Barack Obama is nothing if not a unique politician.  Despite his liberal background, he rushed to the center after the election.

Indeed, his foreign policy is starting to look like a slightly more reasonable version of Bush-McCain neoconservatism.  The result may be promiscuous military intervention, but only after Washington takes the usual diplomatic steps and rounds up the usual allies.

The most disconcerting sign of the future is the appointment of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.  True, when testifying before the U.S. Senate she sounded like the model of responsibility:  “We must build a world with more partners and fewer adversaries.  Foreign policy must be based on a marriage of principles and pragmatism, not rigid ideology.”

Perhaps so, but she has delighted in playing the warrior.  She voted for the Iraq war and during the campaign famously imagined herself visiting Bosnia under fire as First Lady.  Whatever her actual role in setting Clinton administration policy, she embraced her husband’s aggressive war against Serbia, which had neither attacked nor threatened to attack the U.S. or any U.S. ally.

Sen. Clinton announced that if Iran used nuclear weapons to attack Israel—which possesses an estimated 200 nuclear weapons, presumably for use in just such a contingency—“we would be able to totally obliterate them.”  Nor she challenge any of the usual interventionist nostrums while serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Clinton administration’s Balkans policy, as well as threat to invade Haiti and transformation of the Somalia feeding mission into nation-building, created a precedent for so-called humanitarian intervention.  The new secretary of state has called for NATO involvement in Sudan’s Darfur region along similar lines.

Thus, when she affirms that “Diplomacy will be at the vanguard of our foreign policy,” the question is to what end?  The difference between Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama may well be more about means rather than ends.

The other members of the President-elect Obama’s national security team are unlikely to balance against Secretary Clinton.  Defense Secretary Robert Gates has demonstrated both competence and restraint, but has suggested no significant changes to existing policy.  Indeed, he is one of the few optimists about finding a military solution in Afghanistan.  Clinton called a policy review for the latter the “highest priority” for the new president, which likely means an escalation of the war, which she termed “more for more”—more U.S. and foreign troops.

Retired Marine Corps Gen. James L. Jones, the incoming National Security Adviser, is no more likely to act as a voice of “change.”  Though widely seen as competent and nonpartisan, Gen. Jones is unlikely to rethink today’s policy of promiscuous intervention in every region of the world.  His most famous proposal was disastrously bad:  to place a NATO force, presumably including Americans, in the West Bank.  Now Israel has suggested something similar in the midst of its invasion of the Gaza Strip:  U.S. forces could help seal off Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.

Disappointing as the administration seems likely to be, Sen. Obama never presented himself as a candidate of peace.  Rather, he used his prescient opposition to the Iraq war to create an image that attracted most people on the foreign policy Left.

However, even his comments on Iraq were carefully calculated:  he proposed a 16-month withdrawal but said ever less on the issue as it faded from public debate.  The Pentagon reportedly has prepared an accelerated withdrawal schedule to match that schedule, but his plans remain unclear.

He joined his opponents in advocating an expensive expansion of the Army and Marine Corps.  He was more hawkish than John McCain on Pakistan, proposing overt cross-border raids.

Like the other major candidates, Obama attended the AIPAC convention and pandered shamelessly.  Although urging a dialogue with Iran, he promised to do “everything in my power” to stop Tehran from developing nuclear weapons and refused to rule out the use of military force.  Hilary Clinton testified that the new president believed in “an attitude towards engagement [toward Tehran] that might bear fruit,” which is all to the good.  But she did not change the possible end point.

Candidate Obama started out with an even-handed approach to the Russia-Georgia war, but quickly followed Sen. McCain in backing Georgia’s impulsive, irresponsible Mikheil Saakashvili, who, evidence increasingly indicates, triggered the conflict with an unprovoked invasion of the territory of South Ossetia.  At her confirmation hearing Sen. Clinton merely promised cooperation “with our Russian counterparts without pretending to be personal friends.”  The incoming administration seems likely to continue the Bush administration policy of expanding NATO ever further into regions of little geopolitical interest to the U.S., multiplying security commitments and risking conflict with Moscow.

Candidate Obama proposed an extensive democracy-promotion program and advocated concerted action in humanitarian crises, such as Darfur.  Never once did he question any of Washington’s antiquated Cold War alliances.  In fact, after his election he called up South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and promised to “strengthen” an alliance which has lost any role in today’s world.

Nor will new thinking come from Vice President Joe Biden.  He was an uber-hawk on the Balkans, pushed NATO expansion up to Russia’s borders, backed the Iraq war, flew to Tbilisi to embrace Saakashvili, and of Israel declared:  “You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.”

Secretary-designate Clinton predictably advocated greater use of the United Nations and cooperation with friends, but that could mean more not less conflict, as demonstrated by her husband’s administration.  After all, it was NATO that approved the bizarre war against Serbia.

Some of President Obama’s supporters argue that he was dissembling on these and other issues for political reasons.  But it is dangerous to assume that one’s candidate is telling the truth when you like what he says and lying to the world to win votes when you disagree with him.  After all, if he is an unregenerate liar, why should you believe he is telling you the truth?

The new president’s rush to embrace the liberal interventionist establishment in choosing his foreign policy staff suggests that the next four (or either) years will be a lot like the last eight in substance if not tone, and a lot like the previous eight years in both substance and tone.

At her confirmation hearing Sen. Clinton called for the use of “smart power.”  That  sounds good, but it will have meaning only if the U.S. recognizes that it need not always be involved in overseas conflicts.  Unfortunately, the Obama administration seems set to repeat the essential tenet of liberal interventionism: like God, Washington must worry whenever a sparrow anywhere falls to earth.  Those expecting the new administration to implement a foreign policy of peace and restraint are likely to be sadly disappointed.

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Doug Bandow is the Robert A. Taft Fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire (Xulon Press).