Tuesday, October 28, 2003

An Overdose of Clintonian Foreign Policy?

The American Prospect did a bang-up job attracting some real independent thinkers to its two-day Washington confab on the future course of U.S. foreign policy. The lineup of speakers is a who’s who of experts who promise to bring a breath of fresh air to the debate on how the United States can better deal with the rest of the world. They no doubt will offer innovative foreign policy ideas rarely heard in the corridors of power in Washington.

Let’s take a look at the people the American Prospect and its partners, the Center for American Progress and The Century Foundation, have invited to give us insight into ways in which the United States can shake its reputation as the world’s leading rogue state.

Kicking things off on Tuesday, Oct. 28 will be a panel chaired by foreign policy iconoclast Sandy Berger, who served as President Clinton’s national security adviser and later endorsed the Bush administration’s wars against “terrorism,” Afghanistan and Iraq. During a talk at Cornel University this summer, Berger offered the students words of wisdom few have dared to utter in establishment Democratic circles over the past two years: “It is not enough to be defined by what we are against, but show what we are for.”

Richard Holbrooke takes over as chairman during the next session as the panel discusses “winning the peace” in Iraq. Holbrooke, a former assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration and likely secretary of state had Al Gore wrestled the presidency from George W. Bush in 2000, believes the United States needs to strengthen the U.N., not weaken it, because it has more often served U.S. interests than not.

Chairing the next panel will be William Perry, a former secretary of defense in the Clinton administration who, instead of obsessing over Iraq, has been sounding the alarm over North Korea, another member of the Bush administration’s Axis of Evil. While most pundits have shied away from criticizing that country, Perry earlier this year broke the unofficial silence by calling North Korea “the most dangerous spot in the world today.”

Other speakers at the American Prospect-sponsored event include: Robert Rubin, the Citigroup executive and treasury secretary in the Clinton administration; Hillary Rodham Clinton, U.S. senator and first lady during the Clinton administration; Rodney Slater, transportation secretary in the Clinton administration; Wesley Clark, presidential candidate and NATO supreme commander during the Clinton administration; Susan Rice, assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration; Ivo H. Daalder, a member of the national security council staff during the Clinton administration; Jessica Stern, a member of the national security council staff during the Clinton administration; Rose Gottemoeller, an official in the energy department during the Clinton administration; Wendy Sherman, a state department official during the Clinton administration; Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser in the Carter administration (how’s that for a change of pace?) and Clyde Prestowitz, a former Reagan administration official (another change-up) and author of Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions.

If you you’re tired of the stale foreign policy ideas that have circulated through Washington for the past 50 years, you won’t want to miss this opportunity to learn from experts on international affairs who have been denied a policymaking voice by the Washington political establishment for much too long. Visit New American Strategies‘ site today and tomorrow to enjoy the webcast of this great event.

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