WASHINGTON - US President George W Bush's
nomination of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice
to replace Secretary of State Colin Powell consolidates
the control over US foreign policy of the coalition of
hawks that promoted the war in Iraq, led by Vice
President Dick Cheney.
The promotion of Rice's
deputy, Stephen Hadley, to take her place in the White
House also confirms Cheney's pre-eminence in Bush's
second term.
A major booster of national missile
defense and the development of "usable" mini-nuclear
weapons, Hadley held a key policy position under the
vice president when Cheney served as Pentagon chief
under Bush's father, president George H W Bush, from
1989-93.
Growing speculation that another Cheney
ally, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and
International Security John Bolton, will be nominated to
serve as deputy secretary of state under Rice is adding
to the impression that the hawks are on the verge of a
clean sweep.
As expected, the State Department's
current No 2, Richard Armitage, announced his
resignation on Tuesday, thus opening another key slot in
the foreign-policy bureaucracy and one on which Bolton
and his neo-conservative and ultra-unilateralist backers
have had their eyes for months.
"This is a
statement that Bush sees that what he's done in his
first term is the way he wants to go into the second
term, if not a bit more so," said Jonathan Clarke, a
former British analyst based at the libertarian Cato
Institute and co-author of America Alone: The
Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order.
"It's a way of saying, 'If you liked what you
saw in the first administration, you're going to love
the second one,'" he said in an interview.
Although Rice began her tenure as Bush's
national security adviser a traditional "realist",
stressing the importance of bolstering US alliances and
of committing US troops overseas only in cases where
vital national interests were threatened, she was
careful from the outset to avoid alienating right-wing
forces, particularly Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld.
On key issues, particularly
surrounding the lead-up to the Iraq war, the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the US posture toward
Iran and North Korea, she more often either aligned
herself with or deferred to the hawks, especially
Cheney, than she sided with Powell.
That was an
immense frustration to the former head of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, who had assumed at the beginning that,
like himself, she was committed to the pragmatic
multilateralism of George H W Bush and their mutual
mentor, former national security adviser Brent
Scowcroft.
Thus Rice ordered an early draft of
the administration's December 2002 National Security
Strategy (NSS) that was written by Powell protege and
current president of the Council on Foreign Relations
Richard Haass to be completely rewritten, according to
James Mann, author of a highly regarded study of the
Bush war cabinet, Rise of the Vulcans.
"She thought the Bush administration needed
something bolder, something that would represent a more
dramatic break with the ideas of the past," noted Mann.
As rewritten, the NSS marked a comprehensive
endorsement of most of the controversial ideas put
forward under Bush, including global US military
dominance, preemption against possible enemies, the
aggressive promotion of democracy overseas and the
rejection of multilateral mechanisms or treaties that
might constrain the exercise of US power.
But
Rice appears to have been picked to run the State
Department as much for her fierce personal loyalty to
Bush as for her own foreign-policy views.
Recommended originally by Scowcroft and former
secretary of state George Shultz to serve as Bush's
principal foreign-policy adviser during his 2000
campaign, Rice, who shares a love of American football
and physical fitness with the president, hit it off
immediately with the future leader.
During the
past five years, she has frequently spent weekends at
the presidential retreat at Camp David or at his ranch
in Crawford, Texas, with the Bush family.
The
closeness of her relationship with Bush - something that
entirely eluded Powell, whose unequaled international
and popular standing appeared to evoke some resentment
in both the president and vice president - would
normally be seen as a plus by the foreign-service
officers who toil at the State Department, because it
ensures that their views will heard in the White House.
According to Mann, that may yet turn out to be
the case. "The White House saw Powell as an independent
force and an independent operator," he said, adding that
such independence limited his influence.
"Rice,
who will be more hawkish, will also now be the spokesman
for the State Department and for diplomacy within the
administration, and I can imagine situations where, once
in a while, the same policies that would have been
rejected if they came from Powell might get a better
reception at the White House because they came from
Rice."
At the same time, Mann described the
posting as "Bush's way of establishing his political
control over the State Department", which has been seen
by many of the hawks and their backers in the media as
resisting the president's more aggressive policies. In
this view, Rice, like newly assigned Porter Goss at the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), will act as an
enforcer of Bush's policy "vision" in the department and
as a reliable communicator of the president's line to
foreign governments.
"She will be a much more
forceful advocate [of Bush's policy] to American allies
and partners and less inclined to be a sponge for their
frustrations," said Clarke. "She'll be more inclined to
take the fight to them and not allow the outside world
to think that she is somehow a channel into the
foreign-policy-making process to deflect or undermine
the president's policies."
Many State Department
officials expressed serious concerns about Rice's
appointment on Tuesday, even as they were recovering
from Monday's announcement by Powell that he was indeed
leaving.
Powell, who devoted considerable time
and effort to managing the department, had raised morale
significantly from its nadir under his predecessor,
Madeleine Albright, who tended to ignore the career
officers in favor of a small group of political
appointees. "We're so sad to see him go," said one
veteran, who noted that Rice's managerial experience has
been far more limited.
Indeed, most analysts
assess her experience overseeing the National Security
Council (NSC) staff quite negatively because of her
reluctance to take a position when policies were
deadlocked, to ensure that all sides were heard, and to
enforce discipline on the various agencies once a policy
was decided. As a result, policy reviews in key areas,
such as Iran and North Korea, to cite two of the most
prominent examples, dragged on for months and in some
cases were never completed.
To the great
frustration of Powell and former CIA director George
Tenet, Rice tolerated informal channels of communication
between the mainly neo-conservative appointees around
Rumsfeld and Cheney's office, which is headed by his
neo-con chief of staff and national security adviser, I
Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Libby, whose own
national-security staff has been exceptionally large and
aggressive, "is able to run circles around Condi", one
former NSC staffer told Inter Press Service last year
(see Cheney's grip tight
on foreign policy reins, Oct 23, 2003).
Hadley, a lawyer by profession, is seen as a
hardline technocrat who has specialized in nuclear
weapons and national missile defense. He has been a
major advocate of preemption and the development of
"mini-nukes" and other new nuclear weapons that could be
used for conventional purposes.
Considered
particularly discreet - even self-effacing - Hadley came
under strong criticism in various reports in the run-up
to the war in Iraq, primarily because of his close
working relationship with Libby on promoting a number of
now-discredited efforts to tie ousted Iraqi president
Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and to
assert that Saddam was reconstituting a nuclear-weapons
program.
