Command reverts to ‘realists’ in Washington

WASHINGTON: It was just nine months ago when Newsweek spoke for the conventional wisdom at that moment when it pronounced “The End of Cowboy Diplomacy”.

The phrase signalled the apparent victory -- at last -- of the State Department-led “realist” wing over hawks led by Vice President Dick Cheney and then-Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld in gaining control over the foreign policy of President George W. Bush.

One month later, however, war broke out between Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israel, and the hawks, particularly neo-conservatives around Cheney and Rumsfeld, enjoyed a strong resurgence.

Bush not only spurned the pleas of Washington’s European and Arab allies to press the Jewish state for a ceasefire, but his top Middle East aide, Elliott Abrams, reportedly encouraged it, to the horror of both his State Department colleagues and his Israeli interlocutors, to expand the war into Syria.

Now, one Democratic election landslide later, Rumsfeld’s departure, and the longest-running record of sustained low public approval ratings for any US president in more than 50 years, conventional wisdom has again concluded that the realists have indeed taken the reins of power.

That such an assessment coincided with last Tuesday’s felony conviction by a jury of Cheney’s former chief of staff and the most powerful neo-conservative in Bush’s first term, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, for lying to federal investigators was probably not entirely coincidental given the “shadow”, as chief prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald described it, that it cast once again over the vice president’s office.

That the case -- which, at its heart, involved the lengths to which Cheney’s office and the White House went to discredit critics who charged that the administration’s hawks had manipulated intelligence to rally the country behind the 2003 Iraq invasion -- seems likely to soon become the subject of Congressional hearings will almost certainly deepen that shadow.

Even before Libby’s conviction, however, the notion that the realists had finally triumphed was growing here.

“Diplomacy Could Define End of Bush’s Terms: Pragmatism Colours Policy, Experts Say,” headlined a story last week in ‘USA Today’, while on the same day, the New York Times ran an analysis titled “Pragmatism in Diplomacy” about recent moves by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to engage North Korea, Iran and Syria.

“White House Foreign Policy Has Shifted,” noted a front-page ‘Los Angeles Times’ article this week which asserted that recent moves reflect “...the ascendancy of Rice and her State Department team over hawks once led by (Cheney and Rumsfeld).”

“Bush Shows New Willingness to Reverse Course” ran another headline earlier this week in the Washington Post, while one of the newspaper’s columnists, David Ignatius, argued that Bush has apparently embraced the recommendations of the bipartisan, realist-led Iraq Study Group (ISG) in a piece titled “After the Rock, Diplomacy”. In another, Jim Hoagland, in a column called “‘What Has Happened to Dick Cheney?”’ suggested that the vice president has been effectively marginalised by Rice who “has won full agreement and support from the president on strategic goals and methods she and her diplomats are pursuing.”

While Hoagland himself indicated that view remains to be confirmed by events, the evidence that power has shifted in the realists’ favour has indeed increasingly persuasive in just the last month, if only because the hawks, such as Cheney favourite and former UN Amb. John Bolton and his colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), have become increasingly distressed by changing balance of power.

The most dramatic sign of the realist ascendancy to date was last month’s accord between North Korea and the US by which Washington agreed to begin normalising relations and resume the supply of fuel oil in exchange for Pyongyang’s shutting down of its plutonium processing plant and the admission of international inspectors.

The deal, which resembles a 1994 bilateral accord repudiated by Bush early in his term -- albeit within the framework of a regional agreement involving South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia -- marked a sharp reversal of the administration’s stance and was cleared by Bush after a direct appeal from Rice, who reportedly circumvented the normal inter-agency process that would have guaranteed a stronger voice for Cheney and the hawks.

At the same time, the State Department’s persistent if mostly tacit support for Saudi Arabia’s efforts to midwife a Palestinian government of national unity in which both Hamas and President Abu Mazen’s Fatah would participate last month in Makkah -- in defiance of the hawks, in this case led by Abrams -- has been seen by some analysts here as demonstrating a new flexibility that would have been inconceivable just a few months ago and that was consistent with the ISG’s recommendations.

What has gotten the most attention to date, however, was Rice’s announcement at the end of last month that the Washington will participate in at least two regional meetings convened by the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The first takes place this weekend in Baghdad, and the second, at the ministerial level early next month in which Rice herself would take part -- that will also include Syria and Iran.

Her announcement confirmed the growing impression that Rice was indeed trying move the administration toward implementation of the recommendations of the ISG, which was chaired by former secretary of state and neo-conservative nemesis James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, which called explicitly for Washington to engage Tehran and Damascus as part of a larger regional strategy.

Significantly, her announcement came while Cheney was out of the country, and, on the day after his return, the White House spokesman Tony Snow denied that Rice’s announcement did not constitute a change of policy and said that, in any event, “there will not be bilateral talks between the United States and Iran, or the United States and Syria, within the context of these meetings.” —Dawn/The IPS News Service

(To be continued)