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Rally of the realists
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - After two years of
dominating United States foreign policy, are
unilateralist hawks in the administration of President
George W Bush losing power to the so-called realists
whom they have long disdained?
Although internal
fights within the administration on issues such as
policy towards Syria, Iran and North Korea remain
fierce, there are growing indications that the influence
of the hawks, neo-conservatives in particular, is on the
wane.
New attacks on the neo-cons by key foreign
policy figures, as well as suggestions that hawks in the
Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office are
losing influence in several key areas, including Iraq,
are adding to this impression.
While Bush
himself still deploys the soaring
"we're-bringing-democracy-to-the-Arab-world" rhetoric
that has been a neo-conservative trademark for the past
15 months - most recently in his trip last week to
Britain - the growing consensus here is that the
decision to accelerate the transfer of sovereignty to an
Iraqi government belies a sharp reduction in those
ambitions.
Similarly, the speed with which
Washington is trying to recruit former soldiers and
police - with only pro-forma training and vetting for
past loyalties to the Ba'ath regime of former president
Saddam Hussein - marks a major departure from the
thorough de-Ba'athification program that
neo-conservatives said was absolutely necessary if
democratic governance was to have a chance in Iraq.
Even some neo-conservatives themselves, such as
Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol, have conceded
that the new plans suggest the administration is looking
for an "exit" strategy, rather than a "victory"
strategy.
But the loss of neo-conservative
influence is also visible beyond Iraq.
Bush's
announcement during his trip to Asia late last month
that he was willing to put into writing his verbal
commitment that Washington would not attack North Korea
marked a significant victory for the realists in the
State Department, leading former ambassador Donald
Gregg, a Korea expert close to Bush's father, George H W
Bush, to declare "the administration's pragmatists are
in charge".
Other recent straws in the wind
included the abrupt resignation late last month of a
major hawk, assistant defense secretary for
international security J D Crouch II, and the
announcement by Deputy Secretary of State Richard
Armitage that Washington intended to resume a dialogue
with Iran in the near future, although the latter
remains a source of great contention within the
administration.
But Washington's quiet agreement
this week to not press for a resolution at the
International Atomic Energy Agency that would ask the
United Nations Security Council to consider sanctions
against Iran for maintaining secrecy about its nuclear
program - in other words, to defer to the advice of
France, Germany and Britain - marked a defeat for the
hawks.
Secretary of State Colin Powell also
scored another major - albeit little-noticed win - in
another conflict with the hawks, including his
ultra-unilateralist undersecretary of state for arms
control and international security, John Bolton.
The administration decided to waive sanctions
against six central European countries that have refused
to sign bilateral treaties that would have barred them
from handing over US citizens to the International
Criminal Court (ICC) for investigation or prosecution
for crimes against humanity or war crimes.
Bolton, who is close to both the
neo-conservatives and Cheney, has been on an 18-month
global crusade to punish countries that refuse to sign
such agreements, and the administration's waiver, which
was also urged by a unanimous Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, could undermine his efforts and credibility.
Analysts detect in these moves the growing
influence of several officials, not least of whom is
Karl Rove, Bush's closest political adviser, who is
reported to have warned already in September that there
should be "no wars in 2004", advice that makes a lot of
sense in view of Bush's precipitous drop in the polls,
much of it due to a growing lack of confidence about
Iraq policy.
The fact that only a minority of
voters now believe the president's reasons for going to
war - Iraq's alleged ties to al-Qaeda terrorists and
weapons of mass destruction programs - were based on
real evidence has clearly undermined administration
hawks, who were most insistent about the threat Baghdad
supposedly posed to the US.
Similarly, the
patent and continuing failure of the hawks to anticipate
the post-war situation in Iraq has clearly weakened
their hand in internal deliberations. This was clearly
signaled by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice
in early October when she formed the Iraq Stabilization
Group based in her National Security Council, a move
that clearly displeased Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld.
