(Also, don't miss additional info on Steinberg provided after the article. A variety of people who have been watching Steinberg for a while offer commentary.)
http://english.eluniversal.com/2009/01/23/en_pol_esp_washington-prepares_23A2203445.shtmlWashington prepares agenda for dialogue with Venezuela
According to Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, "Chávez's actions do not serve his citizens or people throughout Latin America."
State Department employees await the arrival of new US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton (Reuters)
Western Hemisphere
James Steinberg, who was appointed Deputy Secretary of State, the second most important official of the US Department of State, said that the United States needs to restore that sense of "leadership and united work" of the country with the region. "And now we have the opportunity to do it."
"Our friends and partners in Latin America are looking to the United States to provide strong and sustained leadership in the region, as a counterweight to governments like those currently in power in Venezuela and Bolivia which pursue policies which do not serve the interests of their people or the region," Steinberg said.
He stated that the US relationship with Venezuela "should be designed to serve our national interest, which means to speak out clearly on issues of concern to the United States, while seeking cooperation where it is important to our interest, as is the case in fighting the increasing flow of illegal drugs."
The US Deputy Secretary of State said that "Venezuela is one of the principal drug-transit countries in the Western Hemisphere. Counternarcotics successes in Colombia have forced traffickers to shift routes through neighboring Venezuela, whose geography, rampant corruption, weak judicial system, and lack of international counternarcotics cooperation make it vulnerable to illicit drug transshipments. The increasing preference of drug traffickers to transship cocaine through Venezuela.
According to Steinberg, "The Obama administration intends to pursue clear eyed diplomacy with Venezuela including direct contacts when they serve our national interests. Those interests include ending Venezuela's ties to the FARC and cooperating on counter-narcotics. For too long, we have ceded the playing field to Chavez whose actions and vision for the region do not serve his citizens or people throughout Latin America. We intend to play a more active role in Latin America with a positive approach that avoids giving undue prominence to President Chavez' theatrical attempts to dominant the regional agenda."
"It remains to be seen whether there is any tangible sign that Venezuela actually wants an improved relationship with the United States," he said.
Translated by Gerardo Cárdenas
MORE INFO:
This guy is real big on "asymmetrical" or "4th generation warfare"
Rojo Rojito
Cort
read below:
According to the Wall Street Journal, Steinberg, along with Daniel Kurtzer and Dennis Ross, were among the principal authors of Barack Obama's address on the Middle East to AIPAC in June 2008, which was viewed as the Democratic nominee's most expansive on international affairs.
Project for a New American Century member James Steinberg :
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-20030319.htm 12/24/2008
Obama and the Bush Doctrine
Filed under: Obama — DRJ @ 2:39 pm
The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby writes that progressive Democrats are peeved at Obama's transition decisions — especially the appointments of "hawks" like Robert Gates, General James Jones, and Hillary Clinton to handle national security — as well as key roles handed to a "passel of former Clinton operatives" and the naming of Pastor Rick Warren to give the Inaugural Invocation.
If so, the bad news just keeps coming.
A reported Obama appointment suggests to me that Obama may accept the substance of the Bush Doctrine, limited by America's ability to enlist the support of some democratic nations or a regional alliance. (That's not a minor limitation but my point is many Obama supporters might be surprised to learn Obama does not reject the Bush Doctrine.)
Yesterday's Austin American-Statesman reports Obama will name James Steinberg, Dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs, as Deputy Secretary of State. In 2005, Steinberg and a co-author published an opinion piece in the LA Times that identified preventive war as a useful and "legitimate tool for dealing with new security threats." In the article, Steinberg approved the Bush Doctrine and argued it should be expanded:
"Conditional sovereignty is central to a new norm of state responsibility. In September, U.N. members embraced the idea that states have a responsibility to protect their citizens from genocide and other gross violations of human rights. That logic also suggests that states have a responsibility to head off internal developments – acquiring weapons of mass destruction and harboring terrorists, to name two – that pose a threat to the security of others.
When states fail to meet their responsibilities, the international community will need to step in. Diplomacy and economic pressure are frequently sufficient to do the job. But there will be times when limited military action will be the only effective way to obviate an imminent threat – before, say, a state produces enough fissile material to make nuclear weapons or before terrorists are fully able to hatch their plots. One problem with the Bush doctrine, then, is not that it is overly reliant on preventive force but that it too narrowly conceives of its use, primarily to deal with terrorism and to remove threatening regimes."
Steinberg and his co-author argued Bush was not only right to use preemptive war to stop terrorism but suggested they would go even further and use preventive force in the case of "genocide and other gross violations of human rights." (Iraq, anyone?)
However, Steinberg's article argued the flaw of the Bush Doctrine is that it should only be used in partnership with international organizations:
"The Bush doctrine's other problem is that it insists that individual states, or at least the United States, must have the right to decide when preventive force is justified, even though the threat affects the security of many. The decision to use force in these cases cannot be one state's alone.
***
Preventive military force has a role in managing today's security challenges. Understanding that role is step one; establishing agreed standards for its use is step two; and implanting these standards in an effective institution is the third step. The Bush administration got the first step right, and the logic of its arguments builds toward the second. But it has gotten step three wrong. Unilateralism is not the only alternative to the Security Council. Regional organizations and a new coalition of democratic states offer ways to legitimize the use of force when the council fails to meet its responsibilities."
Perhaps Steinberg has changed his views but I doubt it, which makes this an interesting appointment given the perception by some that Obama rejects the Bush Doctrine.
My guess is that, rather than relying on a set of guiding principles, Obama trusts his judgment and intellect to help him solve problems as they arise. I think this is something every President has to do, but there are limits to what even a very smart person can handle. I know lawyers who think they are smart enough to solve any problem … and they often are. They are typically perfectionists and the good news is that they rarely fail. The bad news is that their few failures tend to spiral out-of-control because they have a hard time accepting there are some things they can't control.
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