Obama can repair U.S. policies and image

The American Security Project, a D.C. based national security research organization, held a telephone conference to discuss the foreign policy decisions facing incoming Obama administration.

“It seems clear to me that the last eight years have been an utter disaster with respect to the U.S. position on international law and even much of domestic constitutional law dealing with foreign relations,” Anthony Clark Arend, Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University and Director of the Master of Science in Foreign Service in the Walsh School of Foreign Service.

“I have never seen the United States at such a low position with regard to its lack of leadership in international law and I’ve thought back and tried to find an administration where that was the case and I really haven’t seen it.”

Arend suggested that there are several steps President-elect Obama can take to improve the United States’ international standing. Including closing the Guantanamo Bay prison facility and issuing an executive order that would hold the intelligence community to the same interrogation standards found in the U.S. Army Field Manual.

There are other members of the Obama administration who will have sway in improving the United States’ foreign policy stance. Under the Bush administration there were various memos sent to the Department of Justice relating to torture and detainee treatment. “Whoever comes in as attorney general will need to immediately withdraw those memos,” said Arend who also recommended reforming how detainees are put to tried by repealing the American Commissions Act.

The future of American foreign policy needs to be discussed in depth, said Arend. This would take the form of creating a special bipartisan task force and may even lead to the creation of a new Geneva convention more in line with 21st century concerns.

Damon A. Terrill, former Attorney-Adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State, who also spoke during the conference, said that following the departure of Bush, the U.S. has an obligation to explain to the international community what went wrong during the past eight years and make sure that they understand the mistakes will not be repeated. Terrill also stressed the importance of sending a similar message domestically to the public.

“We need to explain to the American people why it is, and how it is, that ensuring our commitment to the rule of law in our national security and foreign policy in fact makes them safer [and] enables their government to have a more effect…it is not a constraint. The rule of law enables,” said Terril.