More important was her hiring of former US
ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, who appears to
have effectively taken control of Iraq policy and a
great deal more at the expense of the Pentagon hawks.
Blackwill, who was Rice's boss in the first Bush
administration, is considered on the right, but with a
far more pragmatic temperament than the neo-cons.
The recent announcement that the Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA), which is officially
controlled by Rumsfeld, is doubling the number of
foreign-service officers to 110 - most of them from the
State Department's Near East bureau - marks a major
defeat for the Pentagon's neo-cons, who had vetoed
virtually all of the State Department's Arabists for top
CPA positions before the occupation due to suspicions
that they were too pro-Sunni or elite-oriented. Worse,
CPA chief L Paul Bremer appears to be working directly
with Blackwill in the White House, effectively
circumventing Rumsfeld and his neo-conservative aides.
According to the Washington Post, the two men
have a "close relationship" dating back some 30 years.
The newspaper quoted one unidentified friend of both who
characterized them as "basically conservative ... but
focused on national interest and power - not
neo-conservatism. They are not ideological dreamers".
Their mutual loss of confidence in the hawks was
suggested by Bremer's sudden return to Washington two
weeks ago with a pessimistic Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA)report, the existence of which was promptly leaked
to a reporter to ensure that the White House knew to
press for the decision to accelerate the transition
process in Iraq.
Bremer, according to one
source, attached a personal endorsement to the report by
the CIA - which is considered as much of a "bete noire"
of the neo-cons as State's Near East bureau - in what
was seen as another slap at the hawks.
In this
context, the publication by the Post on Sunday of a
comprehensive attack on the hawks' push for unilateral
war in Iraq by Powell's former director of policy
planning, Richard Haass, also suggests growing
confidence on the part of the realists, of which Haass,
now president of the ultra-establishment Council on
Foreign Relations, is an exemplar.
His column
argues that unilateral "wars of choice" - including Iraq
- can be fought successfully only on two conditions:
first, the US public must be "on board ... to the extent
of being psychologically prepared for the possible
costs"; and second, Washington must "line up
international support", lest it be "stretched too thin
or [go] deeply into debt".
Haass, who left the
State Department only last summer and served the elder
Bush as a top Middle East aide, not only made clear that
he felt neither condition had been met in Iraq; but that
"American democracy ... [does] not mix well with empire"
and that "the United States is not geared to sustain
costly wars of choice". He depicted the recent decision
to speed the transition process as a politically
realistic move that will necessarily fall short of the
neo-cons' more ambitious goals.
"Such a
mid-course correction in US policy reflects in part the
political realities of Iraq ... even more, though, the
policy shift reflects political realities at home.
Domestic tolerance for costs - disrupted and lost lives
above all - is not unlimited. As a result, the president
is wise to reduce the scale of what we try to
accomplish."
Assuming that Haass' analysis about
the motives for the White House's change of course in
Iraq is correct, it still begs the question of whether
it, as well as the administration's softening on North
Korea, Iraq and the ICC, represents a major shift in the
balance of power in favor of the realists or a mere
tactical feint designed to ease growing popular concerns
in advance of next year's election.
Neo-conservatives, who have shown
uncharacteristic disarray in response to setbacks in
Iraq, still insist they have full confidence in Bush to
follow their policy advice as part of the global war on
terrorism, including in Iraq. Some even argue that
stepped-up "Iraqification" is what they had recommended
for years before the invasion, and that the president
and Bremer have now come around to those views.
But it is clear that the process now under way
bears little relation to their original plans, and the
fact that the dreaded Near East bureau and veterans of
the Bush I administration appear to be gaining control
of Iraq policy suggests their displays of confidence may
be unfounded.
Similarly, recent speculation here
that Bremer and Blackwill - rather than Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Cheney's national security
chief, I Lewis Libby - might inherit the State
Department and the national security adviser post,
respectively, in a second Bush term, add further
evidence to the notion that the neo-cons might be in
eclipse.
(Inter Press Service)
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