Affairs Of State -- And Pentagon
John Prados is a senior analyst with the National Security Archive in Washington, DC. His current book is Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby.
The Bush administration's adventure to Baghdad is causing a shift in the constellation of the heavens, the inner circle of Bush advisers who play a key role in what policies the United States pursues. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld consolidates more power into his own hands with each passing week, and signs point to a re-emergence of the authority that national security advisers once wielded in the bad old days of Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. The portents to be read here are disturbing.
Rumsfeld masterminded the Iraq invasion, and believes the result vindicates his early and repeated demands for cheaper, smaller but swifter military operations presumed to blind the foe through dazzling rapidity of action. Politically vulnerable before 9/11 owing to his autocratic management of the professional military and his tenuous relationship with Capitol Hill, Rumsfeld benefited from the period building up to the Iraq invasion. The drive to muster support for President Bush's war plans muted opposition to the Pentagon leader -- and now the initial success of the invasion has defanged Rumsfeld's political opponents and made him unassailable among military ranks.
The rising exuberance of the Pentagon leadership is plain.
The rising exuberance of the Pentagon leadership is plain. For one thing, Rumsfeld framed his request for supplemental budget funds to pay for the war in a way that hands him sole control over where the money is spent (usually Congress budgets money to specific programs). He also has a project afoot that will allow him to hire and fire top generals, further cowing the professionals. For another, Syria's sudden emergence as a target on the U.S. enemies list further reflects the primacy of Pentagon interests. One day Syria was a collaborator in the war on terrorism, doing notable favors for the CIA. Then, in the midst of the Iraqi campaign, Rumsfeld and other Pentagon spokespersons began accusing Damascus of helping Saddam Hussein's forces. Now Syria is being mentioned in the same breath with Iran and North Korea. The transformation took mere days. Next, there is the competition with Central Intelligence Agency. Just last week Rumsfeld scored Senate confirmation for his aide Stephen Cambone in the new post of Under Secretary-designate for Intelligence. This move will allow the Defense Department to consolidate its intelligence programs in a way that could undermine CIA head George Tenet's role.
All these signs suggest that both Rumsfeld's freedom of action and his agenda are expanding exponentially.
Missing in all this is the man responsible -- at least by law -- for foreign policy, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. For all that has been seen of Powell in recent weeks, he might as well be hiding in the administration's proverbial undisclosed location.
Since February, when Secretary Powell made a speech at the United Nations laying out intelligence claims that Saddam possessed a massive infrastructure to produce weapons of mass destruction (which has emerged nowhere, so far, as U.S. forces actually occupy Iraq), the administration's premier moderate has fallen into line behind the extremists.
The diplomatic fiasco caused by pushing for a U.N. resolution authorizing war proved Powell's warnings about building a coalition accurate. The result of his spot-on prediction: The State Department is being relegated to total irrelevance.
The State Department is being relegated to total irrelevance.
On the rise instead -- along with Rumsfeld's empire -- is a newly resplendent national security adviser and her National Security Council (NSC) staff. Condoleezza Rice emerged as a key Bush administration advocate during the war's buildup, a frequent figure on the talk shows and anywhere the White House message needed articulation.
Rice's visibility has grown far greater than that of her predecessors in the Clinton White House, and now approaches that of the classic NSC potentates Kissinger and Brzezinski. Rice's deputy Stephen Hadley also led key Bush administration units orchestrating prewar and wartime propaganda moves.
In the last month the United States has undertaken two vital diplomatic missions. One, during the push for the U.N. resolution, was an attempt to pressure chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix to issue a more negative report on Iraqi compliance with weapons inspections, seen as helping the U.S. push for the war resolution. The second mission, which occurred last week, was a visit to Moscow to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Condoleezza Rice, not the secretary of state, carried out both these missions. Rice is clearly acquiring roles and powers that carry the mantle of the strong NSC of the 1970s.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is getting in on the action, too. In December it was Wolfowitz, not a State Department official, who flew to Ankara for talks with Turkish leaders about support for the war. Now he's busy arranging "town hall meetings" -- to be led by General Tommy Franks -- for Iraqis to discuss rebuilding, albeit in an invitation-only forum. And if you're wondering what Powell is up to, it sounds as if he has a new job as Pentagon errand boy: Wolfowitz recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon had sent the State Department a list of needs -- i.e., the kinds of people and services that the State Department should solicit from European countries for help in rebuilding.
This evolution is disturbing. Rumsfeld and Rice, while ambitious planners, exhibit a peculiar myopia. With Iraq collapsing into chaos and looters trashing Baghdad and other cities, Rumsfeld complained at his press conferences not of these brutal facts, but of the media's reporting of them. In fact, the administration talked as if the chaos would disappear on its own after a day or two, as if it carried no responsibility for order in a post-Saddam Iraq it had itself created.
As we move into the reconstruction period in post-war Iraq and toward a looming conflict with Syria, the seamless transfer of powers from the State Department to the Pentagon should alarm us. Are we to understand that the Bush administration now views U.S. "diplomatic" efforts in the Middle East as a solely military effort?
Published: Apr 14 2003 |
