Bush is leading from the front
By James Mann from the Financial Times, November
George W. Bush's reshuffle of his foreign policy team, particularly the
nomination of Condoleezza Rice to replace Colin Powell as secretary of state,
will certainly alter the personal dynamics within the US administration. But it
is unlikely to cause the administration's actual policies to veer to the right
in the way commentators have predicted.
Over recent days, a simple but questionable logic has been applied to Mr Bush's personnel shake-up. It goes like this: Mr Powell is leaving. He was a proponent of multilateral approaches and caution in the use of force. Therefore, without Mr Powell (so this argument goes) the Bush administration will be more unilateral in its approach to the world and even less cautious in its willingness to rely on military power.
One problem with this line of thinking is that Mr Powell was not winning arguments within the administration anyway - at least not on the big issues such as Iraq or North Korea or the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. To put it another way, Mr Powell's departure will not necessarily push the Bush administration to the right, because it was already there. Moreover, predictions that Mr Powell's departure means the wraps are off for further military interventions in places such as Syria or Iran ignore the military, financial and diplomatic constraints Mr Bush now confronts as a result of the continuing upheaval in Iraq. The administration is not about to go marching into other countries; it does not have the troops and its hands are full in Iraq.
Mr Powell was a regular opponent of neoconservatives within the Bush administration - officials such as Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defence secretary, who emphasised the importance of spreading democracy and combating tyranny. Yet it does not follow that because Mr Powell has resigned, the neocons have taken over. Dick Cheney, the vice-president and Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, are hawks but they are not neoconservatives; they have been above all champions of American power. Ms Rice was schooled as a realist, trained to pay attention to national interests. Mr Bush, Ms Rice, Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld have supported the neoconservatives on Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East but on other foreign policy issues, such as Russia and China, they have tended to operate as cautious realists.
The shake-up of the foreign policy team was motivated less by ideology than by tensions over Mr Powell's role and by the desire to extend the control of the Bush White House over the State department. It was an assertion of raw presidential power.
The roots of the struggle go back to the early 1990s, when Mr Cheney was defence secretary and Mr Powell (who had earlier served as Ronald Reagan's national security adviser) was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mr Cheney chafed at the remarkably powerful independent role played by Mr Powell; so did Mr Cheney's top civilian aides, among them Mr Wolfowitz, Stephen Hadley (now Mr Bush's nominee for national security adviser) and I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, now Mr Cheney's chief of staff.
When Mr Bush first ran for president in 2000, Mr Powell's support was crucial, both for the Bush message of "compassionate conservatism" in the campaign and for his message of national healing after the disputed election. But after Mr Powell was nominated as secretary of state, Republican conservatives began to worry that, given his close ties to the Pentagon, he would become the dominant influence over US foreign policy. They argued that the Bush administration needed to find a particularly strong defence secretary to try to keep Mr Powell's influence in check.
And so, early plans to put a former senator or governor into the Pentagon were scrapped. Mr Bush suddenly gave the job of defence secretary to Mr Rumsfeld, who was close to Mr Cheney and in fact had been Mr Cheney's boss in the Nixon and Ford administrations. In that personnel skirmish four years ago, Mr Powell lost the key battle even before the Bush administration took office.
As secretary of state, however, Mr Powell was often treated with wariness in other parts of the administration. Others resented his popularity, independence and skill in dealing with the media. But he could not be fired or be allowed to resign, at least not before November 2, 2004. This month's presidential election results meant, among other things, that for the first time in five years Mr Bush no longer needed Mr Powell.
Ms Rice will carry to the State department far stronger support from the president than Mr Powell ever enjoyed. This will almost certainly strengthen the department's hand in dealing with the White House and Pentagon. Yet it is not clear how forceful or innovative Ms Rice will be in her new job.
Until now, virtually her entire career in the federal government has been spent at the National Security Council, in the role of co-ordinator or intermediary. Her main role has been to seek to smooth over differences between the State and Defence departments, between hawks and doves, between realists and neoconservatives. Now, for the first time, she will be an advocate in the administration's internal deliberations, speaking for the interests of the State department and of American diplomacy.
The changes mean that Mr Bush himself will dominate all aspects of US foreign policy, right down to its execution, in a way that he has not before. If American diplomacy fails to win international support, no one at the White House or the Pentagon will be able to complain that Mr Powell did not try hard enough or that the State department blew it. There can be no scapegoats. While it remains unclear where Mr Bush will take US foreign policy in his second term, there is no doubt that he is the one holding the reins.
The writer is author-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and author of Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (Viking/Penguin)
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