerry would bring to this position. [View All]

[wisteria]

Now, this is all just speculation, but it says a lot about the resume Senator Kerry would bring to this position.

"Kerry would bring strong credentials to an Obama administration. His Vietnam experience instilled in him a sense of the tragic and a gravity about committing U.S. forces to peripheral conflicts. He has a well-established place in the Senate as a foreign-policy expert, stemming from his seat on the Foreign Relations Committee. His first book, “The New War,” published in 1998, was a prescient look at threats to national security from non-state actors like terrorists and narco-traffickers.



"Furthermore, longtime observers say, Kerry’s political instincts could be an asset. Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a grant-making foundation for non-proliferation studies, said Kerry’s experience in the Senate — and as a presidential nominee — taught him the importance of building domestic support for an administration’s foreign policy. “He combines foreign-policy expertise with political instincts,” Cirincione said. “He understands it’s not enough to have the right policy, but to deliver the policy and build support for that policy.”


“John Kerry has consistently pursued liberal internationalist positions in the Senate, which are in accord with expectations about an Obama administration foreign policy,” said Robert Farley, a national-security professor at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, in an email. “Notably, Sen. Kerry spearheaded initiatives to engage with two nations viewed as hostile to the United States. In 1985, Kerry visited Nicaragua and met with President Ortega, then under heavy pressure from the United States and its Contra proxies. In the early 1990s, Kerry (along with Sen. John McCain) worked to lay the ground for normalization of relations with Vietnam, including hearings that put to rest the idea that Vietnam continued to hold U.S. POWs. To the extent that a President Obama would seek engagement with Iran, North Korea or other nations hostile to the United States, Kerry would seem an ideal choice for secretary of state.”

During the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Kerry gave one of the most forceful speeches, directly attacking McCain on his perceived foreign-policy strengths. “When John McCain stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier just three months after 9/11 and proclaimed, ‘Next up, Baghdad!’” Kerry said, “Barack Obama saw, even then, an occupation of ‘undetermined length, undetermined cost, undetermined consequences’ that would ‘only fan the flames of the Middle East.’ Well, guess what? Mission accomplished.”

http://washingtonindependent.com/16708/kerry-at-foggy-bottom