President-elect Barack Obama appeared Sunday on the CBS program “60 Minutes” for his first televised interview since his November 4 election victory.
He covered a wide range of subjects with a lack of specificity and a placid tone that suggested someone who had read through stacks of briefing books, but had few defined positions of his own and was above all anxious to offend no one.
When asked what he had been “concentrating on” in the past week, however, his answer was unhesitating: “Number one, I think it's important to get a national security team in place because transition periods are potentially times of vulnerability to a terrorist attack. We want to make sure that there is as seamless a transition on national security as possible.”
A “seamless transition on national security”; the phrase is well worth pondering, given the strategy and policy pursued by the administration that will be handing over power to an incoming Obama administration.
The Bush administration enunciated a clear national security policy that became known as the Bush Doctrine. Essentially, it proclaimed the “right” of the US government to attack preemptively any country it believes might pose a military threat to the United States. Underlying this formally stated policy of aggressive war lay the determination of the US ruling elite to advance its monopolization of wealth and power through war abroad and repression at home.
The Bush doctrine was the political expression of an explosion of American militarism, leading to the continuing wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as a series of military strikes against a number of other countries, including Pakistan, Syria, Somalia and Yemen.
“National security” and the “global war on terrorism” were likewise invoked as the justification for criminal policies that have included kidnapping, extraordinary rendition, torture and imprisonment without trial.
Obama's determination to effect a “seamless transition” in this area would appear to fly in the face of the fact that his electoral victory is owed in large measure to the popular revulsion aroused by these policies. If there were anywhere that the electorate might expect to see “seams”—i.e., disparities, interruptions and discontinuity—it would be here.
Yet, even in the run-up to the election, Obama repeatedly made clear that his differences with Bush were of a tactical rather than a strategic or principled character. He tacitly embraced the policy of preventative war, implying that he would employ it both to strike at targets inside Pakistan and to preempt Iran's alleged quest for nuclear weapons.
And as the transition process advances, it is becoming increasingly clear that—tactical differences over US foreign policy notwithstanding—the pursuit of the global strategic aims of America's financial oligarchy by means of military aggression and international criminality is not about to come to end when Obama enters the White House in January.
Rather, the change in administrations is seen within the ruling establishment as a means of bringing about changes that will make American militarism more effective while providing, in the person of Obama, a better political cover for the pursuit of American capitalism's worldwide interests.
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