Obama's National Security Point Man

When George W. Bush decided in late 2007 to make a final-year push for Middle East peace, he turned to retired Marine general James L. Jones for help. But after two months as Bush's Middle East envoy, Jones concluded that brokering a deal between Israel and the Palestinians inside of 12 months was, in his words, a "grandiose hope." So Jones turned his attention to the more modest goal of making peace in one city in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank.

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Obama's Nation of Hope

Now Jones is about to become Barack Obama's National Security Adviser amid the worst violence between Palestinians and Israelis in eight years, and the prospects for peace seem bleaker than ever. But before the new Administration can pursue its own lofty hopes for Middle East peace, Jones will have to meet some goals closer to home. After eight years in which U.S. foreign policy often seemed the private preserve of the Vice President or an endless grudge match between State and Defense, Obama has asked Jones to rebuild a National Security Council that sorts out foreign policy disputes rather than skirts them. (See Who's Who in Barack Obama's White House.)

Working from a small, spartan office at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for another week, Jones knows he doesn't have the luxury of moving slowly. Obama will look to Jones to deliver his promised withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq in 18 months, oversee an intensification of the war in Afghanistan and sort out simmering relations with an Iran determined to pursue nuclear weapons. And he'll have to do all that by somehow forging consensus among Obama's strong-willed team of rivals: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Vice President Joe Biden. "We will oversee the strategic implementation of [Obama's] decisions with a finely developed set of metrics," says Jones in the patois peculiar to those who spend 40 years as a leatherneck. Then he adds, "In a collegial way."

Can he pull it off? It is telling that, by Jones' admission, he and Obama barely know each other. The President-elect picked Jones for National Security Adviser after meeting him face to face only a handful of times. In doing so, Obama is taking a calculated risk. The relationship between a President and his National Security Adviser--the person the Commander in Chief trusts to provide a candid assessment of the country's options--is crucial to success in foreign policy. Jones says that in his few meetings with Obama, he found that "[Obama] clearly is a man with really good instincts." A good part of Obama's presidency may depend on their being right about Jones.

Jones, 65, was born in Kansas City, Mo., and grew up in France. After graduating from Georgetown, he enlisted in the Marines and served in Vietnam as a company commander. He learned his political skills as the Marine liaison to the Senate in the early 1980s. Back in the field in 1991, he led a Marine expeditionary unit into northern Iraq to rescue millions of Kurdish refugees from Saddam Hussein. Two years later, he ran the U.S. aid mission to Bosnia. Jones became the top Marine in 1999.

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