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Saturday Feature
 
Rice out-travels forerunners on diplomacy
Guy Dinmore
2/4/2006
 

          In her first year as secretary of state, a milestone passed on January 26, 2006, Condoleezza Rice is widely credited with having steered US diplomacy on to a steadier course with traditional allies -- no mean accomplishment given the damage done to the superpower's credibility and moral authority by Iraq and the "war on terror".
Forbes named her as the world's most powerful woman; polls give her a consistently high approval rating even as the administration's has plummeted, and rarely does an interview go by without the inevitable question of a run at the presidency in 2008.
Ms Rice, 51, has benefited from her proximity to President George W. Bush -- personally and in terms of policy -- to shift the focus back to diplomacy, as she promised in her Senate confirmation hearings.
Her experienced team reflects this drive, and in striking up personal relationships with world leaders she has out-travelled her predecessors.
On North Korea and Iran, Ms Rice has effected shifts in US policy by accepting some flexibility in negotiations under pressure from allies.
In Sudan's Darfur she overcame ideological opposition and decided not to block a role for the International Criminal Court. She pushed for re-engagement in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Then there was a spate of shuttle diplomacy over Israel's control of Gaza's borders and a display of transatlantic unity in bringing international pressure to bear on the regime in Syria through the United Nations.
"There's more jaw-jaw than war," sums up Ivo Daalder, a foreign policy specialist at the Brookings think-tank and a former Clinton administration official. But he says Ms Rice's efforts are limited by her aversion to compromise and have been mostly tactical and therefore insufficient to overcome what he called the disastrous legacy of the first Bush term.
"When an American secretary of state has to spend an entire week in Europe to argue that the United States does not torture people -- and leave without having convinced anyone that she's speaking the truth -- you know something profound has changed in America's relations with the world," Mr Daalder says.
Ironically, Ms Rice has been able to introduce some of the shifts that Colin Powell, her predecessor, was unable to because of White Home suspicion and his battles with Dick Cheney, the vice-president, and, Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary; notably over the treatment of detainees.
"Rice and Rumsfeld agree more than they disagree. This is a big difference from before," a senior State Department official said.
"One of the great oddities of Condi Rice is that she has succeeded in being far more of a centrist and pragmatist in practice than Powell," commented Anthony Cordesman, senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"She has more influence with the president. Reality has demonstrated this was what was needed."
Charles Krauthammer, a conservative columnist, calls this process a maturing of neoconservatism into "democratic realism". In an essay last year he said this meant pushing ruthlessly for democratic change among adversaries -- first Syria and then Iran - while nudging gently autocratic allies, notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Larry Wilkerson, former chief-of-staff to Mr Powell and now a fierce critic of the administration, disagrees. A former soldier incensed by the policy of secret prisons and harsh interrogation techniques, he says the US is facing a dangerous "militarisation" of its foreign policy and argues it needs a new national security act to reassert civilian control.
"We are really close to allowing the military instruments become the leading instruments of US foreign policy," he told a recent Washington gathering.
State Department officials speak instead of the need to align political and military components in post-conflict situations, a mandate the president recently handed to Ms Rice.
Critics say the US's "freedom and democracy" rhetoric masks a lack of understanding of the Middle East and acts as a substitute for a real strategy beyond attempts at destabilisation through confrontation. And there are those within the department -- career diplomats rather than political appointees -- who complain privately that their critical analyses are being ignored by ideologues.
"The notion there might be other points of view or a need to find a middle ground is alien to this crowd, this president and this secretary of state," says Mr Daalder.
Secrecy and internal discipline have become the twin hallmarks of the Bush administration. Once a decision is taken, dissent is not tolerated. There is a growing reluctance to air criticism through e-mails or telephone calls, and even policymakers, when touching on controversial issues, are avoiding paper trails, according to those within the department. Semi-private contacts between officials and the media have also been curtailed.
In her more reflective speeches, Ms Rice compares this period, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, with that following the second world war. Just as Dean Acheson, as recounted in his memoirs, charted the cold war containment strategy that ultimately led to the defeat of the Soviet Union, Ms Rice sees herself and Mr Bush embarking on their own "generation struggle" to defeat what the administration calls Islamo-fascism.
Marie Gottschalk, professor of political science at Pennsylvania University, says comparisons with "grand old men like Acheson" are premature. She sees Ms Rice as a loyalist to the president without a grand vision of her own; someone who has "acted as an agent for others", namely Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld.
"The question is whether she will step out politically as more independent, whether she has larger political ambitions," Prof Gottschalk commented.
For the moment, Ms Rice is keeping that to herself.

 

 
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