Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State

President-elect Barak Obama is already taking steps to warm many hearts. If there is any truth in the cliché that morning shows the day, then it is just not only the people in USA but also the rest of the world who can feel that sunshine is about to return to their lives after eight long and miserable winters suffered under President George W Bush by the decisions that the transition team of the President-elect is taking.

Senator Obama is clearly a man of vision; one who can rise about partisanship and lead by bridging gaps rather than dividing in sharp contrast to the man he would soon be replacing. He has already reached out to the Republicans, initiating and then meeting Senator McCain, his opponent in a very bitter Presidential election to ensure that he has his support in the Congress in implementing his agenda of change. His country vitally needs this change to return from the worst economic predicament that USA has faced since the Great Depression of the 1930s. He is already contemplating giving cabinet positions to the Republican Party following President Lincoln who after winning the 1860 election took into his Cabinet some of his bitterest critics for the sake of the country. Obama, who writes or drafts most of his speeches like Abraham Lincoln but also uses speechwriters, instructed one of them to underpin a quote from Lincoln for his victory speech. The writer came out with a quote not used much that says: "We are not enemies, but friends … Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection." When these words were spoken by Obama before a vast crowd at Chicago's Grant Park on election night, it found an immediate connect with a nation sick with bipartisan bickering and underscored unequivocally Obama's determination to unite his country.

President-elect Obama's desire to follow the footsteps of President Lincoln by uniting his one-time opponents for the sake of the country can also be seen in his move to make Senator Hillary Clinton Secretary of State. He had fought against her one of the bitterest fights ever seen in the Democratic Party for the nomination for the President. At one stage, Senator Clinton even mentioned publicly and incorrectly that Senator Obama attended an Islamic school in Indonesia where he spent some years as a child with his mother and Indonesian step-father, a reference intended to underline Senator Obama's Islamic link.

The choice of the Senator from New York as the Secretary of State is one in which there are many other positives. Senator Clinton has already proved that she has what it takes to go to the White House and had she not met someone as brilliant and outstanding as Senator Obama, her party's nomination would have been hers for the asking and she could have been very well the President-elect. She has had a comparatively short career as a Senator but during this period, she has gained experience in five committees, notable the heavyweight Armed Services Committee. Although she voted for the Iraq war, she and Obama now shares the common concern of bringing the US troops from Iraq earlier than later. As the First Lady, she played a very crucial role in the Clinton administration with such initiatives as Clinton health care plan (that was aborted in the Congress); State Children's Health Insurance Program and Adoption and Safe Families Act that added credibility and weight to the Clinton White House. At the time of her husband's infidelity, she stood by him by rising above her emotions for the sake of the country.

She is loaded with experience and ability whose inclusion in the Cabinet will be welcomed just not in her country but outside the United States. She will have one additional advantage for the Obama administration if she joins it. She will have an insider in her husband President Clinton to advise her on issues with which he is perhaps one of the most competent to speak to, having been a very successful President in foreign affairs - an interest he is still pursuing with his foundation that provides millions of dollars for development in Africa. As President, Bill Clinton had focused great attention and energy for resolving the Palestinian problem and just before he handed the administration to George Bush, had come very close to a permanent resolution to the crisis. It can be expected that he would influence the Obama administration indirectly for a just and sustainable peace in the ME and moderate the overtly pro-Israel stance that the President-elect had taken during the presidential campaign.

The Obama administration would be assuming office at a time when the US is in the midst of an economic meltdown. By tradition, the Democrats are pro-labour and in trade, protectionist. The economic crisis will only make Democrats in Congress less “free textile trade” and more “fair textile trade” with textile quotas ending at the end of the year. This is not good news for Bangladesh whose crucial export earnings from RMG come mostly from the US market. Bangladesh's economic diplomacy will be tested to the fullest to receive favourable attention from the new administration so that her RMG market in the US does not face a major blow. Bangladesh has no lobbyist working in the US; it has a Bangladesh caucus in the Congress but there is no reason to be optimistic that this group would be able to do much to help Bangladesh with her trade interests. The outlook is bleak with one window of opportunity, which one can see is in a connection that a leading Bangladeshi has with Senator and President Clinton. In this context, I remember an event during the early days of the Clinton administration where Dr. Yunus was being honoured at the US State Department with one of the many international prizes that he has won. In his address at the event, Secretary of State Warren Christopher said that during the presidential campaign in California, when as candidate Bill Clinton was relaxing after a hard day's work, he told a group of close associates that there was an individual working wonders in Bangladesh with the poor and poverty alleviation and that he should be given the Nobel Prize. Very few knew who Bill Clinton was talking about till he named that individual as Dr. Mohammed Yunus. Before that in the 1980s, Dr. Yunus had been invited by the Clintons to Arkansas where Bill Clinton was Governor and ever since, Dr. Yunus has been a very close friend of the Clintons, a fact now widely known in relevant circles in Washington.

