US: An Obama cabinet preview?

He is a Republican senator from Nebraska, a friend of his party's US presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, and, like McCain, a combat veteran of the Vietnam War. And yet, Charles "Chuck" Hagel has refrained from endorsing the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

The main reason: Hagel is a vociferous opponent of the Iraq war and of the Bush administration's overall foreign policy. McCain, although he has attempted to distance himself from US President George W Bush on specific areas of foreign policy of late, supports the continuation of most of the president's policies, especially the war.

In a speech earlier this month at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress (CAP), in Washington, Hagel expounded his views on US foreign policy, views that sound very much like US senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama's in their emphasis on diplomacy, internationalism and consensus-building. Hagel has not endorsed Obama, but it is possible that Hagel regarded his appearance as an audition for an Obama administration cabinet position such as secretary of state or secretary of defense.

If this sounds a little farfetched, consider this: The external page Washington Post reported on 29 May that Hagel's wife contributed money to the Obama campaign. In 2000, both Hagels supported John McCain for president. In a broad hint at his CAP appearance, Hagel urged the next president to choose cabinet members from the opposing party to promote national unity.

It should come as no surprise that office seekers are starting to position themselves now that Obama has emerged as the likely Democratic nominee. The 61-year-old Hagel is retiring from the Senate next year after two terms. He serves as a senior member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and is the ranking Republican on that body's Subcommittee on International Development and Foreign Assistance. It seems he is betting that the next president will be a Democrat.

Another case in point is Democratic Senator Joseph Biden from Delaware. The 65-year-old is chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and a 35-year veteran of the US Senate. Biden, like Hagel, is also spoken of as a potential secretary of state.

Biden also spoke at CAP in May, delivering a point-by-point refutation of a foreign policy speech delivered by McCain a few days earlier. In the speech, McCain laid out his vision for the world in January 2013, the end of his first term in office if elected.

Interestingly, like Hagel, Biden has yet to endorse a presidential candidate, having vowed that he would stay neutral during the nomination process. But Biden acknowledged that Obama is the likely nominee and specifically defended the junior senator's approach to foreign affairs in his CAP speech.

Hagel spoke primarily of general principles and set out a foreign affairs approach that reads like an antithesis of Bush's. "The world does not want an America that imposes, that dictates, that lectures, that preaches, that invades, nor occupies," he said.

"Reintroducing America to the world will be as important as any one thing this next president has to do," he added. To accomplish this end, Hagel said, "We need to reverse the optics," concentrating less on how the US sees the world, and more on how the world sees the US." Hagel called on the US to renew international institutions and diplomacy.

Hagel hopes the Iraq war has taught the US that "military power alone will not achieve the great objectives that are going to be required to meet 21st-century challenges." Those challenges, at their core, involve reducing world strife by relieving discontent through social and economic development, he said.

In his address, Biden argued that a McCain presidency would see the continuation of Bush's "failed" strategies on Iraq.

McCain, he said, "continues to cling to the failed strategy of this administration, which is that it is possible to have a Shia-dominated central government, strong enough that it controls the whole country, and has the support and confidence of the Kurds and the Sunnis. I wish that were true, but I don't believe that [...] will happen."

Biden also attacked McCain for painting a rosy outlook for Iraq while failing to deliver any specifics as to how he would get there. "In his speech, Senator McCain predicted that by 2013, 'the Iraq war has been won.'" he noted.

"But how does he do it?" Biden asked. "He foresaw that 'Iraq will be a functioning democracy.' How? He doesn't say."

The senator then turned his attention to the issue of engagement with Iran, defending Obama's stance that he would engage in a diplomatic initiative with the Islamic Republic without preconditions. Biden emphasized that this would not take place via the presidency at first, but at the ministerial and bureaucratic levels, and would seek to exploit differences of opinion within the Iranian government.

"Last week, John McCain was very clear," Biden said. "He ruled out talking to Iran. He said that Senator Obama was 'naïve and inexperienced' for advocating engagement. 'What is it he wants to talk about?' John asked. If John can't answer the question, we are in trouble."

Biden then rattled off a laundry list of potential issues with which to engage Tehran: Iran's nuclear program, its support for Shiite militia in Iraq, and its patronage of Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Obama, of course, has remained mum on potential cabinet appointments. He has not yet won the nomination of the Democratic Party and it would be presumptuous of him to discuss the subject of cabinet positions. But as he comes closer to clinching the nomination, more and more Washington heavy hitters will be expressing their opinions on how to steer US foreign policy away from the Bush legacy.