Robert F Ellsworth [1], a former deputy secretary of defense under Donald
Rumsfeld, gives his estimation of Rumsfeld as an individual and as defense
secretary, and the political judgments that affected the formulation of Iraq
and other policies. In an interview with The National Interest online
editor Ximena Ortiz, Ellsworth says the neo-conservatism Rumsfeld adopted
made
"planning for any difficulty ideologically unacceptable" on Iraq.
The National Interest: Given what you know about Donald Rumsfeld
in light of your past professional experience with him, to what degree do you
believe he, rather than the president, formed the crucial policy decisions on
Iraq?
Robert F Ellsworth: I think that they worked very closely
together, together with Vice President Cheney, to form the crucial policy
decisions on Iraq.
TNI: Did you see his signature on anything in particular?
RFE: Well yes. They left to him the details of how to manage and
plan for the invasion and its aftermath. And the difficulty was that the
decision-making was shot through and through with the ideology of the
neo-conservatives, who insisted that it was going to be easy.
Remember, it was going to be a cakewalk and that therefore, planning for any
kind of difficulty after the invasion was ideologically unacceptable because
that would make the decision to invade more difficult. And I'm sorry to say
that all three fell into that trap.
TNI: Why do you think that they bought the neo-conservative line
so thoroughly on Iraq?
RFE: I don't know. [Neither] of them is a neo-conservative, but
they certainly bought the neo-conservative influence.
TNI: Given, again, what you know about Rumsfeld personally, why
do you believe he did not at some point decide to change course?
RFE: That's a good question and I can't really answer it, except
to say that at the same time that he was managing the Iraq war he was also
trying to do something else, which is very difficult and very important, and
that was to transform the military. Because the military is not ready to fight
the kinds of wars that it's going to have to fight over the next 10 or 15 years
and he was trying to get it ready and they resisted that, because it clawed on
their toes and, oh, how they hated him for that.
TNI: Let me ask you the same question in a slightly different
way. To what degree were Rumsfeld's policy decisions affected by his personal
style? Do you believe that his unwavering commitment to the neo-conservative
blueprint, as you so identified, was formed purely out of a long-held strategic
vision, or were personal characteristics, say a certain stubbornness, also a
factor influencing policy?
RFE: No, I don't think it was either personal characteristics or
stubbornness. I think it was a sense on his part, a political judgment that the
neo-conservatives had the political power to impose their vision on the
government and that they should be helped in that. And that was his decision.
It was a political judgment.
And then his style kept him on track without deviating from that because his
style is to be a consistent, stubborn manager and to believe that he knows how
to get things done and that most of the people around him do not. That was his
attitude particularly towards the military.
TNI: Having known him over the years, would you say that was
always his style?
RFE: Yes.
TNI: Did you witness any change in Rumsfeld over the years?
RFE: Well, I think he got wiser and smarter as he got older. He's
been through some terrible personal agonies. He almost died from Legionnaires'
disease about 20 years ago. Yes, he's gotten older and wiser, but basically and
fundamentally, he's remained the same, if you can follow that.
TNI: What do you believe gave Rumsfeld his staying power at the
helm of the Department of Defense, given the escalating and politically
perilous discontent on Iraq? He's known to be tough and abrasive, but do you
believe he gained, before these elections, a certain intimacy with or
commitment from the president?
RFE: Oh yeah, I think that the president and the vice president
and Rumsfeld, all three, worked very closely together to stay the course and to
try to get the right outcome in Iraq. But you remember that Rumsfeld, twice
before over the last year, offered to resign and the president wouldn't let
him.
So Rumsfeld has not been blindly pursuing some personal agenda over there. He's
seeing that there were difficulties and that he was part of the difficulties
and he twice offered to resign but the president turned him down.
TNI: What in your view now is the potential for a change in broad
policy on Iraq and otherwise now that Rumsfeld is gone?
RFE: I don't think that Rumsfeld going all by itself - I think
that's very symbolic. But I think that a change in the approach to the Iraq
problem is coming. I think that [Robert] Gates, the newly designated secretary
of defense, will bring some new ideas, and I think there are a few ideas
around, mainly involving broadening the scope.
It's a regional problem, it isn't just an Iraq problem and it isn't just an
insurgency problem. It's a catastrophic situation in Iraq in which the
surrounding countries and other great powers in the world have a very strong
interest. So I think that the important thing now from the standpoint of our
national interest is to get other powers into the picture quickly on our terms
as much as possible, before they decide that they have to come in on their own
terms and disregard our interests.
[1] Ambassador Robert F Ellsworth is vice chairman of the board of
directors of The Nixon Center and president of The National Interest, Inc. He
was chairman of Bob Dole's presidential campaign in 1988, ambassador to NATO
under president Richard Nixon and worked in the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld
as deputy secretary of defense (and received the National Security Medal)
during the Gerald Ford administration. Now a life-science venture capitalist in
San Diego, he was a three-term Republican congressman from Kansas. He served at
sea in the US navy in World War II and the Korean conflict.
