Today, President-elect Obama introduced an impressive national security team that includes independents, Republicans and Democrats.  This diverse team shares commitment to the President-elect's foreign policy principles, and to the agenda first laid out by President-Elect Obama and progressives during the campaign.  This agenda is now widely supported by civilian and military experts.  There is broad agreement in the military, the intelligence community and among pragmatists and progressives on the need to redeploy our forces out of Iraq and refocus on Afghanistan and Pakistan.  There is also consensus for a diplomatic strategy to engage Iran.  Moreover, when five former secretaries of state, both Democrats and Republicans, were asked what they viewed as America's central priority they all agreed on the need to rebuild our alliances and image and retake our place as a respected leader in the international community.  If confirmed, Obama's team will empower the United States to move beyond the failures of the past eight years and restore the centrality of diplomacy and the rule of law to the way America engages the world.

Obama's foreign policy team signals a shift to a more balanced integrated approach that utilizes all elements of national power. "All three of his choices - Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as the rival turned secretary of state; Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander, as national security adviser, and Robert M. Gates, the current and future defense secretary - were selected in large part because they have embraced a sweeping shift of resources in the national security arena. The shift, which would come partly out of the military's huge budget, would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the incoming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed at preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states. Whether they can make the change - one that Mr. Obama started talking about in the summer of 2007, when his candidacy was a long shot at best - 'will be the great foreign policy experiment of the Obama presidency,' one of his senior advisers said recently. But the adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said the three have all embraced 'a rebalancing of America's national security portfolio' after a huge investment in new combat capabilities during the Bush years." [NY Times, 12/01/08]

Redeployment out of Iraq.  Obama's national security team agrees - along with the full spectrum of Iraqi leaders and the Bush Administration that it is time for U.S. re-deployment from Iraq.  Secretary of State-nominee, Hillary Clinton, explained that "we must bring an end to the war in Iraq... I have urged the Bush Administration to end the failed policy in Iraq that forces our troops to police a civil war. And I am working hard in the Senate to advance a strategy to redeploy our troops out of Iraq as quickly and as safely as possible." The Iraqi Parliament and Cabinet as well as the Bush Administration have all signed off on an agreement that sets the end of 2011 as the concrete date for the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq.  This consensus stems from a recognition that the only way towards lasting stability is for Iraqis to stand up and make the difficult political compromises that bring about reconciliation.  [Hillary Clinton, 2008. NSN, 9/9/08.  NSN, 11/17/08. NSN, 11/13/08. NY Times, 10/17/08. Washington Post, 11/06/08. Senator Barack Obama, 8/01/07]

Re-focus on the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.  Last week's tragic attacks in India - and their still unfolding consequences for India and its neighbors - underscore the conclusion of 16 US intelligence agencies that the vulnerable Afghanistan - Pakistan region is home to the greatest threat to the U.S.  The Bush Administration failed to heed those warnings, and instead chose to remain myopically focused on the Iraq war.  Momentum is building - with Obama's new team at its forefront -- to give the forgotten front the attention Obama has called for since 2007.    The White House, the Pentagon and Central Command are conducting reviews of U.S. strategy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan as part of a general shift of focus towards problems occurring there, with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates calling Afghanistan the test "of what we are trying to achieve when it comes to integrating the military and civilian, the public and private, the national and international."  An equally critical piece of this strategy, begun in the Senate by Vice President-elect Biden and supported there by Senators Obama and Clinton, is to reinvigorate the non-military aspects of our relationship with Pakistan and Afghanistan and increase our support for civil society, recognizing that it holds the long-term key to stability.  [National Intelligence Estimate, 7/07. NSN, 7/15/08. Washington Post, 10/16/08. NY Times, 10/22/08. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, 10/16/08. Washington Post, 11/11/08. Barack Obama, 8/01/07]

Engage with Iran.  No power in the Middle East has been more strengthened as a result of the failed policies of the last eight years than Iran.  Obama has broad, bipartisan backing for his strategy of diplomatic engagement.  Secretary of Defense Gates, wrote recently that "another war in the Middle East is the last thing we need. In fact, I believe it would be disastrous on a number of levels."Secretary of State nominee, Hillary Clinton, believes in engagement as well, writing in Foreign Affairs, "The Bush administration has belatedly begun to engage Iran and Syria in talks about the future of Iraq. This is a step in the right direction, but much more must be done." In 2006, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group came out in favor of talks "without preconditions." More recently, five former secretaries of State expressed approval for a strategy similar to Obama's, including Henry Kissinger, who believes that talks without preconditions can begin at the Secretary of State level. Nicholas Burns, who managed U.S. policy toward Iran under Secretary of State Rice, urged the U.S. to embrace "a national strategy of smart engagement with the rest of the world" - and the Bush Administration itself sent the third-ranking US diplomat to talks with Iran this summer for the first time.  [Parameters, Summer 2008. Foreign Affairs, 2007. Washington Post, 5/19/08. Iraq Study Group, 12/06. Former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, 9/15/08. Newsweek, 10/25/08. CBS, 7/15/08]

Revitalize U.S. relations with the world.   Global respect for the United States has dissipated, even among our closest allies, as the world came to believe that our actions did not accord with basic American values.  Obama's team agrees that, as the President-elect put it this morning, "our values are America's greatest export to the world." Attorney General nominee Eric Holder recently said "Our needlessly abusive and unlawful practices in the 'War on Terror' have diminished our standing in the world community and made us less, rather than more, safe." The reaction to Obama's election in countries where opinions of America have been in steep decline was remarkably positive. This tremendous popular support will give the next administration the opportunity to restore its respect and admiration from America's most important allies - and this begins, as Attorney General-designate Eric Holder said today, with bringing US policies and practices back in line with the Constitution and the rule of law. Five Secretaries of State wholeheartedly endorsed this approach, including Colin Powell, who commented: "[W]e're Americans, we should have confidence in ourselves, confidence in our system, [and] reach out to the rest of the world." [NSN, 11/24/08. Time, 12/01/08. Time, 11/05/08. BBC, 11/11/08. FT, 10/5/08. FT, 10/5/08. Middle East Times, 10/17/08. CBS, 11/7/08. Colin Powell, 9/15/08]