"Obama's report does address the right security issues — nuclear weapons, climate change, violent extremism, and I would add, the issue of a world filled with conflict and division. Economic issues also are a key area of focus," Blaney said Friday. "But we need a strong general consensus about American strategic and foreign policy goals."
Blaney, currently a Senior Fellow for the Center for International Policy (CIP), said Obama's plan illustrates that the President intends to leverage all the most crucial instruments of national power, financial, martial and diplomatic, to protect US security interests.
Areas of cooperation between both parties do exist on security issues, if US leaders are willing to forego political brinksmanship and collaborate to find solutions, he explained.
"There will be support in the end if there are fair solutions to Ukraine and Iran. On climate change even about half of Republican voters think we need to act," Blaney said.
Blaney's comments come as Obama's strategy is under attack by many Republican leaders who think the President's plan doesn't address immediate actual security threats and focuses too much on issues like climate change.
On Friday, Obama released his 2015 US National Security Strategy which promises, among other things, to strengthen national defense, combat terrorism and prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, along with non-military objectives such as arresting climate change and championing the rights of all ethnic and religious minorities, the disabled, the displaced and LGBT individuals.
