[Mb-civic] Moves Cement Hard-Line Stance On Foreign Policy

[Michael Butler]

washingtonpost.com 
Moves Cement Hard-Line Stance On Foreign Policy


By Glenn Kessler
 Washington Post Staff Writer
 Tuesday, November 16, 2004; Page A01

 By accepting Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's resignation, President
Bush appears to have taken a decisive turn in his approach to foreign
policy.

Powell's departure -- and Bush's intention to name his confidante, national
security adviser Condoleezza Rice, as Powell's replacement -- would mark the
triumph of a hard-edged approach to diplomacy espoused by Vice President
Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Powell's brand of moderate
realism was often overridden in the administration's councils of power, but
Powell's presence ensured that the president heard divergent views on how to
proceed on key foreign policy issues.

But, with Powell out of the picture, the long-running struggle over key
foreign policy issues is likely to be less intense. Powell has pressed for
working with the Europeans on ending Iran's nuclear program, pursuing
diplomatic talks with North Korea over its nuclear ambitions and taking a
tougher approach with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Now, the policy
toward Iran and North Korea may turn decidedly sharper, with a bigger push
for sanctions rather than diplomacy. On Middle East peace, the burden for
progress will remain largely with the Palestinians.

 Moreover, in elevating Rice, Bush is signaling that he is comfortable with
the direction of the past four years and sees little need to dramatically
shift course. Powell has had conversations for six months with Bush about
the need for a "new team" in foreign policy, a senior State Department
official said. But in the end only the key official who did not mesh well
with the others -- Powell -- is leaving.

"My impression is that the president broadly believes his direction is
correct," said former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

Rice sometimes backed Powell in his confrontations with Cheney and Rumsfeld,
but more often than not she allowed the vice president and the defense
secretary to have enormous influence over key diplomatic issues. More to the
point, she is deeply familiar with the president's thinking on foreign
policy -- and can be expected to ride herd on a State Department bureaucracy
that some conservatives have viewed as openly hostile to the president's
policies. The departures of Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage,
could trigger a wholesale reshuffling of top State Department officials.

 "Condi knows what the president wants to accomplish and agrees with it,"
said Gary Schmitt, director of the Project for the New American Century, a
think tank that frequently reflects the views of hard-liners in the
administration. "One of Powell's weaknesses is that even when he signed on
to the president's policy, he was not effective in managing the building to
follow the policy as well."

Of course, senior officials often become advocates of the bureaucracies they
head. For decades, there has been an institutional split between the State
and Defense departments -- though many say the battles in Bush's first term
were especially intense -- and so ultimately Rice may find herself in
conflict with her Cabinet colleagues over the best diplomatic approach.

 Danielle Pletka, vice president of the American Enterprise Institute, said
she doubts the battles will end, even if the top officials are less divided
on ideology. "This has nothing to do with Colin Powell or Don Rumsfeld or
Condi Rice," she said. "This is a time of real turmoil, a crossroads in
history, and figuring out how to deal with these things is not a smooth plot
where everything unrolls easily from beginning to end."

For the rest of the world, Powell was considered a sympathetic ear in an
administration that often appeared tone-deaf to other nations' concerns.
There will be "teeth-gnashing" over Powell's departure by many foreign
officials, said Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, national security adviser in
President Bill Clinton's second term. "Colin was the side door they could
get into when they could not get through the front door."

 "The president ultimately set the course," Berger added. "Colin has had a
hard hand to play over the last several years in selling policies not
popular to allies."

 Powell had long indicated he planned to leave when Bush's first term ended.
But with Rumsfeld under fire for his handling of the Iraq war, particularly
the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and new opportunities for peacemaking in the
Middle East after the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, some people
close to Powell detected hints he might consider staying for a period of
time in the second term -- in part to burnish his legacy.

Powell has had a mixed and frustrating tenure as secretary of state, with
his most memorable moment -- his 2003 speech to the United Nations making
the case that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that were later
never found -- arguably also his lowest point. The U.N. speech tarnished
Powell's legacy, even though his personal popularity remains high -- both
among the public and inside the State Department.

 Much of Powell's tenure was marked by fierce battles with his bureaucratic
foes and by few lasting achievements in key foreign policy areas. Under his
watch, North Korea added to its arsenal of nuclear weapons and Iran has
advanced dramatically in building a nuclear weapon. The invasion of Iraq was
ordered by Bush despite Powell's misgivings, and Powell was often frustrated
as he tried to steer U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Powell
did, however, champion a new approach to development aid, tied to whether a
country advances in building political and economic institutions.

 A senior State Department official said that Powell's resignation was
almost a foregone conclusion given the tension Powell had with the
president, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Powell just never fit: Bush had to ask for
reassurance that Powell would be with him in the Iraq war, Powell believed
Cheney had a "fever" about al Qaeda and Iraq, and Powell felt Rumsfeld was
never straightforward, practicing his "rubber gloves" approach of never
taking a stand in the inner council, this official said.

The bad blood between Cheney and Powell dates to the 1991 Persian Gulf War,
when Cheney, then the defense secretary, felt that Powell sometimes failed
to keep him informed, and even tried to exclude him from some aspects of war
planning. In his 1996 autobiography, "My American Journey," Powell expressed
some puzzlement about Cheney's character. As a leader of congressional
Republicans, he wrote, Cheney "preferred losing on principle to winning
through further compromise."

 Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.

 © 2004 The Washington Post Company