LETTER FROM WASHINGTON
Obama's best pick yet: Jones as national security adviser
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Last week, the world was taken by President-elect Barack Obama's new foreign policy team: Hillary Rodham Clinton as U.S. secretary of state and Robert Gates, who is being kept on as head of the Defense Department.
Both choices are remarkable. There has not been anything approaching the selection of Clinton since 1980, when Ronald Reagan offered the vice presidency to an old rival, the ex-President Gerald Ford; in contrast, the Clinton appointment is probably a good idea.
Only a year ago, a central theme of the Obama insurgency campaign was his opposition to the war in Iraq. Imagine if it was suggested then that he would win the election and keep President George W. Bush's defense chief.
This is a testament to both Gates and to the recent U.S. success in Iraq.
Yet the most impressive, and perhaps important, choice may have been Obama's tapping General James Jones to be his national security adviser.
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In his own right, Jones, 64, is as formidable as the other two heavyweights. He's a retired four-star general; a highly decorated 40-year Marine veteran; a former commandant of the corps and supreme allied commander of NATO forces. He also rejected Bush's overtures for positions including deputy secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Jones looks the part. If there was a movie about this team, the tall, broad-shouldered Jones would play himself, now that John Wayne is gone.
"He has a terrific military background, great discipline, considerable diplomatic skills and a commanding presence," said former Defense Secretary William Cohen. Cohen has known Jones for 30 years - the general was his top military aide at the Pentagon - and still doesn't know whether Jones is a Republican or a Democrat.
Although Jones and Obama barely know each other, people who know them well predict they will forge a close relationship. Both are intellectually curious, self-confident, more pragmatic than ideological, and interested in seeking out people with different perspectives.
"If they didn't think there would be a rapport, the offer would not have been given or accepted," said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who is one of the preeminent military specialists in Congress. "Intellectually and temperamentally, they are similar."
If so, Jones would bring something to the national security job that has been sorely missing. He is an honest and effective mediator and broker of ideas, assuring that strong policy differences are framed for the president in a fair way and that only big matters are brought to him.
This is the role so effectively played by another general, Brent Scowcroft, during the first Bush presidency. Scowcroft, who was personally close to George H.W. Bush, has been an adviser to and a model for Jones and helped Jones decide to accept this post, associates say.
During the first Bush administration, Scowcroft served as a go-between for high-powered officials - Jim Baker at State, Dick Cheney at Defense and Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs - and always did it with skill and sensitivity and with the president's interests preeminent.
The honest-broker national security role was derailed for most of the current Bush presidency. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney bypassed all channels, intent on outmaneuvering Secretary of State Powell. With an acquiescent and passive president, they succeeded in making a travesty of the national security decision-making process.
Even before Clinton has been confirmed by the Senate, fears are being stoked that she will try similar end runs in an Obama administration. Some of her associates have put out the word that she will have a unique ability to deal with the president directly and be more equal than others.
"That would not be a great prescription," warned Cohen, who headed the Pentagon during Bill Clinton's presidency.
If anyone tries an end run, they would be likely to find the national security adviser a formidable obstacle. Jones has privately been appalled and frustrated at the breakdown of a coherent interagency national security system and is determined to restore that process.
His record suggests he will be a realpolitik internationalist and reject the neoconservative unilateral approach.
He has told friends that it is important to "get it right" on Russia and not simply to act reflexively on Vladimir Putin's aggressiveness.
He appreciates that the most important bilateral relationship will be with China. In the Middle East, as in other matters, he will follow the president's directives while advocating more engagement. And he wants to close the Guantánamo detention center and end torture.
It is not hard to see why he and Rumsfeld did not see eye to eye.
Jones, never a fan of the Iraq war, has indicated that he considers Afghanistan an enormous challenge. Although he supports sending more forces there, he also believes that success is impossible without a comparable effort to reform the Afghan government and to use American "soft power."
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