| |
When 500-pound gorillas
fight
By Ehsan Ahrari
The sudden
primacy of President George W Bush's national security
adviser, Condoleezza "Condy" Rice, as the person in
charge of a newly formulated "Iraq Stabilization Group",
which is responsible for overseeing the reconstruction
efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, is causing considerable
controversy. Rice herself does 
not seem to be comfortable with her newly
acquired visibility, a development that is not in
harmony with her own vision of her role. That may not
turn out to be a welcome development for the success of
a policy whose effective implementation, even without
this controversy, faces enormous odds.
When Bush
picked Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld to become
secretaries of state and defense, respectively, he
indeed selected two heavyweights to conduct the national
security policy of his administration. The clash between
these two 500-pound guerillas was expected; it goes with
the turf. Bush also chose Condy Rice to be his national
security adviser. She may not have been of the same
caliber as Powell and Rumsfeld in the realm of national
security affairs, however, because of her close ties
with Bush, she was expected to play an important role.
In the American national decision making system, the
chief strength of a national security adviser always
stemmed from his or her personal relationship with the
president, since he looks at that person for candid
recommendations and advice on some of the most
contentious but heady issues of his tenure. Almost all
powerful national security advisers came to the job with
a long tenure of personal friendship with the president.
Two "models" of the role of a national security
adviser stand out. The first one is about what the job
entails: coordinating inputs from various agencies and
forwarding them to the president with recommendations
for his decision, and making sure that other national
security agencies are properly implementing the
presidential preferences and objectives related to all
major policy issues.
Henry Kissinger established
the second model of the role of national security
adviser during the administration of former president
Richard M Nixon. In the "Kissingerian" model, the
adviser remains a visible advocate of policy options. He
often rode roughly over other agency players in order to
make sure that his perspectives remained inordinately
visible, compared to those of others. Obviously, this
model assigns undue primacy to the national security
adviser, however, the very existence of that primacy
depends on the wishes of the president.
The
Kissingerian model may be viewed as sui generis
because of Nixon's Watergate-related troubles. When he
was bogged down by that scandal, Kissinger became more
important than he would have been otherwise. After all,
foreign policy was definitely a forte of Nixon's when
Kissinger entered.
It was assumed that only
another national security adviser of the professional
stature of Kissinger might become that powerful again.
Zbigniew Brzezinski came pretty close to emulating the
Kissingerian model in his role as the national security
adviser to former president Jimmy Carter. The operating
force even in that instance was the close mutual rapport
between Carter and Brzezinski going back to the former's
involvement in the Trilateral Commission - a
non-governmental policy-oriented discussion group formed
in 1973 by private citizens of Japan, European Union
countries and North America to foster closer cooperation
with shared leadership responsibilities - when he was
governor of the state of Georgia. Brzezinski also
brought to his job a professional reputation similar to
that of Kissinger.
Rice's professional
credentials are no match to Kissinger or Brzezinski.
However, she has the personal confidence of Bush. But
Rice's vision of her role is not like that of either
Kissinger or Brzezinski, nor did she bring to her job
the mega-egos of her two predecessors. Her preference
has been to play the role of a policy coordinator.
Rice's approach to her job also suited the
larger-than-life egos of Powell and Rumsfeld, who often
strongly disagreed on the conduct of US national
security policy.
During the US military campaign
in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld did play a significant role.
But as Bob Woodward describes in his book, Bush At
War, the major credit of creating a potent
warfighting strategy that resulted in the dismantlement
of the Taliban regime goes to Central Intelligence
Agency Director George Tenet. That strategy combined the
use of special forces with air power to supplant ground
attacks of the Northern Alliance on the Taliban forces.
It seems that Rumsfeld did not want to be outshone by
any other agency player next time around. So he and his
department played a central role in creating the
warfighting strategy during the Iraqi military campaign.
