FOREIGN POLICY: AFTER IRAQ, U.S. DEBATES THE NEXT STEPS

 

  Artículo de Glenn Kessler and Karen DeYoung en “The Washington Post” del 13.04.2003


 As the Bush administration emerges triumphant from a war in Iraq that faced heavy opposition from across the globe, President Bush and his national security advisers are struggling to identify the best mix of confrontation and conciliation to achieve other foreign policy goals that are being expanded and refined in the wake of the collapse of Saddam Hussein's government.

The battle lines that characterized the administration's internal debate on Iraq before the war -- often between the Pentagon and State Department -- are reemerging, officials said. But there is widespread agreement within the administration that the rapid toppling of the Iraqi government presents a powerful demonstration of U.S. ambitions, determination and goals as the United States continues to pursue what the president has called a global war on terrorism.

The example of U.S. military prowess, administration officials said in interviews over the past week, should frighten potential enemies such as Syria, Iran and North Korea into curtailing their links to terrorism and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. "The world is changing," one senior official said. "There are consequences to this behavior."

North Korea yesterday dropped its long-standing demand that it would only meet one-on-one with U.S. officials to discuss its nuclear program, a decision that U.S. officials interpreted as a sign that the North Korean government has been shaken by the United States' quick dispatch of the Iraqi government and is now more willing to compromise.

France, Germany, Russia and other opponents of the war can draw their own conclusions, officials said, as the conflict in Iraq moves into a postwar phase in which the interests of the United States and members of the United Nations may again be at odds. "If you need a demonstration of how serious the United States is, it's that serious," another senior official said. The administration, said a third official, has made it clear that the new, "21st century threats" have to be dealt with firmly.

Although the war has emboldened administration hawks, there already are fierce disputes within the administration over how to build a functioning, representative government in Iraq that will justify the cost and blood of the war, as well as over a range of other foreign policy issues. Most prominent are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the role of the United Nations, and how to deal with Iran and Syria, two of Iraq's neighbors that the United States has long alleged have ties to terrorism and nonconventional weapons programs. The challenge posed by North Korea also looms.

At almost every turn, the administration will face a choice over whether to accommodate its policy to the concerns of others, or whether to push ahead, sure of its own convictions and confident that others will follow.

At the moment, hard-liners in the government feel vindicated by the sudden fall of Baghdad and by North Korea's unexpected willingness to meet on U.S. terms. Yet, the intensity of these fights is the result not only of policy differences but also of a policy process within the administration that results in most debates being resolved only at the highest levels of the government.

With strong and powerful personalities such as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney at the center of these disputes, the battles are often carried on to the last minute, when Bush makes a decision. Both sides wage spirited fights because, up until the moment Bush tips his hand, they assure themselves that the president shares their point of view.

The process, some officials say, at times verges on dysfunctional, largely because people at the lower levels make decisions without knowing or understanding the actual policy. That in turn can confuse and confound allies and foes as the administration appears to shift tactics from diplomacy toward confrontation, and back again.

For the moment, the war may have given the Pentagon a prominence in foreign policymaking that is likely to provide ammunition for policy battles yet to come. "The Defense Department should wage war if necessary and defend our security; the State Department . . . should make foreign policy," Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, said on John McLaughlin's "One on One" this weekend. "But in bureaucratic games, you can't beat something with nothing.

"The fact is that in the Defense Department you have a cluster of people . . . who have a strategic viewpoint that's strongly held and well-refined, and you don't have its equivalent in the State Department," Brzezinski said. "The State Department doesn't like the fact that the Defense Department takes the lead strategically, but it hasn't really formulated some alternative concept of how American foreign policy should be conducted. And that is weakness."

A senior State Department official, however, said that the possibility of movement in the North Korean crisis and the need to demonstrate progress on Middle East peace sends a different signal. "The message has gone out," he said, "Diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy will handle the other problems in the world."

What follows are reports on the debate over the next steps in these four facets of foreign policy:

Postwar Iraq  |  Israel and Palestinians   |   Syria and Iran  |  Allies and the U.N.

 

POSTWAR IRAQ: REFEREEING TENSIONS BETWEEN STATE AND DEFENSE

In the administration's internal battles, the Defense Department has fought for, and largely won, the lead role in the physical and political reconstruction of Iraq.

Although there are broad areas of agreement between the Pentagon and the State Department on how the process should be conducted, there are deep differences between them. They have clashed over the composition of the Pentagon-led U.S. team that will initially run the country, and the formation of an Iraqi interim authority to begin the process of returning the country to its citizens.

Pentagon enthusiasms have occasionally run afoul of the White House. Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice intervened last week to slow the selection of the Iraqi interim authority after the State Department argued that its early establishment would give undue influence to Pentagon-favored exile groups at the expense of leaders inside Iraq, officials said.

Much of the postwar planning, which began as early as last May, was handled by a committee of Cabinet deputies headed by Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser. The committee, meeting twice a week, methodically explored the problems that would result from the fall of Saddam Hussein, including humanitarian assistance and the possibility of anarchy, officials said. The challenge is matching the plans to the rapidly changing facts on the ground.

Another critical question is how to foster the rise of new Iraqi leadership, and whether to focus on the exiles or let new leaders emerge at home. The State Department has waged a campaign against Ahmed Chalabi, one of the most prominent opposition leaders, on grounds that the London-based banker, who left Iraq in 1958, lacks credibility and support. In the end, the administration has decided to let the process evolve more slowly, although the Pentagon tried to gain the upper hand last weekend by flying Chalabi and 700 supporters to southern Iraq.

"There is not so much a preference for Chalabi as a desire for democracy," a senior administration official said. "We favor those who support representative government over those who don't, but in the end the Iraqis will have to choose."