Successful diplomacy depends on tact, contact and national power. Of power, the less said the better in case of Bangladesh. Tact or the ability of diplomats to negotiate successfully is on the decline. On contact, Bangladesh has precious little to successfully achieve her foreign policy goals. If Senator Clinton becomes the next US Secretary of State, a window of opportunity would open in achieving Bangladesh's bilateral interests with USA with the element of contact. This window of opportunity could work if a number of other things fall into line. Bangladesh must have a credible election and an elected government in place without resorting to violence. The government that would come to office must make its intentions clear on its resolve to deal with Islamic militancy. As President, Obama would have little or no interest in Bangladesh; there is no reason for him to be. But if Bangladesh can come strongly with a democratic government serious on the issue of militancy, it could attract the attention of policy makers in the new administration, including Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of State. In that scenario, Bangladesh could work with Senator Clinton through Dr. Yunus with a very limited bilateral agenda such as sustainable access to the RMG market in the US. An announcement that Senator Clinton would be the next Secretary of State is expected after Thanksgiving and at the moment, it seems certain that she will be.

Message of Change from President Obama

Published in The Daily Star, November 8, 2008

THE US voters rose above racial prejudice and voted to the White House as their 44th President a black man and thus made history. A country where slavery was once institutionalised and legalized, where even as late as in the 1960s blacks were still fighting for their civil and human rights, has now changed forever. Martin Luther King's dream that there will be a day when people will be judged not by the colour of their skins but by the content of their character is now a reality.

Senator Barak Obama won a landslide victory with 364 electoral votes and 53% popular votes on his promise of change. The voters of US, particularly the youth, came together to let their country breathe fresh air again. The world has also been freed of the suffocation suffered under President Bush as his neo-con advisers sought to re-write international law by inventing the concept of pre-emptive strike, which gave them the right to attack any country that they thought is a threat to the United States. They attacked Afghanistan and Iraq under that concept after the events of 9/11. Threats of attack were held out against North Korea and Iran assuming these two nations to be parts of the “axis of evil”. They turned the world upside down for the worse.

There was spontaneous support internationally for President Bush's war on terror in pursuance of which the US invaded Afghanistan. The world heaved a sigh of relief when the Taliban fell. Thereafter, Bush's neo-con advisers went to Iraq on totally false premises leaving the work in Afghanistan half-done to complete the unfinished objectives of elder President Bush; that of removing Saddam, occupying Iraq and getting control over the country's oil. With the Iraq diversion and the manner of it, the US lost its image and support worldwide. It divided the US internally and the world externally following the lines drawn by President Bush himself that “you are either with us or against us”. The world went against the US and her worldwide image received its worst battering ever.

Thousands of lives of US soldiers have been lost; many times more innocent people have been killed as a result of the actions of the US. Hundreds of billions of US dollars have been pumped to Iraq and Afghanistan that pushed the US economy to its worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression, such that even a US 700 billion dollar bailout package may not help overcome. The meltdown of the US economy has threatened to take the rest of the world down the same path. President-elect Obama thus will be inheriting an office that will challenge him like that office has not challenged anyone in history. The new President must not only lead his country; he must also set the directions for the rest of the world both politically and economically. In bringing the promised change in his country, President Obama must also think of the rest of the world for the fate of the two is inextricably linked.

President-elect Obama's package of economic reforms won the voters' approval overwhelmingly. These reforms will now no doubt develop into a movement for US' benefit under his dynamic leadership. His foreign policy priorities, however, would require re- evaluation to bring the change the rest of the world, who welcomed his victory with the same enthusiasm as people in the US, is expecting. His administration must change direction to lead the world not by bullying but by earning respect and support that most nations gave the US after 9/11 in her demand that those responsible for the acts should be punished.

President-elect Obama will thus have his hands full in dealing with foreign policy that should receive his administration's attention as much as domestic issues for the sake of the US and the world. Senator Biden no doubt will bring all his experience to assist him in the area of foreign affairs. During his campaign, Senator Obama has identified Afghanistan as the new frontier where the war on terror would be fought. On a trip to Israel, he promised the Israelis more than they have received from any US leader, giving to them the whole of Jerusalem. On South Asia, he thought the real problem is not between India and Pakistan but between Pakistan and Afghanistan. These stances indicate that Senator Obama would have to rethink his priorities if he wants USA to become the respectable leader of a problem ridden world that his predecessors could have easily achieved but lost on a totally unrealistic view of the world; that the rest of the world had no choice but to accept the US as the leader.

The world was expected to become peaceful, where wars and conflicts were supposed to become history after the Soviet Union fell. That did not happen and trouble spots sprouted like bamboo shoots on all the continents. The one in Middle East, involving the Israelis and the Palestinians became the most dangerous. It became the root for growth of Islamic extremism by groups who used Islam to fight injustice to Palestinians who have been made refugees in their own homeland. President Bush's inadvertent slip about the crusade on TV when informed about the 9/11 incidents helped drive Islam and the western world on a dangerous clash course of civilizations where, if justice had been done in Palestine, there would not have even been cause for what eventually happened. Let it not be lost to the new President that it had taken General Colin Powell as Secretary of State eight months to make his first visit to the region under the Bush administration.

President-elect Obama thus needs to review his policy on Palestine for this is the key to bringing the Islamic and the western world into partnership. In fact, a just and successful resolution of this issue may not need the US to fight the war on terror for then this war can still be resolved without military action. He must bring the occupation of Iraq to an end early in his Presidency and open dialogue with Iran instead of taking the neo-con stance and dealing with it as “an axis of evil”. If a nuclear power like India is provided civil nuclear technology under an agreement with the US that Senator Obama backs, then the case of Iran for civil nuclear technology must also be dealt with diplomatically and not by threat of war.

In Afghanistan, the Bush administration has messed up everything. The Taliban is resurgent there again threatening the elected and US backed government of Hamid Karzai. Recently the British and Russian Ambassadors in Kabul and also experts on Afghanistan have suggested that it may not be a bad policy to talk with the Taliban and insurgents for the military option there is a doomed one. President-elect Obama must review the US policy in Afghanistan and look at the diplomatic and political options as against the military. Also, his assessment during the campaign that the problem in South Asia is between Pakistan and Afghanistan and not between Pakistan and India would also need to be re-assessed for the problem between the latter two is much deeper. The signing of the civil nuclear deal between the US and India has elevated the latter to a pre-eminent position that could ruffle the delicate balance of power in the region. President-elect Obama should ensure that India uses this newfound prestige for positive ends so that the long-standing problems that the nations of South Asia have with her are resolved amicably and justly.

Bangladesh's major interest in the Obama presidency will be in trade. By tradition, Democrats are pro-labour where interests of the US workers come first. Bangladesh's RMG sector, upon which its national economy is heavily dependent, would face difficulties under the Obama presidency for two reasons. First, till the new President is able to lift the country out of her economic miseries, consumption in USA would continue to suffer and hence the need to import RMG would be significantly reduced, in turn affecting Bangladesh adversely. Second, the new administration would also put trade agreements of the past under serious scrutiny and introduce tougher standards from which Bangladesh's RMG exports could suffer adversely. During the presidential campaign and earlier, McCain's position on free trade was more favourable to a country like Bangladesh than the one taken by President-elect Obama. One avenue for continued and increased access of Bangladesh's RMG could be made by pleading on its LDC status for which the need for effective lobbying would be of the essence.

President-elect Obama has been chosen by destiny to create the United States of Martin Luther King's dream. He has the vision, the charisma and the brilliance to do it. The world, however, has changed a great deal since the dream, and the fate of the US is now inextricably linked across national frontiers. President-elect Obama must thus not lead his country only; the world is also looking towards his leadership. Those two hundred thousand people who cheered him in Berlin as a presidential candidate represent the hope that people outside USA places on an US President. Professor Huntington's prediction of a clash of civilizations was taken up by neo-cons to destroy Islam that in turn has brought so much conflict, death and misery. Senator Obama can change this prediction and establish a fusion of civilizations for, on the basics, Islam has no fight with Judaism and Christianity because all three are religions that have evolved from the same source.

The people of the United States deserve to be congratulated for ending their long winter of discontent suffered under a White House in the hands of the neo-cons and letting sunshine back in by their historic effort to elect Senator Barak Obama as their President. Let President-elect Obama give a part of that sunshine to the rest of the world to enjoy for US' long winter of discontent has also been theirs.

The author is a former Ambassador to Japan. His email address is serajul@cfasonline.org