Obama and Pakistan

Pakistan may have burst onto the television screens of average Americans Thursday morning with the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. But for Sen. Barack Obama, the turbulent nation at the forefront of the Bush administration’s war on Islamic terrorism had long ago quietly displaced Iraq as the central example in his attempt to articulate a new, dramatically different foreign policy.

And while many campaigns took studiously apolitical public stances in the wake of Bhutto’s murder, Obama’s advisors were frank in arguing that the new crisis on the subcontinent vindicates their candidate. Obama aides took particular aim at Sen. Hillary Clinton, arguing that her vote to authorize the war in Iraq indirectly led to the turmoil in Pakistan by sapping resources from the battle against al-Qaeda. The skirmish reflects a larger struggle between an establishment Democratic view of the world and Obama’s call for a generational shift.

“Those who made the judgment that we ought to divert our attention from Afghanistan to invade Iraq and allow al-Qaeda to reconstitute and strengthen are now having to assess the wisdom of that judgment as we may be seeing yet another manifestation of al-Qaeda’s potency,” said Susan Rice, a top Obama foreign policy advisor who was an assistant secretary of State in the Clinton administration, in an interview with Politico.

She said Pakistan illustrates a difference between Obama and Clinton’s approaches to foreign policy. Clinton, in Rice’s view, is willing to tolerate authoritarian regimes – in this case the government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf – who might be useful to short-term U.S. goals. Obama, on the other hand, seeks a diplomacy that sees values and human rights than traditional realpolitik.

“Senator Clinton’s view has been closer to Bush’s, which is to see Musharraf as the linchpin but democracy as something that is desirable, but not necessarily essential to our security interests,” said Rice, “Whereas Obama feels that democracy and human rights in the context of Pakistan are essential to our security.”

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