The Gates Nomination, A Shift in Policy is Possible

Jim Lobe has some insight into the Robert Gates nomination as Secretary of Defense. There have been both positive and negative remarks made on the nomination. The negative mostly deal with Gates and Iran-Contra. These issues need scrutiny and the confirmation hearings should be tough. Lobe's article deals with how the Gates nomination changes the landscape in the Bush White House. This is not just a different face. It SHOULD signal a change in policy. Of course Bush sets the policy but lets face it, he doesn't have one. Bushes policy was the Cheney/Rumsfeld policy and that seems to have ended. Gates has been working with the Iraq Study Group under Jim Baker. Obviously the ISG will have a major influence on where Iraq and Middle East Policy heads from here. US Foreign Policy Set to Change Dramatically by Jim Lobe The abrupt replacement of Pentagon chief, Donald Rumsfeld, by former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Robert Gates, combined with the Democratic sweep in Tuesday's mid-term elections, appears to signal major changes in United States foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. A career CIA analyst until his retirement in the early 1990s, Gates, a favourite of both former president George H.W. Bush and his national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, has shared their ‘realistic' approach to U.S. foreign policy and shown little patience with the neo-conservatives and aggressive nationalists, like Vice-President Dick Cheney. Or with Rumsfeld, who dominated the younger Bush's first term after the Sep.11, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on New York and the Pentagon and led the march to war in Iraq. As recently as two years ago, for example, Gates co-chaired a task force sponsored by the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) with Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, which called for a policy of diplomatic and economic engagement with Iran, a policy that was denounced as ‘appeasement' by a number of prominent neo-conservatives. Indeed, in the aftermath of Tuesday's electoral landslide, in which the Democrats gained at least 29 seats to win a secure majority in the House of Representatives and appear poised to win a narrower majority in the Senate as well, and Rumsfeld's departure, both Cheney and his neo-conservative supporters, now appear more marginalised than ever. ''If the trend in the Bush second term is viewed as what a friend of mine once called ‘an imperceptible 180-degree turn' from neo-con ideology to political realism, then this would be a crowning achievement,'' says Gary Sick, an Iran specialist at Columbia University who worked with Gates in the National Security Council under former president Jimmy Carter. ‘'Viewed from my own knowledge and perspective, I think this is one of the most significant U.S, policy shifts in the past six years,'' he said, adding that, among other things, Rumsfeld's departure and Gates' ascension would, at the very least, give Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- like Gates, a Soviet specialist from the realist school -- more diplomatic manoeuvring room than in the past when she had to contend with both a hostile vice-president and a secretary of defence. [snip] ‘'Bottom line, the Gates' nomination has Jim Baker's finger prints all over it,'' said J. William Lauderback, executive vice-president of the American Conservative Union. That analysis will likely be echoed in the coming days by a host of neo-conservatives howling about a realist takeover. More At Common Dreams