Obama and a Concert of Powers Approach?

The president-elect has selected Mona Sutphen to be his deputy chief of staff. Last year, she co-authored a book with her Clinton administration colleague Nina Hachigian (The Next American Century)on future directions for U.S. foreign policy, and expounded on a possible concert of powers approach to solving a number of pressing foreign policy issues.

Is this a direction he might move in? In a related essay for Culture 11, I noted that "depending on how he chooses to situate his Afghan policy, it could also serve as the basis for restoring the post-9/11 coalition of the major powers. Instability from Iraq is largely contained, and the major “proxy players” in Iraq — Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran — are skilled at limiting the fallout to the rest of the region. In contrast, there is no real prophylactic barrier that insulates Afghanistan from the larger world. A resurgent Taliban — even one that ends up in control only in southern Afghanistan — would not be in any of the great power’s interests.

"The return of the Taliban feeds the extremist current in Pakistani politics, which in turn causes the government in Islamabad to seek to export jihadis, principally into Kashmir and other parts of India. China and Russia do not want a return to the 1990s when terrorism spilled over into Central Asia and threatened their own stability (in Xinjiang and Chechnya, respectively). Europe doesn’t want a safe haven for extremists nor a resurgence of the heroin trade. There is a strong community of interest among the major powers for success in Afghanistan.

"If this is tied to two other issues which Obama has identified as first-order priorities for U.S. foreign policy — nuclear non-proliferation and climate change — one can see the emergence of a 21st century “concert of powers” approach where America “convenes the board” with representatives from Europe, India, China, Russia, and Brazil to hammer out workable solutions — in keeping with the original FDR vision for what the Security Council of the United Nations was intended to do (or, in keeping with Nixon’s “regional policemen” strategy)."