What James Jones would bring to the White House as national-security adviser

WASHINGTON — James Jones, a retired four-star general, was among a mostly Republican crowd watching a presidential debate in October when Barack Obama casually mentioned that he got a lot of his advice on foreign policy from Jones.

"Explain yourself!" some of the Republicans demanded, as Jones later recalled it.

He didn't. A 6-foot-5 former Marine Corps commandant with the looks of John Wayne, Jones is not given to talking about his political bent. And yet, he is Obama's choice for national-security adviser, a job that will make him the main foreign-policy sounding board and sage to a president with relatively little foreign-policy experience.

The selection of Jones, who retired last year from the Marines after 40 years, will elevate another foreign-policy moderate to a team expected to include Robert Gates, a carry-over from the Bush administration, as defense secretary, and Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state. By bringing a former military man to the White House, Obama may be trying to cement an early bond with military leaders who regard him with some uneasiness, particularly over his call for rapid troop reductions in Iraq.

He'll have to mediate

But Jones also will be expected to mediate between rivals, particularly in dealing with Gates, who has his own power base at the Pentagon, and with Clinton, who has told friends she does not expect the national-security adviser to stand between her and the president.

And while other generals, including Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft, have successfully made the transition to national-security adviser, the experience has sometimes been rocky, as in the career of John Poindexter, a retired admiral who fought an uphill battle during the Reagan administration to mediate between George Shultz at the State Department and Caspar Weinberger at the Pentagon before getting caught up in the Iran-contra affair.

Obama is expected to announce his national-security team Monday in Chicago, with Gates at the Pentagon, Clinton at the State Department, Jones at the White House and possibly Adm. Dennis Blair, who is retired, as director of national intelligence. What is notable is that none of them has a long history with Obama and none is known to be particularly close to him.

At the time of the presidential debate in October, Jones had spoken only twice to Obama, most recently to brief him on Afghanistan before the candidate made his first trip there. By contrast, Jones had worked since 1979 with John McCain and regarded the Republican nominee as a friend. On the night of the debate, Jones had just given a speech to a mostly Republican group in Pebble Beach, Calif.

He knows the system

Jones, 64, is fluent in French, which he once spoke better than he spoke English after living in Paris from age 2 to 17. He played basketball at Georgetown University, served in Vietnam and has received numerous decorations as a Marine, including the Defense Distinguished Service Medal with two oak leaf clusters and the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V."

In selecting Jones, Obama also has picked a former supreme allied commander in Europe, a man who, at NATO, had to cajole, prod and bully recalcitrant nations. At NATO, he led the U.S. operation in Kosovo. He served as the Bush administration's envoy to set up an Israeli-Palestinian security model in the West Bank city of Jenin and has traveled to Afghanistan and Iraq on missions for the Pentagon.

Jones has said the war in Iraq caused the nation to "take its eye off the ball" in Afghanistan and warned that the consequences of a failure there are just as serious as in Iraq.

"Jones brings the same balance that Scowcroft did to the job," said David Rothkopf, author of "Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power."

"Not only does he know how to work the Washington system," Rothkopf said, but "he's deeply steeped in Afghanistan, which is going to be a central front for us."

But what is unclear, Rothkopf said, is how quickly Jones can develop a close relationship with Obama and how successfully he, Clinton and Gates can define their roles on issues such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia and terrorism.

A "get it done" approach

Because of his proximity — the national-security adviser works in the West Wing of the White House and consults with the president several times a day — Jones will automatically serve as a counter to the State Department. But a State Department at war with the White House is the last thing Jones wants, his friends and associates said.

"He's not the sort of person who is going to be chasing down whether Hillary went through him or not," said one of Jones' friends, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He doesn't have that kind of an ego."

Jones, friends said, gets along well with Clinton and has hired some of her former employees to work for him on the energy task force.

Jones approaches things in a "get it done" fashion, associates said, with a propensity to think tactically. Sometimes, that can rub people the wrong way. When he began working on a security proposal for Jenin, some Israeli military officials grumbled that he thought he knew Israel's security requirements better than they did. Israelis also worried that Jones would seek to impose an international force on the ground to maintain security, an idea favored by many in the international community but that leaves some Israeli hawks queasy.

But things have changed in Jenin, much of it thanks to Jones, Israeli and Palestinian officials said. The city that once sent waves of suicide bombers into Israel now has Palestinian security officials who have restored order.

"He was able to force all of the different parts of the U.S. government to work together to make Jenin a model of economic hope, despite a very dreary past, and so far, so good," said David Makovsky, an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "He brought clarity to a messy situation."

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.