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The re-education of Colin
Powell
By Ehsan Ahrari
The
potential US invasion of Iraq without the participation
or even support of its major European allies, save some
sycophant Central European countries, or even without
further consultation with the United Nations was being
bandied about in Washington in January.
The Bush
administration's decision to seek a second UN resolution
- despite the steady demands of the neo-conservatives in
Washington for unilateral action and despite the
Franco-German resolve to postpone military action
against Iraq through a UN resolution of their own - is
therefore a tribute to the prestige of Secretary of
State Colin Powell in the top echelons of the US
national-security bureaucracy. A great irony associated
with this issue is that Powell - who was depicted as the
lone voice of moderation and a believer in giving
diplomacy a chance - has lately emerged as one of the
foremost proponents of the US invasion of Iraq. His
speeches at the World Economic Forum on January 26 and
then at the UN on February 13 were clear examples of a
change of heart.
Why has Powell turned hawkish,
or has he? He was the famous "reluctant warrior" of the
Gulf War of 1991, a position that put him in the same
category as one of his personal heroes of the World War
II years, General (and later secretary of state) George
Marshall.
According to Washington insiders,
Powell felt "violated" by the French foreign minister,
Dominique de Villepin, in a meeting of January 20. The
announced purpose of that meeting was to discuss the
future international response to terrorism. Instead, de
Villepin remained focused on the Iraqi situation, and
even indicated to Powell that his country would consider
using its veto when the world body met to pass another
resolution to use force against Iraq. It is still hard
to fathom, however, why the US secretary of state would
react so strongly to such a supposed betrayal. The issue
of military invasion of Iraq and the enormous human
sufferings stemming from that action are so
overwhelming, compared with the trifling problems
associated with personal egos.
The Franco-German
disagreements with the United States on Iraq are not
new. Those countries have made clear their opposition to
the use of military force without giving the UN
inspectors more time to do their job. On the US side,
the French position is viewed as purely driven by the
economic payoffs, as if no other country should consider
anything but adopting the Bush administration's position
of invading Iraq. The German opposition is generally
dismissed in Washington as an outcome of electoral
politics.
There are also reports that Powell
himself has become frustrated with the impasse-oriented
deliberative process of the UN Security Council,
especially since he was the driving force in persuading
President George W Bush to go to that body for its
initiation of the inspection of the Iraqi WMD (weapons
of mass destruction) sites.
A more plausible
explanation regarding the change of heart of Colin
Powell might come from the bureaucratic politics at the
highest echelons of the US government, and is certainly
not idiosyncratic to the Bush administration. In an
administration that is top-heavy with neo-conservatives
(ie, hawks) who are bent on the necessity of toppling
Saddam Hussein, Powell has remained an odd man out.
While that attribute has earned him frequent kudos from
numerous capitals of Europe and Asia, it did not give
him many allies in the innermost sanctum of the
national-security bureaucracy, where domestic realities,
petty parochial perspectives and tunnel-visioned
turf-mindedness often drive the debates over heady
issues of America's strategic affairs.
At the
same time, Saddam's pervasive intransigence about fully
declaring his country's WMD capabilities has not made it
easy for Powell to continue to insist on prolonged
inspections. Undoubtedly, the Iraqi dictator is
attaching too much significance to the trans-Atlantic
squabbling as a phenomenon that might prolong the life
of his regime. What he does not appear to understand is
that, in the final analysis, the United States can, and
will, go it alone. The current rate of US force buildup
around his country should leave no doubt that his
dictatorship is steadily edging toward extinction.
Alternatively, it can also be argued that Saddam
knows his regime is witnessing the final weeks of its
existence and has decided that, if he has any fighting
chance against the awesome military power of the United
States, he had better keep whatever weapons of last
resort he has saved for his last stand. Such a
description creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. However,
such a prophecy, in all likelihood, lies very much in
the realm of reality. So Powell's re-education toward
hawkishness might be a deliberate one. In the
post-Saddam Iraq, his still comparatively moderate
perspectives might drive the US policy of rebuilding
Iraq, and of keeping the actual tenure of US occupation
of that country to a very short duration.
Despite his palpable and recent hawkishness on
Iraq, Powell remains the most articulate voice of reason
and multilateralism in the US. In this capacity, he
remains above the "exchange of unpleasantries" between
some US officials - notably Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld - and French and German leaders. Powell has
refrained from such contentious characterization as
referring to France and Germany as part of "old Europe"
simply because they advocate giving the UN inspections
more time to bring about the disarming of Iraq.
Powell is also mindful of the intricacies of the
debates that are taking place in Europe. European
countries are truly going through an agonizing process
of coming to grips with differences among themselves as
well as resolving their disagreement with the lone
superpower, which played such a crucial role in
containing the former Soviet Union, and thereby
guaranteeing the independence, and the nurturing of
democracy, in Western European countries. Ironically, it
is the demonstration of independence of thought, and the
pursuit of German and French national interests - which
happen to clash with the US predilections for imminently
invading Iraq - that are at the core of the escalating
trans-Atlantic rift.
Whether Iraq is invaded or
not, Powell knows that the trans-Atlantic alliance is
not only here to stay, but it also has to become
formidable in order to come to grips with the
increasingly complex issues of the coming decades. And
it is his perspectives on the necessity of multilateral
management of such issues that are sorely needed in the
coming years if the United States is to maintain its
highly deserved leadership of the West.
Unfortunately, the neo-conservative Manichean
world view remains a formidable obstacle in his way.
Powell knows it, and, perhaps, also for that reason he
has modified his own moderation in order to remain an
effective player in the bureaucratic politics of the
Bush administration regarding Iraq.
Ehsan
Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based
independent strategic analyst.
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