In the wake
of Colin Powell's resignation as US secretary of state several
days ago, speculation over the direction of Washington's
foreign policy under a second George W Bush presidential
term has intensified. Although his departure
had been expected for some time, many are wondering
whether Powell's exit at this particular juncture
will increase the Bush administration's unilateral
tendencies on the world stage. Their fears are
well founded, but there is good reason to believe that
the hardline neo-conservative current of US policy has
already peaked. Above all, there is simply not enough
time in Bush's second term for Washington to disengage
itself from Iraq to a degree where it can regain
the flexibility that allowed it to pursue a militarist
foreign policy after September 11, 2001.
There is little doubt that Powell's resignation
will, at least in the short term, strengthen the
administration's hardliners, led by Vice President Dick
Cheney. As Bush's most substantial moderate official by
a long margin, Powell had been the only significant
counterweight to the administration's unabashed
unilateralists, and his relatively inexperienced
successor, Condoleezza Rice, has neither the clout at
home nor the diplomatic skill abroad to fill the vacuum
he leaves behind, even if she shares his realistic and
anti-Utopian world view that underlies his divergence
from the neo-cons.
On the other hand, Powell has
left enough of a legacy that his absence need not spell
disaster for moderation. In the final 19 months of his
term, Powell's patient resolve has at least partly
reversed the marginalization of the State Department
that had occurred in the preceding 19 months - the
period from September 11 to the fall of Baghdad in April
2003 - in which the Pentagon's neo-con civilian leaders
had forged their own foreign-policy agenda that
relegated traditional US diplomacy to the sidelines.
Indeed, from the very moment that US troops began
encountering unexpected difficulties in securing their
21-day blitzkrieg to the Iraqi capital, Foggy Bottom has
clawed its way back to the forefront of US foreign
policy.
In early April 2003, US neo-conservatism
reigned triumphant as the giant statue of Saddam Hussein
in Baghdad was brought down before the international
media. Yet even as Cheney, Pentagon deputy Paul
Wolfowitz, Doug Feith and other neo-con stalwarts in
both the administration and the press celebrated the
rapid victory, events were unfolding right under the
noses of coalition forces that would decisively
undermine the credibility of Washington's rosy
expectations for post-Saddam Iraq. As reports emerged of
rampant looting in Baghdad unchecked by US troops, the
jubilant White House and Pentagon were innocently
unaware that a lengthy, costly, haphazardly planned and
executed occupation of not altogether grateful Iraqis
had begun.
By mid-2003, once it had become clear
that no Hamid Karzai would arise in US-dominated Iraq,
as in Afghanistan, Washington had little choice but to
pin its hopes on the newly formed Coalition Provisional
Authority (CPA) and the largely ceremonial Iraqi
Governing Council. Through its career officials in the
CPA, including CPA head L Paul Bremer, the State
Department established itself as a player in occupied
Iraq. Nonetheless, the Pentagon retained its influence
in Baghdad, and the extent to which Bremer was pressured
by Bush administration hardliners is debatable.
As the Sunni insurgency escalated in the latter
part of 2003, Washington's rhetoric of preemptive
warfare stood in ever-greater contrast to its
overstretched military might. Consequently, US diplomacy
staged a comeback, much to the chagrin of the neo-cons.
Most notably, the State Department seized the initiative
on the North Korean nuclear crisis, signaling to
Pyongyang that it would not be required to fully
dismantle all its weapons-related facilities before
substantive multiparty talks could resume. As Bush
political mastermind Karl Rove quietly adopted the
slogan "no war in '04" to boost the president's
re-election chances, proponents of traditional, realistic
foreign policy became more vocal in their criticism of
the Iraqi quagmire. Increasingly marginalized, the most
uncompromising supporters of preemptive war - former
Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and former
Bush speechwriter David Frum (who coined the term "axis
of evil") - published the vitriolic polemic An End to
Evil, in which they lambasted the revival of State
Department influence over US foreign policy.
Saddam's capture last December gave the
neo-cons new hope that Iraq had finally turned a corner
and enough US resources would be freed to improve the
strategic posture vis-a-vis North Korea, Iran and other
enemies in their gunsights. It also enabled hawks to
claim that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's decision to
dismantle his special-weapons programs one week later
resulted from his fear of meeting Saddam's fate, when in
fact the compromise represented a success for diplomacy
that the neo-cons would never have tolerated with
Saddam. In the spring of 2004, however, the Bush
administration's remaining illusions in Iraq vaporized
amid a shocking surge of insurgent attacks that nearly
shook the US-appointed interim government to its core.
