Obama faces complicated world issues, Scowcroft says

PROVO — Never before has a president faced so many serious and complicated, yet solvable, problems as has President Barack Obama, former general and national security adviser Brent Scowcroft told a packed audience Tuesday at Brigham Young University.

"(Obama) has an overwhelming kind of situation facing him," Scowcroft said, listing issues like the lawlessness in Afghanistan, new nuclear revelations in Iran and the rocky Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

"Each of these problems ... could capture the complete attention of a government by itself, and he's got to deal with all of them," Scowcroft continued. "But with the mood he's established and the receptiveness of that mood by the rest of the world, these problem are all solvable; difficult, but solvable."

Scowcroft, a retired lieutenant general in the U.S. Air Force, former National Security Adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, president of The Scowcroft Group, an international business advisory firm and an Ogden native, listed three main tasks facing the Obama administration.

First, changing the mood in and toward the United States, which Obama has done well, Scowcroft said.

Second, that Obama "come to grips" with the complicated and rapidly changing world, and third, that his administration address specific problems in that world.

One of the most dramatic changes to foreign policy came in 1991 with the end of the Cold War, Scowcroft explained.

"The threat of nuclear war vanished, and instead there was a world without any great threat but with a number of little irritating problems around, problems which we had just brushed aside in the heat of the Cold War," he said. "(The change) was like looking through different ends of the telescope."

One of the newest problems is how Obama and the world will deal with the recent discovery of Iran's second uranium enrichment plant.

"We don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons," Scowcroft said. "If they continue we can be almost certain that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey and maybe others will feel they have to do the same thing for their own protection. That is not a world that we would like to see — (several) new countries only a couple months away from a nuclear weapon."

Scowcroft said if world powers like Russia, China, Germany, France, Britain and the United States can convince Iran that pursuing independent enrichment of uranium will not increase its security, and that there are other ways to obtain nuclear fuel, Iran may think twice about "standing up to everybody," he said.

However, perhaps the most vexing matter facing the Obama administration is the conflict in Afghanistan, Scowcroft said.

Not only is it next door to Pakistan, a country with more than 100 nuclear weapons, but it is a country that has continually lacked a centralized government and has become a haven for terrorist groups, Scowcroft said.

"It's not really clear (to the public) why we're there and what we really need to do to succeed," he said. "What does succeed mean in Afghanistan?"

It's a difficult question with no quick and easy answer.

Yet despite the tough questions, Scowcroft said the most important task for citizens is to become informed about issues on more than just a surface level.

"The answers are not very obvious," he said. "The problems are, but the answers aren't."

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