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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zonder who wrote (49285)	10/4/2002 4:41:47 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I just watched "The Man Who Knew," on "Frontline" the investigative series on PBS. It is the story of John O'Neill, the FBI agent who was head of Counter Terrorism for the New York Office. He retired and took over security for the Trade Towers on 9/11, and died in the disaster. The whole story is on the PBS site at: pbs.org My feeling was that this story is about as good as we are going to get about what was going on in the FBI prior to 911. It is interesting that just about everybody in a decision making position in the FBI at the time is now retired. The program is written from O'Neill's POV, and his opposition in the FBI and State refused to be interviewed. I usually end up being pissed at the State Dept people whenever they are involved in this type of tale, and it was the same this time. The Ambassador to Yemen was a real villain here, IMO. She was more concerned with her relations with the top people in Yemen than with finding out what happened to the Cole. We have this constant "Client" problem with State all over the globe. In any case, I highly recommend that you check for a rerun in your area on the PBS site, and read the material.

To: zonder who wrote (49285)	10/4/2002 7:06:17 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Zonder, here is an article by a "CFR" member that sums up what Bush is up to, IMO. And explains some of the problems that Euros are having with it. From "Financial Times" Misunderstanding the Rice doctrine By Walter Russell Mead In the US and abroad, the consensus view of the Bush administration's foreign policy is twofold. First, it is shaped by a conflict between the liberal multilateralism of Colin Powell, secretary of state, and the conservative unilateralism of Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defence. Second, it constitutes a radical departure from the foreign policy of past administrations. Wrong on both counts. Despite the public disagreements between the Pentagon and the State Department, the most striking thing about this administration's foreign policy is its intellectual consistency. The ideas that Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, outlined in a Foreign Affairs article in 2000 shape the administration's foreign policy today. In particular, Ms Rice laid down an approach to multilateralism versus unilateralism to which the administration has returned at every important moment since - and that forms the basis of the new US national security strategy. Ms Rice's article rejected the liberal multilateralism espoused by Woodrow Wilson as a basis for US foreign policy. The US must not, she warned, forget the pursuit of its national interest in a grand quest for the common interests of a global world order. This did not mean that the US should act as a Lone Ranger. The key would be to manage relationships with the Great Powers - notably Russia and China - to achieve key US goals. Organisations such as the United Nations should neither be dismissed nor seen as embryonic global governing bodies. To convinced Wilsonians in the US and elsewhere, this sounds like a repudiation of the goal of a liberal international order. What most observers miss is that Ms Rice's position is not new. Wilson wanted the League of Nations to become the core of a global governing body with the power to issue orders to national governments; that is perhaps the key reason why the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles. During the cold war, no US government ever accepted the idea that it needed UN approval for enterprises ranging from the Vietnam war to the invasion of Grenada. A lack of Russian support on the Security Council did not stop the Clinton administration from attacking Yugoslavia over Kosovo. The Bush administration, like its predecessors, rejects the Wilsonian approach to supranational institutions but supports the remaining core principles of liberal internationalism. Why does such a traditional and conservative foreign policy - very much in the mainstream of US thinking throughout the 20th century - strike so many intelligent observers as a dangerous and radical deviation? The key is September 11 2001, which touched off a popular response comparable with the wave of patriotic fury that swept through the US after the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The eruption of a new type of mass terrorist threat led the administration to formulate a doctrine of pre-emption that naturally unsettled much of the international community. Pre-emption is not a new idea. Nor is it uniquely American. Ronald Reagan's invasion of Grenada and Lyndon Johnson's of the Dominican Republic were pre-emptive strikes, as was Winston Churchill's attack on the French fleet in 1940. Normally, a US president announcing such a bold - if incremental - change in US foreign policy would spend months developing a consensus among allies. He would wrap the message in warm and fuzzy talk designed to reassure the country's partners. But George W. Bush does not have the option; US voters want decisive action. Rhetoric aside, US policy remains well within the postwar consensus. Like his father before him, Mr Bush has said he will pursue US interests over Iraq whatever the UN Security Council says - but has also approached both the UN and Congress before taking military action. Despite tough rhetoric, US policies toward Russia and China continue to reflect Ms Rice's commitment to managing those relationships with great care. Military partnerships with Nato and Japan remain the cornerstone of security thinking. Under Mr Bush, the US has paid its UN dues and increased its foreign aid budget. It is both rejoining Unesco and deferring to its European allies over the timing of any US pull-out from the Balkans. No US president has been as decisive and clear as he has about the need for a democratic Palestinian state with secure boundaries. Ms Rice's doctrine of realist multilateralism may not be an inspiring rallying cry and many legitimate and helpful criticisms of it can no doubt be made. But the policy, whatever its faults, is neither rudderless nor radical. Until the critics grasp that, they will continue to have little impact. The writer is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations