Looks like the State-Defense pendulum is swinging back to Defense:
Policy Divide Thwarts Powell in Mideast Effort
Defense Dept.'s Influence Frustrates State Dept.
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 26, 2002; Page A01
State Department officials say Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has been repeatedly undercut by other senior policymakers in his effort to break the Middle East deadlock, warning this has left U.S. diplomacy paralyzed at an especially volatile moment.
State Department officials say that Powell's return from the Middle East a week ago with few concrete results has left them more discouraged than at any time since the Bush administration took office.
They partly fault what they said was the administration's unwillingness to stand behind Powell, especially in pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to withdraw his forces from West Bank cities and hold accelerated talks with the Palestinians. Department officials said they continue to face objections as they seek to fashion a diplomatic initiative aimed at creating a Palestinian state.
Powell has displayed little public frustration. But his employees' complaints, reflecting their own exasperation and deep loyalty to him, reveal the depth of divisions inside the administration, especially between the State Department and the Pentagon.
Many in the State Department cite resistance to their diplomatic efforts coming from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has more of a voice in shaping Middle East policy than his predecessors.
The opinions of Rumsfeld and his key lieutenants, notably Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, figure prominently because the Pentagon has been given a seat at interagency discussions over the Middle East conflict. In recent years, the peace process was largely the purview of the State Department and the White House.
Rumsfeld and his advisers have advocated giving Sharon wide latitude to press his military operations, viewing the Israeli campaign as a legitimate war on terrorism. At the same time, they see little value in trying to engage Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in renewed negotiations.
Powell and his team have a different view. They sympathize with Israel's need to defend itself but worry that the unprecedented Israeli offensive is fostering greater Palestinian hatred and destroying the Palestinians' ability to govern themselves. While the Powell camp shares the disdain for Arafat, it believes he remains central to any settlement.
The rift in President Bush's inner circle, some State Department officials said, has left the administration's policy "dead in the water." These officials use words like "despondent" and "disheartened" to describe the mood in Foggy Bottom, saying they cannot remember a time in recent years when they have felt so badly beaten up.
"I can't think of an awful lot of allies," a State Department official said. He said the demoralization within the department was "the most acute" in at least five years.
Another department official, noting with satisfaction how quickly U.S. relief aid had been dispatched to the devasted Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, expressed dismay over the administration's broader approach to the Middle East. "Now, if only we could fix our policy . . . with the same speed," the official said.
With Powell back from the region, Bush has yet to resolve what a former State Department official called the "battle royal" between Defense and State, delaying the adoption of a plan on how to proceed.
Since the start of the administration, senior State and Defense Department officials have disagreed over a range of issues, including Iraq, peacekeepers in Afghanistan and arms agreements with Russia. But a senior administration official said the tension has become especially pronounced over the Middle East.
"Is it as intense as it's been in the 15 months since [Powell] has been secretary? Sure," the official said.
Larry DiRita, Rumsfeld's special assistant, said senior policymakers from the Pentagon and State Department are working together intensively to promote Bush's Middle East policy. "It's a collaborative effort. No one has a monopoly on answers here. They're working through this in a way that serves the president very well," he said.
State Department officials said the only strong support for a more vigorous policy seeking to address both Israeli and Palestinian concerns is coming from the CIA, which has developed a working relationship with the two sides in fostering security cooperation.
Vice President Cheney and his staff largely share the Pentagon's perspective, though Cheney has increasingly expressed concern about how the conflict is affecting other administration priorities in the Middle East.
The role of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice is primarily to broker discussions among senior officials and promote Bush's views. Although her own opinions on the Middle East remain unclear, she played an important part in the decision to step up the administration's engagement and dispatch Powell to the region.
Rice's senior director assigned to the Middle East, Zalmay Khalilzad, is relatively new to the Arab-Israeli issue and remains preoccupied with Afghanistan. His new deputy, Flynt Leverett, is relatively junior and is considered suspect by more hawkish policymakers because of his pedigree as a CIA employee who also worked at the State Department, officials said.
Some of the harshest criticism has come from Capitol Hill. Many members of Congress, Republican and Democrat alike, endorse the policies of Sharon's government and fault efforts either to constrain his military operations or engage Arafat.
Absent a decision how to move forward, the White House is continually recalibrating its approach. After Bush demanded three weeks ago that Israel end its West Bank invasion, Powell went to the region and pressed Sharon with little immediate success. The White House, facing intense lobbying by Jewish, evangelical Christian and neoconservative groups, backed off, and Bush's spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters that Sharon was a "man of peace."
Hours before Powell left Jerusalem, however, he told reporters that a cease-fire and political negotiations could not proceed until Israel ended its military offensive, which Sharon was continuing despite Bush's demands. This was a shift in the U.S. position, which had been that there could not be progress until Arafat cracked down on militant groups.
But a day later, as Powell sat beside him in the White House, Bush praised Sharon, again calling him a "man of peace," and credited him with taking satisfactory steps to end the three-week-old invasion. These comments fell like a body blow to the State Department.
"We're getting hammered for that quote throughout the Arab world," a State Department official said.
Given the chance to call Sharon a man of peace on the Sunday morning talk shows last weekend, Powell demurred.
State Department officials said they fear Sharon will seek to exploit the split in the administration and end the standoff at Arafat's compound in Ramallah by raiding the building -- despite American warnings not to do so.
"The State Department has a strategy and Powell does. But he's not supported by the administration and by the president because of the political risk," a former U.S. official said.
Feeling largely isolated, officials at State have rallied around Powell. At the first senior staff meeting he chaired after his return from the Middle East last week, Powell was given a spontaneous standing ovation, the only one that officials could remember at the regular morning session.
Though Powell returned to Washington looking weary, administration officials said he is a seasoned infighter and eternal optimist. "He's been in this town a long time and slugged it out over a lot of things. He understands it is not a perfect world. He also understands that things typically work out," a senior administration official said.
One of Powell's senior advisers counseled officials to follow the secretary's lead: "You've got to be right and you've got to be patient."
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