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Rumsfeld up, Powell down -- for now
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Thursday, 29 November 2001 13:00 (ET)
Rumsfeld up, Powell down -- for now
By MARTIN SIEFF, Senior News Analyst
WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell has lost
his dominant role in shaping U.S. foreign policy, at least for the
moment. How do we know? Because he is so busy saying he hasn't.
On Sunday, The New York Times magazine featured a long and generally
extremely sympathetic and flattering profile of Powell written by one of
the most senior and respected journalists on the paper, Pulitzer Prize
winner Bill Keller. Keller, like the outstanding journalist he is, took
pains to include all the major criticisms currently made of Powell's
current policies and past record. But he also clearly enjoyed
exceptional access to the secretary of state who used the opportunity --
understandably -- to paint himself in the most impressive light.
The article was clearly in the works well before the fall of Kabul to
the Northern Alliance but it also reflected the very changed
circumstances of the fall of the Afghan capital and the dramatic, widely
unanticipated collapse of the extremist Islamist Taliban regime there.
Powell had over the preceding two months striven exceptionally hard to
restrain the victorious Northern Alliance forces from occupying Kabul.
Instead, they had ignored him and done so. The first great and strategic
U.S. victory in the war against the terrorists who killed up to 4,000
Americans on Sept. 11 had been won because America's allies directly
ignored the policy that America's most senior diplomat and most revered
soldier had sought to impose upon them.
This was obviously, not the interpretation that Powell sought to present
to Keller and The New York Times. He and his colleagues were at pains to
paint a picture of a unified administration, whose members argued only
over details but fundamentals. This enabled him to present his cautious,
diplomacy-dominated strategy as essential to the capture of Kabul when
in reality he had pursued it as an alternative to "risking" the fall of
the city and the total collapse of the Taliban there.
The flattering New York Times profile, like a cover story in Time
magazine several weeks before, was conceived when Powell was still
riding high and getting all his policy recommendations adopted by
President George W. Bush. Many of them still are, especially in favoring
Pakistan over India, giving the Saudis everything they want and tilting
U.S. mediation in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process the Palestinian
-- and Saudi -- way.
That last point is the only deduction that can be drawn from the
appointment of Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former commander-in-chief of U.S.
Central Command, to be the new key mediator in that peace process.
Zinni, a tough retired Marine general and one of Powell's closest
friends, has vast experience and close personal relationships with Arab
and Muslim leaders throughout the Middle East and Central and South
Asia, but has had virtually no contact with Israelis. That stacks the
deck in this new U.S. initiative before it even starts. And Zinni is
Powell's handpicked choice for the job.
But the fall of Kabul dropped the weight of Powell's influence
dramatically in the balance of Washington power. He lost -- and lost big
-- in the most important policy of the day. His arch-rival Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld got what he wanted instead. And neither man had
made any secret that what they wanted were diametrically opposed to each
other. It was a zero-sum game and Powell was left holding the zero.
As Lawrence Kaplan pointed out in a powerful article in the Nov. 26
edition of the New Republic magazine, Powell on Nov. 18 was still
publicly urging that the Northern Alliance forces should not take Kabul
but only "besiege" it, as he said that day on an NBC interview. And Bush
was still in his secretary of state's pocket on that issue. He publicly
said the same thing, urging the alliance that it should attack the
Taliban indeed but not into the city of Kabul itself.
Yet the very same day, on the CBS television network, Rumsfeld gave the
green light to the Northern Alliance to drive ahead. "The goal is, as
soon as is humanly possible in the right way, to get the al Qaida
(terrorist organization) and the Taliban the dickens out of Kabul," he
said. "(They are) going to attack and take Kabul when they feel like it
... and when they think they are capable of defeating the Taliban and
getting them out of there." And, as Kaplan pointedly pointed out, within
three days of those remarks, that was exactly what the Northern Alliance
did.
Here was a situation that commonly occurs in nations that are losing
battles and wars but that almost has never been seen in nations that are
dramatically winning them. The leadership of the victorious nation is so
divided in its strategic goals and even its immediate tactical military
and diplomatic decisions that arguments between the two sides are openly
and fiercely conducted in full view of the entire nation. And in this
case, the clearly expressed decision and desire of the president of the
Untied States was openly defied and countered by his own secretary of
defense on the very day that he made it. And, as a result, that cabinet
officer rises rather than falls in influence with that same president.
There were three reasons Bush swallowed crow and reversed himself on the
policy Powell had urged upon him so quickly. First, the fall of Kabul
actually happened, and skilful politicians always adapt as fast as they
can to new realities, especially if they had not planned or anticipated
them. That makes it all the more urgent to maneuver to take the credit
anyway.
Second, as President John F. Kennedy dryly noted after the 1961 Bay of
Pigs fiasco, "Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan." Therefore
it is only too natural that both Bush and Powell would scramble as fast
as they could to share with Rumsfeld the reflected glory of the dramatic
triumph which they had both opposed only days before.
Third, and most important of all, Bush was totally inexperienced and
generally ignorant in matters of war and diplomacy when he won the
presidency. Consequently, he has been pulled hither and thither between
the opposing magnetic poles of the dove Powell (negative charge) and the
hawk Rumsfeld (positive charge) during his entire 10 months in the White
House. This latest flip-flop by him is far from the first and will not
be the last.
Finally, Powell has fallen from influence -- though never from favor --
with Bush before, but like the veteran and canny Washington insider
political operator he is, he has always contrived to climb back. The
"damage control" tone of the flattering profile of himself that Powell
was able to influence, if not shape, in the New York Times was a major
step on that route. It is far too soon to count him out yet.
--
Copyright 2001 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
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