The US invasion of Iraq, unlike the Afghan
campaign, revolved around the use of conventional
military forces. Even though special forces did play an
important role in that operation in the northern and
western parts of Iraq, the ground forces carried the
brunt of the battle that toppled the regime of Saddam
Hussein. In fact, Rumsfeld 's decision to use lighter
forces in Iraq - a decision that all off-the-record
sources alluded to the secretary of defense, but he
himself gave credit for that strategy to General Tommy
Franks, Commander of the Central Command - did come
under heavy criticism from a number of retired US
general officers.
The US Department of Defense
came under heavy censure during "phase four", aka the
post-conflict phase, of the Iraqi campaign. The acute
looting of Iraqi cities, while the US forces either
looked away or remained focused on guarding oil fields,
created an environment of bitter resentment among the
Iraqis. The US occupation forces could never reestablish
a large reservoir of goodwill in that country since
then. The saboteurs, pro-Saddam forces, and even alleged
Islamic forces from other Middle Eastern countries, seem
to be making sure that the anti-US feelings in Iraq do
not subside. Thus, while the US-led Coalition
Provisional Authority, under the administrative
leadership of L Paul Bremer, is attempting to rebuild
Iraq, the anti-US forces are busy destroying the
infrastructure, conducting a campaign of terror against
US forces, and against those Iraqis who are cooperating
with the US.
As the security situation continued
to deteriorate in Iraq, Bush finally decided, towards
the end of September, to bring about a major change in
the bureaucratic leadership that is in charge of
rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan. Now the new entity, the
Iraq Stabilization Group, is under the leadership of
Rice.
Rice is currently faced with two intricate
challenges. First, the rebuilding of Iraq and
Afghanistan is challenging enough by itself and is full
of numerous landmines that threaten to blow up without
any advance notice. Taliban and al-Qaeda forces are
regrouping in Afghanistan. Some Afghan warlords have
also resumed the age-old internecine warfare that
threatens to further corrode the already weak authority
of leader Hamid Karzai. On October 14, the United
Nations Security Council unanimously passed a resolution
expanding the 5,500-strong North Atlantic Treaty
Organization-led force in Afghanistan to areas beyond
the capital. Even though this is a major victory for the
Karzai government, one has to reserve judgment whether
it would indeed enhance the stability of Afghanistan.
At the same time, the security situation in Iraq
seems to be getting more complicated with the impending
insertion of Turkish peacekeeping forces. The Turkish
embassy in Baghdad has already come under a terrorist
attack, on October 15. Despite the endeavors of the Bush
administration to garner the support of other countries
to widen the presence of multinational peacekeeping
forces in Iraq, the outcome is far from satisfactory.
The trouble is, Washington wants the international
community to help out in Iraq, but is not willing to
offer concessions either in terms of handing over a
major share of governing authority to the UN, or
transferring sovereignty to the Iraqi Governing Council.
Some major breakthroughs are vital on these issues
before the impending conference of the donors countries
for Iraq in Madrid towards the end of the month. Rice
has to remain fully focused to ensure progress on all
these heady issues.
The second challenge for
Rice is that she must continue to massage the egos of
Rumsfeld and Powell and make sure that the frequency or
intensity of interagency squabbles does not result in
bureaucratic inertia for which Washington is legendary.
Such inertia emerges when a major policy is not going
well for a sitting president. And now it seems to be
just that time for Bush, involving Iraq and Afghanistan.
He is quite conscious of that reality, and is very much
on the offensive to ensure that the American public is
hearing his side of the story: That considerable
progress is being made in Iraq.
Rice is also
doing her bit to divert the attention of the media by
stating that she will continue her role as a policy
coordinator. The sad part about these ongoing
interagency battles is that the important business of
rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan is likely to be lost,
especially if security situations in both those
countries continue to deteriorate. As former president
John F Kennedy observed many decades ago in the context
of the "blame game" - another idiosyncrasy of Washington
- "Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan."
In the wake of the continued worsening of the internal
affairs of Iraq and Afghanistan, Rice will get the
lion's share of the blame. She is already coming under
heavy fire for the "dysfunctional" nature of the
functioning of the National Security Council under her
leadership.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an
Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent strategic
analyst.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information
on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