He added that while Chalabi and Iraqi Kurdish leaders are among the exiles that support representative government, the hope is that others within Iraq will now emerge.

 

 

 

 

ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PEACE: AN OPPORTUNITY TO RELAUNCH EFFORTS TO BREAK THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE

 

Few subjects have divided administration officials as much as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and little progress has been made in the 10 months since President Bush pledged to create a Palestinian state in three years. But officials believe the victory in Iraq, and the appointment last month of a new Palestinian prime minister, have created an opportunity to demonstrate to the Arab world that the administration is determined to end the cycle of violence.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in particular, believes he has a commitment from the president to take forceful steps. Once the Palestinian prime minister -- Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen -- forms a cabinet, the administration has said it would release a "road map" that lays out the steps expected of both sides to reach the goal of a Palestinian state. The plan was crafted by the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia.

Administration officials have told the Israeli government that it is in its interest to allow Abbas to succeed. "We're talking hard, right now," an official said, about the steps expected of the Israeli government. A senior Arab official said Arabs will be watching to see whether Israel takes substantive steps such as quickly reducing the number of roadblocks and checkpoints on the West Bank or dismantling some settlements.

Yet Israel has serious concerns about the road map, and officials have indicated they want to renegotiate some aspects, a position that has some sympathy in other parts of the administration.

"We've talked to the Israelis repeatedly about doing something about the daily life" of the Palestinians, but the Israelis have "a security problem," another official said. But, the official added, once the road map is released, people "shouldn't go to their corners and begin talking about what they're not going to do."

U.S. and Arab officials acknowledge that time is running short. If little progress is made by summer, it will be difficult for an administration running for reelection in 2004 to place much pressure on Israel, giving the Israelis an incentive to drag out the process. "All bets are off" after the summer, a U.S. official said.  

 

 

 

SYRIA AND IRAN: IRAQ NEIGHBORS WARNED: U.S. IS WATCHING BEHAVIOR

 

Syria and Iran, two of Iraq's neighbors, have emerged as potential flash points. Administration officials have put both on notice that their behavior is being closely watched, but the State and Defense departments disagree over how hard to push the message and whether it is being heard.

The Pentagon has taken the lead in challenging Syria, with officials accusing it of secretly aiding Iraq by letting military goods and backers of the Saddam Hussein government slip over the border.

"The concern we're raising about Syria is that in recent days the Syrians have been shipping killers into Iraq to try to kill Americans," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said last week.

Asked if the United States was preparing to take some action against Syria, Wolfowitz said, "That's not a decision the Defense Department makes. That obviously . . . would be a decision for the president and Congress."

Yet, on the same day as Wolfowitz's comments, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage told reporters that "in the last several days they have responded quite well to U.S. and coalition warnings and démarches about closing their borders and things of that nature and she has done so."

While the State Department is not unhappy to have Syria rattled, the rhetoric has begun to alarm some officials, as well as officials in the British government. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is frequently forced to deny in television interviews overseas that the United States has a secret list of countries it plans to attack next.

The administration, in discussions with the Iranians, has made it clear it expects them not to interfere in Iraq. But officials were shocked to learn earlier this year that Iran's nuclear weapons program was close to fruition. Officials are pressing countries such as Russia and China to limit Iran's access to nuclear technology.

"I do think it's important to recognize that if we're able, as we fully expect, to create conditions for a different kind of Iraq, or so that Iraqis can create a different kind of Iraq . . . if we can get there, and I think we will, that will start to change the dynamics for a lot of states," a senior administration official said.

 

 

 

 

ALLIES AND THE U.N.: HANDSHAKES AND COLD SHOULDERS

For all the commentary that the administration faced a diplomatic debacle at the United Nations when it failed to gain international support for an invasion of Iraq, administration officials now say the military victory has left the opponents in a politically untenable position.

The administration needs the U.N. Security Council to lift sanctions on Iraq and to recognize the new Iraqi government. In what administration officials consider important gestures, President Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell have traveled to Europe since the war started and emphasized the need for U.N. involvement, particularly for humanitarian assistance.

At the same time, officials plan to make it clear that potential allies need to move quickly if they want a role in postwar Iraq. Key supporters, such as Spain and Poland, in addition to Britain, which sent a sizable number of troops to Iraq, have already been assigned positions that will enable them to have some influence on the country's future.

Administration officials plan to frame the debate over the U.N. role in Iraq this way: It is not a question of endorsing U.S. actions but of helping the Iraqi people. "I think that the way to make certain that the United Nations and the Security Council and others now play a constructive role is to do exactly that -- to be devoted to playing a constructive role on behalf of the Iraqi people," a senior administration official said. "We need not to have everybody go to their corners and talk about theological expressions of what the U.N. has to be, but all unite now and do what is best for the Iraqi people. That means that when it comes time to lift sanctions, it ought to be done because it will benefit the Iraqi people."

Powell has already begun to reach out to Europeans because, in the words of one official, "this war is over, there is business to do." Still, special enmity is reserved for French President Jacques Chirac and what one administration official called "a relatively small group around him," including Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin.

The French, this official said, are "drunk on their own hubris" and see their opposition to the war as a way to establish an alternative power center to the United States.

"I think France is going to pay some consequences, not just with us, but with other countries who view it that way," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said.

Indeed, at a White House meeting this week, Cabinet deputies from State, Defense and other departments, plan to discuss how to handle relations with France.

Some officials have proposed short-term and long-term punishment in light of what many consider France's betrayal at the United Nations over Iraq, ranging from cancellation of U.S. participation in the Paris Air Show in June to a fundamental realignment of NATO to isolate the French. Others, while still bitter over the U.N. experience, see the eventual reestablishment of a strong relationship with a traditional U.S. ally as necessary and desirable, and have argued for a more measured response.