A return to soaring rhetoric
Intel Dump
Prof. Eliot Cohen, author of "Supreme Command : Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime", writes in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) about the principal failure of outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell — as well as the challenge and opportunity this failure presents for incoming Secretary Condi Rice. The failure was not so much one of policy, Prof. Cohen writes, as one of imagination. America needed a global statesman and global voice at Foggy Bottom, but it didn't find that in Mr. Powell.
"The Bush administration has two great strengths in its foreign policy: backbone, and clarity of vision. Those qualities, indispensable in time of war, have their accompanying weaknesses. Their resulting price has been sheer stubbornness, culpable tactlessness, and more dangerously, a lack of realism. Whether in dismissing the Kyoto treaty without suggesting some kind of alternative, or indeed treating seriously the problems it was meant to address; or in failing to acknowledge the errors and mistakes that have landed us in a full-blown guerrilla war in an Iraq that did not have the weapons a hapless secretary of state insisted to the world it did have, the administration has alienated more friends than it needed to, and made itself look arrogant to the point of blindness. The world gives us opponents enough: No need to cool our friends and heat our enemies by our own words and deeds.
Mr. Powell knew all that, but was not successful, in part because he did not make adequate use of the chief resource at his disposal. A secretary of state does not command a large budget or a vast work force. He or she cannot, as the secretary of defense can, send thousands of soldiers into battle, build roads, or catch terrorists. What the secretary has is, chiefly, the English language. Aside from an impassioned speech at the U.N. and a stirring evocation of the American record in Europe at Davos, Secretary Powell will leave behind no memorable words, no speeches that clarify the American position abroad, explain it at home, or guide those who must implement it.
The rhetorical function of leadership has succumbed to PowerPoint, e-mail, and telephone calls; indeed, the word "rhetoric" itself now has a pejorative connotation. But now more than ever we need rhetoric in its true sense, persuasive and illuminating speech about the troubles of our times.
As Mr. Powell's successor, Condoleezza Rice should begin by casting aside the ungainly acronym GWOT, and the more obscure term for which it stands: the Global War on Terror, a term that makes as much sense as if Americans had responded to Pearl Harbor by declaring a global war on dive bombers. She must tackle head-on the question of what the threat from Salafist terrorism is, whence it came, and how it can be combated. She must tell the world and the peoples of the Middle East what the U.S. can hope to achieve in Iraq, now that the mirage of a swift creation of a liberal state is gone. She must reinvent our public diplomacy, articulating abroad the values for which the U.S. stands, using not the techniques of Madison Avenue executives (one of the failures of the first part of the administration) but speech rooted in America's history and politics. She needs to explain how the administration will manage its new strategic partnerships, such as that with India, and its uneasy relationship with the rising power of China. She must describe what Americans expect international institutions to be able to do, and what we understand they cannot. She should, in other words, make an argument about what the world is, the extent to which we think we can shape it, and the extent to which we will be shaped by it."
Interesting argument — and probably correct. At a time when America needed it desperately, Secretary Powell did not provide America with the passionate voice it needed in the world. I think he was probably hamstrung from day one by the White House. It would have been tough to strike out on his own without significantly more backing from the White House. The SecDef and VP also undercut Powell's ability to act as America's voice abroad. It will be very interesting to see how Condi Rice fills this role, or whether she simply acts as head of the State Department and chief foreign policy adviser. |
