Center for International Policy

Condoleeza Rice and American Foreign Policy In the Second Bush Administration

February 11, 2005
By: Parker Borg
Fifth Column

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As Condoleezza Rice begins her job as Secretary of State, many are asking what sort of Secretary she will be. Three separate questions seem likely to determine how history will look upon her. First, what was her role in shaping foreign policy in Washington's national security community? Second, how difficult were the issues she faced? And third, what was her role in implementing these policies overseas? Obviously, the future is impossible to anticipate, but it is useful to preview the political environment where she will be working and where she will need to assert her authority if she is to be regarded favorably by history.

Although Condi Rice will continue to be associated with many of the same issues that absorbed her attention as the National Security Advisor, the new job is very different. As National Security Advisor she had a prominent role in shaping policy, but a minor one in its implementation. As Secretary of State she will have major roles in both areas and an unequivocally higher profile on both the nation's and the world's stage.

In shaping foreign policy, three important differences distinguish the role of the Secretary of State from that of the National Security Advisor. First, she will be the leader of the State Department's large bureaucracy, a 30,000 person institution, which generally believes it holds the nation's collective wisdom about the best ways to solve international problems and usually shows less than complete enthusiasm about policy initiatives deemed unpopular in the rest of the world. Second, rather than her National Security Advisor's role as advisor to the President and arbiter of inter-agency disputes, she will now find herself one of several players who must make their case before the President and the other members of the National Security Council. And third, she will need to defend the Administration's foreign policy before Congress, a job she was able to avoid as National Security Advisor.

What kind of a leader will she be at the State Department? Secretary Rice should not have any problems leading the State Department. Contrary to a popular view that senior diplomats are often hostile to political direction, she will find that the career service is eager to help her succeed because they hope she will be an advocate for their point of view. For the average career officer, even after losing a battle of two, hope springs eternal that next time State's "wise" perspective might prevail. As contrasted with Colin Powell, who looked upon senior Foreign Service Officers as professionals-much like his former colleagues in the military service-and continued many Clinton era holdovers into the first Bush Administration, Condi Rice is cleaning house. Rather than selecting as her senior advisors people with close ties to the neo-conservative community, she seems to have focused initially on political professionals from previous administrations and senior career officials. As her deputy she has selected Robert Zoellick, the former Special Trade Representative, and a highly respected bureaucrat, who held a senior State Department position in the President's father's Administration. By selecting a new team, the Secretary's senior staff at State will be her loyalists, all without emotional ties to Colin Powell, her exceedingly popular predecessor.

Other political appointees at the State Department are more likely to be a problem for the new Secretary than any members of the career service. Will they be her candidates-or forced placements from other Bush Administration leaders or the neo-conservative community? How will she deal, for example, with John Bolton, Powell's Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, who maintained close ties with the neo-conservatives and often seemed to operate outside Powell's authority, regularly pushing more confrontational approaches toward North Korea and Iran than might otherwise have emerged? If Bolton leaves, what will be the loyalties of his successor? Will the Secretary be the master of her own bureaucracy or will she have to put up with well-connected outsiders who might carry a separate political agenda?

Condoleezza Rice may quickly establish herself as leader of the State Department, but State is only one player in Washington's often cantankerous foreign policy world. Within the Executive Branch, the key players on national security affairs during the first Bush Administration were President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Powell, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and National Security Advisor Rice. Personal and political ties with each of the other players will be important. She should find an easy working relationship with Steve Hadley, the new National Security Advisor, who previously served as her deputy. She knows the other players well, but how will she work with them now that she had taken Colin Powell's place? While regular assurances from the top of confidence and cordiality among all parties are a certainty, beneath the surface tensions are likely to grow as time passes.

As she begins her work as Secretary of State, Condi Rice has one advantage that her predecessor lacked. She has had the ear of the President, dating back to the 2000 campaign when she became his foreign policy advisor through her near like-family relationship as National Security Advisor. Press reports rarely showed that Colin Powell established the comfortable relationship with the President, which would have been essential to prevail over the longer term in the internal foreign policy debates. In the foreign policy of the first Bush Administration, Powell may have won the occasional skirmish, such as his effort to bring the Iraq problem to the United Nations, but he regularly lost the bigger battles against competing views from the Vice President's Office and the Defense Department. Superficially Secretary Rice should be able to maintain the close relationship with the President; but will this easy access translate into greater influence?

