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Condoleezza Rice takes charge
The White House went on the offensive this week in its Iraq and Afghanistan policies, this time domestically. On Monday, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice announced, on the front page of the New York Times no less, the establishment of an Iraq Stabilization Group. You can stop guessing which ideological camp Secretary of State Colin Powell’s or Vice-President Dick Cheney’s Rice is in: she’s just assembled her own.
In a bold, calculated move, Rice gave up playing honest broker in increasingly fractious interagency struggles in the Bush administration and took charge, wrestling control of Iraq and Afghanistan’s reconstruction from the Defense Department. The Pentagon suffered a very public loss of face. Widely overlooked in the fallout from the move was that this represented another blow to career Arabists and Middle East experts. Yet another senior official with no experience in Middle Eastern or South Asian affairs took charge of America’s most demanding foreign policy portfolios.
Few people give Rice the credit she deserves. She has demonstrated bureaucratic dexterity in placing her people in positions that are now the nucleus of the Iraq Stabilization Group. For example, in August she appointed former US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill to the position of deputy assistant to the president and coordinator for strategic planning. Blackwill and Rice worked together from 1989-90 under then-President George Bush. They were also members of the “Vulcans,” George W. Bush’s foreign policy training team for the 2000 election campaign.
Rice’s intentions are clear. The National Security Council’s senior director for the Middle East, Elliott Abrams, is finding his portfolio squeezed. Blackwill’s Iraq and Iran specialists will take the lead, while Abrams’ are relegated to secondary positions, mainly dealing with the Arab-Israeli issue. Rice’s insertion of a new portfolio, strategic planning, was another tactical success. While planning is a natural adjunct of national security formulation, the job is also a cover for inserting Blackwill, whose expertise lies in Chinese and European affairs, into the Mideast policy maelstrom. Blackwill’s stand on terrorism is unflinching, and comments he made on Pakistan as he left New Delhi were incendiary.
Blackwill’s control of levers at the heart of the administration’s foreign policy is in direct competition with Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and Director of Policy Planning Mitchell Reiss at the State Department. Reiss, who came from academia, was appointed in July to replace the neoconservatives’ nemesis, Richard Haass. Feith may find himself replaced by another Rice ally, her deputy Steve Hadley.
Rice also plans to install a deputy to the US civilian representative in Iraq, Paul Bremer, who will report directly to her. This is the most obvious blow to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. His problem is Bush’s reported frustration over the slow pace of providing security and guaranteeing reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush is a results-oriented president, and he’s not seeing results in both countries.
Pity White House spokesman Scott McClellan who tried to apply a fig leaf to Rumsfeld’s reputation last Monday, when he stated the defense secretary was involved in planning for the Iraq Stabilization Group. Rumsfeld, in an interview with members of the European press, displayed pique by saying he had not, in fact, been involved. On Wednesday, McClellan equivocated. It was Bremer, not Rumsfeld, who had been briefed. By Thursday, though, Rumsfeld was back on board and excuses were made for the discrepancy between his and the White House’s lines.
While Rumsfeld may hang onto his job, one of his deputies might have to go. In summer it appeared that Feith, who is the Pentagon’s policy coordinator, would be forced out to atone for the mistakes in post-war Iraq planning.
One solution lies in Rice’s consolidating the message on Iraq under her communications advisor. The campaign unveiled Monday includes a media blitz to remedy the negative public perceptions of the post-war situation. Though the administration has said the media is distorting reality, there is no getting around the negative impact. Bush’s approval ratings have plummeted almost 20 points in three months. His credibility, and an election, is at stake. Someone has to take the fall. Feith is still believed to be the most vulnerable, despite Pentagon denials.
As many pundits have said, Rice is the most powerful secretary of state since Henry Kissinger sorry, national security advisor. Her position is a useful audition for Colin Powell’s job, which he is expected to vacate in a second Bush term. It requires stamina for fighting policy battles and managing myriad administrative responsibilities, and Rice has, to date, demonstrated neither skill. Now is her chance.
Amid the talk of reorganizing policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, what has become of the Palestinian-Israeli “road map?” Arguably, this is the single most important policy initiative in the Middle East, yet it is paid little more than lip service. That’s partly because it requires that Bush step in and incur the wrath of pro-Israel Jewish and Christian fundamentalist organizations. As a senior Arab official put it, there is no need to worry: The administration will just blame Arafat for the stalemate.
<b.The road map Bush is carrying arrives in Baghdad before it does Jerusalem. The administration is now frantically trying to pedal the hope that Iraq’s democratic model and cultural enlightenment might transform other countries in the region. It’s going to take time, at least until after the November 2004 election. Do Arab leaders and Israeli realists believe the Middle East can wait that long?
Maggie Mitchell Salem is special assistant to the president at the Middle East Institute in Washington. She wrote this article for THE DAILY STAR |
