| Businessweek | - |
President
Barack Obama elevated two trusted long-time advisers to fill out his
second-term foreign policy team, naming United Nations Ambassador Susan
Rice as his national security adviser and Samantha Power, an outspoken
advocate of intervening in ...
President
Barack Obama speaks as former aide Samantha Power, left, U.S.
Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, right, and incumbent
National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, second left, listen during a
personnel announcement at the Rose Garden of the White House on June 5,
2013 in Washington, DC. Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Bloomberg News
Obama Picks Rice for National Security Post
June 05, 2013
President
Barack Obama elevated two trusted long-time advisers to fill out his
second-term foreign policy team, naming United Nations Ambassador Susan
Rice as his national security adviser and Samantha Power, an outspoken
advocate of intervening in humanitarian crises, to succeed Rice.
Rice
is a “fierce champion for justice and human dignity” still determined
“to exercise our power wisely and deliberately,” Obama said today at a
White House ceremony. Power, his former human-rights adviser, “knows
that we have to stand up for the things that we believe in,” he said. The choices put at the forefront of Obama’s national security team two women who share the president’s inclination to respond to foreign crises through international coalitions as the U.S. confronts a sectarian civil war in Syria, Iran’s nuclear program, and provocations from North Korea.
Republican critics’ successful efforts last December to block Rice from being nominated secretary of state are now answered by placing her in a potentially more influential role in the administration’s national-security apparatus. In her new post, she will meet with the president daily.
Rice, 48, doesn’t need confirmation by the Senate, though Power will. White House press secretary Jay Carney said the administration didn’t anticipate a contentious process.
Tom Donilon, the current White House national security adviser, plans to leave in early July after more than four years. Obama and Donilon have been discussing his departure since late last year, Carney said, and Donilon was asked to stay as the president put in place a new team, also including Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
‘Liberal Interventionists’
Rice and Power, 42, are both “hard-headed liberal interventionists,” said Karl Inderfurth, a senior adviser at the Center for International Studies in Washington. The two women pressed Obama to intervene in Libya to stop atrocities deposed leader Muammar Qaddafi threatened against rebels. Even so, they are unlikely to shift thinking in the White House on intervention in Syria, Inderfurth said.“While they would be temperamentally inclined to take action in circumstances like that they also know that President Obama is very wary of getting America involved in new foreign interventions with American boots on the ground and uncertain outcomes,” said Inderfurth, a former assistant secretary of state who served with Rice on President Bill Clinton’s national security team.
Rice and Power were both on Obama’s foreign policy team when he was an underdog in the 2008 Democratic primaries. Power has been with Obama since his first year in the Senate. Rice broke with the Clinton team to back Obama over Hillary Clinton.
‘Monster’ Comment
Both also have postponed personal ambition to deflect controversy from Obama. Power resigned from the Obama campaign after she was quoted calling Hillary Clinton “a monster” by a Scottish newspaper. Rice gave up her ambition to be secretary of state late last year when Republican senators threatened to block the nomination over public explanations she gave for the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.The announcement may underscore a recent political shift by the president to challenge congressional Republicans more directly as both sides prepare for the 2014 midterm elections.
Yesterday, Obama named three nominees to vacancies on U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and essentially dared Senate Republicans to filibuster their confirmation, accusing the opposition party of obstructionism.
Libya Revolt
Rice’s tenure at the UN include supporting the revolt in Libya, a more measured response to the uprising in Syria and negotiating with Russia and China for sanctions on Iran.Her four years at the UN revealed little of her own views on issues such as cyber-espionage, the administration’s military shift to Asia, and Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“Rice has sometimes shown impatience with Security Council members, including her European allies, that she believes to be posturing or pursuing wrong-headed political strategies,” said Richard Gowan, associate director of New York University’s Center on International Cooperation.
“She’ll be similarly tough on diplomatic nonsense,” whether it’s coming from the U.S. or abroad, Gowan said.
Rice has tussled with Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin. Over the years, Churkin faulted Rice for her “Stanford dictionary of expletives” while she publicly accused him of “bogus claims” that the U.S. sought regime change in Libya. Their duels spilled over frequently into Security Council business.
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