The confirmation theatrics in the Senate over John Bolton’s nomination as this nation’s United Nations Ambassador have featured not only the well-worn cast of Democratic Party leftists and old-line multilateralists from Foggy Bottom, but the behind-the-scenes accusation by Colin Powell – whose legacy as secretary of state is steadily going bust – about the nominee’s alleged meanness. Powell’s backbiting came as no surprise to those versed in Washington infighting.
Not much had been heard from Powell since President Bush unceremoniously dropped him from his second-term Cabinet without so much as telling him in advance that Condoleezza Rice would be taking over at State. The string of successes attributed to the much-maligned Bush Doctrine – the notion of democratic idealism espoused by administration heavyweight thinkers such as Bolton, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Cheney, has served to underscore the failure of Powell’s global consensus, negotiations-based legalistic approach to fighting terrorism.
On issues of terrorism and confronting authoritarian regimes, history will show that Powell’s approach reflected a bygone era. He refused to call for regime change in North Korea, mistakenly relied on old-fashioned conference diplomacy in challenging Iran’s mullahs, resisted the use of force to depose the Taliban, and naively turned to the United Nations to head off Saddam Hussein.
Ironically, Powell’s one big success against the weightier strategic thinkers in the administration in winning over the president – taking the case against Saddam to the UN for the umpteenth time – led to the classic photo of him haplessly appealing to a dismissive Security Council about the Iraqi leader’s lurking menace.
So was it surprising that Powell surfaced in a rear-guard effort (one clearly aimed at redeeming his place in history) by attacking Bolton for lacking a softer and gentler persona in dismissing the advice of disgraced State Department and CIA “intelligence” bureaucrats?
Powell was grudgingly forced to accept Bolton as one of his six undersecretaries based on Vice President Cheney’s job recommendation. Years before, in his autobiography, Powell revealed his disapproval of a more muscular American diplomacy such that as championed by Bolton. In the administration of George Bush senior, charged Powell, Cheney and Wolfowitz had turned the Defense Department into “a refuge for Reagan-era hardliners.”
In his two decades of diplomatic experience, Bolton distinguished himself for mustering support to end the UN’s notorious Zionism is Racism resolution and for cobbling together a coalition at the international organization to enforce standards for Saddam to abide by following the first Gulf War. Bolton stood out among Powell’s entourage in opposing the foreign-policy culture that saw diplomacy as a legalistic operation designed to buy time. In Bolton’s view, the United States in the world arena should unapologetically use its power in puruing its vital interests.
Specifically, the record of how a visionless Powell dealt with Yasir Arafat underscores the contrast between the Powell and Bolton approaches to statecraft. At best, Powell’s performance might be excused for showing endless patience for that inveterate terrorist. But a more telling analysis would fault Powell for aimlessness, naiveté, an unwillingness to ostracize Arafat and a lack of intellectual honesty in his evenhanded criticism of the Palestinian and Israeli positions. Powell’s ongoing attempts to negotiate with Arafat stood in stark contrast to President Bush’s morally based refusal to even take a phone call from the Palestinian terrorist.
From the outset, Powell misjudged Arafat as a person subject to pragmatic arguments. In his first speech on the subject of terrorism as secretary of state, at the University of Kentucky two months after the chastening experience of 9/11, he tried convincing Arafat that terror was unproductive (note the absence of any denunciation of terrorism as “morally compromising” its perpetrators – subsequently a central point of President Bush’s case against Arafat): “The intifada is now mired in the quicksand of self-defeating violence and terror directed against Israel.”