Within the National Security Council of almost every administration, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense put forward competing views on the optimal means to implement the President's foreign policy. The Secretary of State generally argues about the importance of allies, the role of the UN, and the relevance of international legal obligations, while the Secretary of Defense is more likely to find a resolution to a problem through threatening or using American force-and in some case adamantly insisting on avoiding the use of force. If Secretary Rice chooses the pattern of her predecessors at State, will the President move away from his unilateralist tendencies?

General agreement about key foreign policy questions may exist at present among the members of the National Security Council, but new issues are certain to evolve in the not too distant future and differences emerge. When these new questions arise, Secretary Rice is likely to find herself at a disadvantage. Although she may have an easier relationship with the President than her predecessor, she will face formidable adversaries in the inter-agency battles over foreign policy. She is new to her job and working with a new team at the State Department, while the top players at the Pentagon and in the Vice President's Office remain largely unchanged.

Colin Powell, despite his extensive background on military and security issues, was only rarely able to prevail over the combined forces of the Cheney/Rumsfeld alliance. Will the new Secretary of State offer a separate perspective to solving future problems or will she go along with the prevailing views at Defense and the Vice President's office? Top officials in these two offices are not only more bureaucratically experienced, but they also have a long history of working closely together, dating back into Reagan and in some cases the Nixon administrations. They have a common world view and easy working relationships which will be difficult for the new Secretary of State to overcome with her team of relative outsiders. If she chooses separate courses of action, how often is she likely to prevail?

In judging Secretary Rice's role in policy formulation, the most important question will be whether she consistently supports the prevailing view of other members of the National Security Council or establishes an independent voice which wins its share of bureaucratic battles. If she appears to agree with the majority of initiatives from the Defense Department, whatever their merits, she will not be considered an important player in foreign policy formulation.

The substance of American foreign policy in the second Bush Administration will be the second area where history will judge Condoleezza Rice's effectiveness as Secretary of State. Whether or not she plays a critical role in policy formulation, she will have a vital role in its implementation.

For most of the Twentieth Century, the dominant forces in determining American foreign policy were events in other lands-a military provocation, a civil war, political turmoil, or an economic collapse. Often one administration inherited the problems and policies of its predecessor. Despite what Presidents might have set out to achieve in the first days of their administrations, ultimately the foreign policy agenda was set by events elsewhere. Administrations may have asserted themselves forcefully or stood apart from a crisis, but the commanding events occurred elsewhere. Imagine the foreign policies of Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon without Vietnam, Carter without the embassy hostage crisis in Iran, or Reagan and the first George Bush without the collapsing Soviet Empire?

The equation changed after 9/11 when President Bush declared war on terrorism throughout the world. Almost overnight our friends and enemies were redefined in terms of their own struggles against terrorism and their willingness to support the terrorist battles we defined. The United States was on the offensive. Our confrontations in Afghanistan and Iraq not only dominated the America's policy agenda, but before long the foreign policy agenda for nations everywhere. The American foreign policy which emerged after 2001 stood in marked contrast with the expectations from the 2000 campaign when Bush the candidate called for a more humble, more modest foreign policy.

President Bush has given every indication that he plans to pursue an equally activist foreign policy in his second administration. In his Inaugural Address, which used the word "freedom" 27 times, but omitted either Iraq or Afghanistan, the President best summed up his plans when he said:

"It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

Many political observers noted afterwards that the President's words defined an idealism historically associated with Democratic leaders like Wilson, Roosevelt and Kennedy, but seemed to go wildly beyond their aspirations. The statement contrasted starkly with the more traditional Republican views on the importance of a strong national defense to protect the nation from enemies, but rarely attempted to reshape the world.

Although unforeseen events could change the equation at any time, President Bush has stated clearly his intention in both his Inaugural Address and the State of the Union speech a few days later to continue his activism. Looking ahead, the key issues are likely to be: 1) the war on terrorism and the associated effort to promote democracy, 2) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and 3) the spread of nuclear weapons, particularly to Iran and North Korea. Relations with other countries in the region and around the world are more likely to be influenced by the American approach to one of more of these problems, than by any purely bilateral issues.

Iraq is, and will be, a central issue for the next few years. The election of January 30 is likely to be judged almost everywhere as a great success because of the high turnout and the absence of the much anticipated violence, but the election is just one hurdle in the long process which is supposed to carry Iraq into the ranks of democratic nations. Several months will pass before it's possible to know, even for the short term, whether the election reduces the level of the insurgency, permits an early reduction in the American military presence, or establishes a commonality of purpose among Iraq's separate ethnic and religious communities. Holding the election may have been the easy part. Further down the road there will be other elections, the drafting of a constitution, and the establishment of a governing authority; all possibly interspersed with violence. Over the longer term there will be the difficult questions about a viable, democratic state composed of Shiites, Sunni Arabs, and Kurds. For the immediate future, however, the success of Iraq's first experiment with democracy gives the President and the Secretary of State a strong hand in selling greater international involvement in Iraq among the Europeans and other nations in the region.

To the east of Iraq, American policy in all likelihood will be focused on three complicated situations: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. The transition to a representational government in Afghanistan has been a surprising success over the short term-and should be considered an important achievement by the Bush Administration, but Afghanistan has a long way to go before it overcomes the power of the war lords, its economic dependence on opium poppies, and the remnants of the Taliban. Pakistan will remain a volatile flashpoint as President Musharref continues his balancing act between his counter-terrorism alliance with the West and his large fundamentalist community at home-a fundamentalist community which has undoubtedly helped Osama bin Laden remain concealed in Pakistan's ungoverned frontier territories.

Iran is likely to be among the biggest challenges to President Bush's foreign policy team during the second term. How does the US choose to deal with Iran's decision to pursue a nuclear option in ways which do not strengthen the role of the Islamic fundamentalists running the government? How important will it be to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon? Will we work with the Europeans who are pursuing negotiations or choose to act independently and more confrontationally? What about the allegations that US intelligence teams are already active in Iran? How far are we prepared to push a country, where a large portion of the population currently dislikes its elected government, but might be rallied by our actions to anti-American patriotism? Can we find a way to reduce the threat and limit the political control of the Ayatollahs? Iran is almost certain to be one of the defining issues in determining Condoleezza Rice role in formulating and implementing policy.

To the west of Iraq lies an equally central issue to American foreign policy over the next four years. How does the United States choose to involve itself in the long simmering dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians? During President Bush's first administration, the United States generally avoided direct engagement, arguing that Yasser Arafat's presence as leader of the Palestinians made negotiations impossible. Arafat's death and his replacement by Mahmoud Abbas, as the new head of the Palestinian Authority, changes the Middle East equation and makes engagement more difficult to avoid. The President stated that our goal is "two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace . . ." What will the new Secretary of State do? How active will the US choose to become? Will there be a special envoy? When the inevitable Palestinian violence occurs, promoted by hard core opponents of peace, and Ariel Sharon again breaks off negotiations until the terrorism stops, will the US quickly line up with Sharon and condemn the Palestinians or will the US push both sides to keep the dialogue open? The State Department has traditionally been more supportive of keeping the dialogue open than political leaders who are more responsive to pressure tactics from pro-Israeli lobbyists. Will Secretary Rice put the second Bush Administration in a more prominent role in promoting peace in the Middle East or continue to place the burden for peace on Palestinian compliance with Arial Sharon's political agenda? In spite of the invasion of Iraq, there is no political issue which is a greater flashpoint for the way the Islamic world and many Europeans regards American foreign policy than the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

Looking elsewhere in the Middle East, the President said in his State of the Union speech that we "stand with the allies of freedom to support democracy," and called specifically on Saudi Arabia and Egypt to lead the way. Condoleezza Rice has already made this struggle one of her own, likening the call for democracy in the Middle East to the Civil Rights movement in the US, an effort which engaged a generation. This is an issue where the State Department will find primary jurisdiction. If this is not to be empty rhetoric, how will the Secretary of State promote democracy in countries where we have always placed greater emphasis on political stability, peace with Israel, and abundant oil supplies at reasonable prices? The aggressive promotion of democracy could easily undermine any or all of these objectives. Putting substance to the rhetorical calls for democracy without undermining core interests will be one of Secretary Rice's most difficult challenges.

North Korea and the war on terrorism elsewhere in places like Syria are also likely to be equally well publicized foreign policy issues. At a slighter lower level of importance, key issues will be the AIDS pandemic, Russia's movement toward centralized authority, China's growing economic stature, and the strengthening of the EURO as a global currency, but none of these latter issues received a reference in the State of the Union Speech. While their importance is likely to grow in the coming years, most of these issues will probably not involve the same level of intense interplay among the members of the National Security Council. Secretary Rice will be in a much stronger position to determine US policy in these areas without bowing to the interests at the Defense Department or the Vice President's office.

The policy issues will be tough, but looking at the situations today, it would seem that Secretary Rice has the greatest opportunity to leave her mark on policy by setting the course on Iran, involving the US in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, promoting democracy in the Middle East, and diverting North Korea from its nuclear option. These are all simmering problems, currently lacking specific US direction. If she is able to move any one of these issues to a peaceful resolution, her tenure is likely to be regarded as very successful.

Beyond the policies themselves is the separate question about the style of implementation. When dealing with foreign governments, will Condoleezza Rice emerge as an effective interlocutor and negotiator as well as an effective spokesperson for the United States? Her experience as a diplomat is dramatically less than as a policy maker. Some early clues should be evident during her first trip as Secretary of State in early February. During this visit to a half dozen European nations and Israel, she will set the stage for President's Bush's visit to Europe later in the month. It will be worth watching what sort of a dialogue she is able to establish.

During her confirmation hearing, the Secretary Rice said that she intended to reinvigorate diplomacy. What does this mean? Diplomacy is traditionally a two way street: we explain our point of view, listen to the perspectives of others, and, if possible find solutions to common problems, which are in the interest of both parties. Critics have said that one of the foreign policy shortcomings of the first Bush Administration was its disinterest in the views of allies before determining a course of action. After deciding what we intended to do, we cajoled other countries into joining us, but we set the terms in Washington and we tended to become angry if any nation balked at our plan. Neoconservative critics of Colin Powell argued that the Department of State failed to sell successfully American foreign policy to the rest of the world.

How will Condoleezza Rice "reinvigorate diplomacy?" If this challenge means little more than one way, heavy-duty salesmanship, American diplomatic initiatives are likely to stall. When dealing with Colin Powell, world leaders seemed to respect his ability to listen to and absorb their message-even though they were disappointed that he usually failed to deliver what they expected. Progress in Iraq and with the Israeli-Palestinian problem might help even a one way dialogue, but the Bush Administration will be much more effective if they appear to listen and take into consideration what other leaders have to say.

President Bush sets off to Europe at the end of February on his first foreign trip of his second term. According to the White House, the President wants to reach out to friends and allies in Europe "to defeat terrorism" and "encourage freedom and democracy as alternatives to tyranny and terror." When the President reaches Europe, the means he chooses to deliver his message will be as important as the message itself. Will the President engage in a two way dialogue or will he spend the visit transmitting his intentions to wary audiences? Since the President's war on terrorism is already vastly unpopular in Europe, the way the President promotes his ambitious new agenda and the European reaction to it should provide signs about the likely intensity of American foreign policy in the coming year. Popular demonstrations against his visit are likely to be as interesting as his meetings with European leaders. Whether Secretary Rice can convince the President to appear more conciliatory in his presentations will add dramatically to the Secretary's stature in the eyes of the rest of the world.

When considering the President's likely approach to the Europeans, his visit to Canada shortly after the election provides some useful clues. According to the Washington Post (January 23, 2005), the Canadian trip was supposed to have been a fence-mending visit, but ended with the Canadians more angry with Americans than before the visit because, contrary to assurances, the President used the private sessions with the Canadian Prime Minister to lecture about missile defense and his public session to reiterate the previous policies which had divided the US from its allies in the first place. If the President attempts to repackage his divisive words when he meets with European leaders, he will find himself once again alone. The Canadian trip occurred before Condoleezza Rice became Secretary of State. Could she, or would she, have made a difference in the tone of the visit?

Condoleezza Rice faces many challenges as Secretary of State. She will need to establish herself as an important player in the foreign policy decision making, push solutions forward on tough issues like Iran, Middle East peace, and North Korea, and demonstrate that she can be an effective salesperson for the US perspective around the globe. Under the best of circumstances, the tasks will be difficult, but she faces the additional challenge of the American unpopularity, particularly in Europe and the Middle East. While foreign policy should never be a popularity contest, her own effectiveness will also be judged by her ability to either change the way the President deals with the rest of the world or the way the rest of the world views George W. Bush.

Parker W. Borg
February 3, 2005

Biographic note: Parker W. Borg, who grew up in the Twin Cities, is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington DC. He retired from the Department of State after more than 30 years service, including two tours as Ambassador and many years working at senior levels of the Department of State. He can be contacted at Borgs_pa@hotmail.com.