26Oct03-Knight Ridder-Are they still Bush's dream team? Discord distresses allies, confress - and may stall the administration's goals
Posted on Sun, Oct. 26, 2003
U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
Are they still Bush's dream team?
Discord distresses allies, confress - and may stall the administration's goals
BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY, WARREN P. STROBEL AND WILLIAM DOUGLAS
Knight Ridder News Service
From left to right: Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice and Cheney.
WASHINGTON -- In the days before he assumed the presidency in 2001, George W. Bush liked to boast about the foreign policy ''Dream Team'' he had assembled.
Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were all ''smart people'' who would compensate for the former Texas governor's lack of international experience.
''General Powell's a strong figure, and Dick Cheney's no shrinking violet, nor Condi Rice,'' Bush said in December 2000. ``I view the four as being able to complement each other.''
But after nearly three years in office, Bush's dream team is beset by infighting, backstabbing and maneuvering on major foreign policy issues involving North Korea, Syria, Iran and postwar Iraq. The result has been paralysis, inconsistency and a zigzagging U.S. policy that confuses lawmakers on Capitol Hill and disturbs America's friends, allies and would-be partners.
It has hampered U.S. policies in the Middle East, where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to rage, caused anxiety in Asia, where the administration's refusal to deal directly with North Korea has dismayed allies, and has seriously soured relations with some North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, say U.S. and foreign officials.
One U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be named, recalled what he said was Chinese exasperation over what they perceived as conflicting messages from the administration on North Korea. ''We actually don't care what your point of view is. Just have one,'' he quoted his Chinese counterparts as saying.
White House officials declined to comment for this story.
The battles between Bush's foreign policy principals spilled into public view recently after Bush announced he had tapped Rice to oversee a new group designed to reduce violence and speed the reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Rumsfeld, whose Pentagon has led the charge of postwar Iraq, publicly bristled at the news and hinted that he had not been consulted. Rumsfeld suggested that in forming the Iraq Stabilization Group and putting Rice in charge, the president was finally having the National Security Council do its job of coordinating the various government agencies involved in rebuilding Iraq.
The Bush foreign affairs team can't seem to agree even when it embarks on a mission in unison. Tired of what it felt were negative media reports from Iraq, the White House launched a public relations blitz three weeks ago. The president, Cheney and Rice delivered speeches stating the administration's case.
The outcome was a series of addresses that varied so much in tone and message that some leading lawmakers, such as Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., were left dismayed.
'I'm not certain who assigns these or whether people just say `I've got to say something' and just blurt it out,'' said Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Bush ``really has to indicate a unified voice, his voice, to the American people and people abroad.''
Bureaucratic infighting in foreign policy is nothing new. During George Washington's administration, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams battled, often viciously, over whether the United States should tilt toward England or France. Secretary of State George Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger squabbled in the Reagan administration. National security adviser Henry Kissinger overpowered Secretary of State William Rogers in the Nixon administration, and Jimmy Carter's secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, quit after the failed 1980 attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran, which he had opposed.
But the Weinberger-Shultz fights and those between Vance and Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, ''look like Sunday-school picnics'' compared with the present fights ''in terms of freezing the administration's ability to act,'' said a former U.S. official, who requested anonymity.
DIFFERENT OUTLOOKS
The conflict pits so-called neo-conservatives led by Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld against so-called pragmatists led by Secretary of State Powell, and is fueled by a major difference in world outlook, say knowledgeable officials.
''This time it's not about tactics; it's about ideology,'' said one senior official who served in several Republican administrations.
The Cheney-Rumsfeld camp looks at the terrorist threat much as communism was viewed during the Cold War: a global network of evildoers whose links to one another are real even if they aren't visible. They oppose negotiating with regimes in Syria, Iran, Iraq and North Korea that support terrorism.
The pragmatists, who include CIA Director George Tenet and some members of the armed services, are ideological descendants of Kissinger. They continue to seek some form of détente with Syria, Iran and North Korea, believing that a combination of international sanctions, carrots and sticks can moderate their behavior.
The divisions between the two camps were muted at the outset of the administration, but they hardened after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, several top officials said.
''What happened was that Cheney and Rumsfeld essentially went on a crusade against terrorism, starting with Iraq, and Powell kept trying, mostly without success, to rein them in,'' said one official, who like the others spoke only on the condition of anonymity. 'Cheney is always in Bush's ear, whispering `terrorism, terrorism, terrorism.' He's obsessed.''
Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he's hearing more complaints about Cheney's influence on foreign policy matters.
''If you look at Afghanistan, if you look at the [Israeli-Palestinian peace] roadmap, if you look at Iraq, if you look at bilateral and multilateral dealings with the Europeans, just as Powell looks like he will stitch the garment back together again, Cheney goes to the Heritage Foundation [a conservative think tank] and re-enunciates the policy of pre-emption,'' Biden said. ``It's just what they did in Iraq. They outsmarted the centrist or the internationalists in this administration, and the neo-cons carried the day.''
One of the major internal battles centers on who will lead Iraq. Civilian leaders in the Pentagon have pushed for Ahmad Chalabi, a controversial Iraqi leader who for years lived in exile in London, to replace former President Saddam Hussein.
Chalabi, head of the U.S.-backed Iraqi National Congress and now a member of Iraq's Governing Council, had spent years winning over Washington figures such as Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz by pledging support for democracy.
But Chalabi, who was convicted of bank fraud in absentia in Jordan in 1992 and sentenced to 22 years in prison, is distrusted by the State Department, the CIA and many senior U.S. military commanders. They view him as a self-serving and unreliable source of ``intelligence.''
State Department officials last year withheld about $8 million in funding for the INC in a dispute over accounting irregularities. Shortly after that, the Defense Department agreed to pick up the funding.
The internal turf battles have not been limited to Iraq.
In one early skirmish, the Pentagon defied a White House decision in early 2002 to conclude a legally binding treaty with Moscow that placed new limits on the number of nuclear warheads that could be fielded by the United States and Russia. As U.S. and Russian diplomats hammered out a document, Pentagon officials, in separate talks with their Russian counterparts, continued to push for a non-binding agreement. And Pentagon officials unsuccessfully tried to change portions of the draft agreed to by diplomats.
Eventually, Bush had to intercede with Rumsfeld, reminding him that he wanted a legally binding treaty, which Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed on May 24, 2002.
NORTH KOREA
The longest-running battle among the administration's foreign policy titans has been over North Korea. Fissures surfaced early when Bush surprised Powell by temporarily abandoning a Clinton administration policy of seeking an end to North Korea's missile program through negotiation.
The State Department insisted on talks to solve the problem, while the Pentagon opposed any negotiations. That argument was still going on as multi-nation talks involving North Korea got underway, first in April and then in August, in Beijing.
The talks have been stymied by North Korea's demand for a non-aggression pact from the United States. Powell has called the demand a non-starter, but added that there could be another way to give North Korea a written assurance that the United States won't attack. But that idea has met stiff resistance among the administration's hardliners, despite Bush's offer last week to discuss a security guarantee.
Biden believes the neo-conservatives' rejection of any kind of nonaggression pledge has hurt the prospects of resolving the North Korea nuclear crisis.
The administration has ''screwed it up so badly so far that it may not be redeemable,'' Biden said.
Bush himself has apparently grown tired of the internal bickering spilling into public view. He has implored his senior administration officials to cooperate with each other and two weeks ago ordered them to stop leaks to the media.
''Sometimes, you realize that too much time is being spent on the wrong things,'' one senior administration official said.
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