Exactly one year after Saddam's ouster,
the neo-conservative vision for postwar Iraq was
in shambles, and Powell's persistence in the face of
his earlier impotence had apparently paid off. While
Bush did not reshuffle the Pentagon's civilian leadership
for the botched occupation, he dramatically limited
the neo-con role in the handover of power from the CPA
and Governing Council to a new interim Iraqi
authority. Largely through the State Department, he sought
approval from UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi in executing the transition
last June. The new government's top leaders,
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi (a former Ba'athist) and
President Ghazi al-Yawer (a Sunni tribal leader), were
both considered Foggy Bottom favorites that had never
been top choices among the now-discredited neo-cons, whose
own favorite Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National
Congress had just been disgraced by charges of spying
for Iran. So precipitously had the top Pentagon
civilians fallen in the pecking order that they were
powerless to stop a mild re-Ba'athification in parts of
Iraq.
In the months since the June 28 handover, US
policy in Iraq has in essence proceeded along the
course set by the State Department realists. The massive
US Embassy in Baghdad now rests at the pinnacle of the
occupation's decision-making structure and is, at least
in theory, subordinate to a sovereign Iraqi state. US
troops now conduct major operations only at the behest
of Allawi's interim regime.
In the wider
arena of US foreign policy, nowhere has the realist outlook
of Powell's State Department manifested itself more
clearly than in relations with China. September 11 had
compelled the Bush administration to improve ties with
Beijing after bilateral relations were strained by
various events earlier in 2001, notably the Hainan spy-plane
incident. Despite this, hawks continued to view China
with suspicion and were displeased - though not
surprised - by Beijing's alignment with France and
Russia in opposing the invasion of Iraq. Only as postwar
Iraq deteriorated did Washington embrace China's rise to
diplomatic prominence in Asia. As host of the six-party
talks to resolve the Korean nuclear crisis in August
2003, Beijing gained prestige as a regional great power,
a development that Powell welcomed.
By the
end of 2003, there was little doubt that State
Department realists had sidelined the neo-cons on China policy.
In December, Bush took the unprecedented step of
publicly scolding Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian
for suggesting the island's independence. His warning was
a nasty surprise, compelling Chen to tone down
the independence rhetoric in his re-election campaign
and igniting a firestorm of criticism from neo-con
pundits. Throughout 2004, US-China relations remained on
an upswing, largely due to State Department ascendancy.
On the touchy issue of Taiwan, Powell has
steered Washington away from a confrontational
course, emphasizing respect for the status quo on all sides.
His latest remark that Taipei should integrate with
the mainland may have been intended as a final warning
that an overstretched Washington will not tolerate
its defense commitment to Taiwan being taken for
granted, though he unwittingly exceeded such a message
by in essence taking Beijing's side.
With Bush
re-elected and Powell gone, there is no assurance that
the State Department will not suffer another period of
weakness as it did in the prelude to and early part of
intervention in Iraq. Yet although the neo-cons will
undoubtedly push for a renewed policy of aggressive
action against unfriendly regimes, Iraq will likely
remain Washington's principal foreign project for the
foreseeable future. While experts expect substantial
troop reductions to begin as early as 2005, the US is
quietly preparing to deal with spasms of instability for
an extended period. A reasonable forecast is that at
least 100,000 US troops will remain in Iraq until 2006
at the earliest, and no fewer than 50,000 will still be
present at the end of Bush's second term.
This
leaves the hawks with little choice but to recommend
some combination of covert operations and precision
bombings to neutralize North Korean and Iranian weapons
programs, assuming (as hawks generally do) that
negotiation will fail. Yet even without electoral
concerns in his coming term, Bush will be hard pressed
to launch new wars, given how he has already
underestimated the difficulty of securing Iraq. Unless
another September 11 gives him a clear mandate for
drastic measures, it is hard to imagine new applications
of the Bush doctrine in the next four years.
Thus diplomacy - albeit aggressive and possibly
not very diplomatic - will probably be the primary means
of promoting vital US interests in the near future. This
would ensure the State Department's centrality in
resolving crises and at best a secondary role for the
Pentagon. In waging war on Iraq, the State Department
had been dragged along by the military to seek
international cover for what was, in strictest terms, an
illegal war of aggression. From now on, the more
traditional paradigm of military force being wielded as
only one of several instruments of power by diplomats
will take firm root in Bush's foreign policy.
Despite a good share of disappointment as he
leaves office, Powell can take heart in the fact that
events of the past 19 months have vindicated his
conservative vision of international affairs, and he has
maneuvered the State Department back from the doldrums.
The quagmire in Iraq has demonstrated the gap between
the neo-conservative aspirations for global domination
and actual US capabilities. By contrast, the Powell
doctrine of war as a last resort and of using
overwhelming force with a well-defined exit strategy has
never appeared more prudent than it does today. In the
coming years, Powell's shadow will loom large over not
only Foggy Bottom, but the White House as well.
Pan Hu is an independent strategic
analyst based in the Washington, DC, area.
