ارسل موضوعاً جديداًhe Foreign Policy Decision Making Process of the George W. Bush AdministrationAlexander Moens

The Foreign Policy Decision Making Process of the George W. Bush AdministrationAlexander Moens

Abstract

This paper describes and evaluates the management model, decision structure, and decision style of George W. Bush's foreign policy process. It offers an early assessment of the strengths of the decision making group. These findings are also evaluated in light of the personality and decision style of the President. Preliminary conclusions indicate that George W. Bush as an active-positive presidential character employs a decision style that is a unique combination of Ronald Reagan's 'visionary but hands-off leadership' and his father's intensely collegial approach. Also, while his foreign policy management model is well structured, it does not hamper collegial decision making. The greatest risk lies in the potential for bureaucratic politics.


Presidential Style and the Decision-Making Process


A new president’s persuasive powers are a function of his ability to acquire prestige and reputation early in his administration. To build persuasive power, the president needs to establish a reputation for trustworthiness, decisiveness and political skill. He must provide a clear White House management model and make it work convincingly from the very start. He also needs to show that he can set a limited set of coherent priorities, stick to these amidst early criticism, and score a clear Congressional victory during the honeymoon period.

Based on Neustadt’s criteria, George W. Bush has made a strong start.

The secretarial nomination process which became such a political bottleneck for Bill Clinton has become an early test of presidential power. Colin Powell received a unanimous endorsement from the Senate as Secretary of State, and Donald Rumsfeld came a close second as Secretary of Defense. The broad range of nominees, from highly acceptable candidates (to democrats) such as labor secretary Elaine Chao and education secretary Roderick Paige, and highly popular candidates such as secretary of state Colin Powell, to the controversial ones such as interior secretary Gale Norton and Attorney General John Ashcroft in fact meant that Bush presented a politically credible balance. Bush’s appointments are more a kaleidoscope of views and minority groups in the Republican party than an endorsement of the conservative wing. His former General Counsel and Secretary of State in Texas, and now White House legal counsel, Alberto Gonzales, is not particularly conservative in his views. As justice on the Texas Supreme Court he did not take social conservative positions.

Bush did the politically smart thing—inhumane as it may seem—by distancing himself almost immediately from Linda Chavez his first nominee for Secretary of Labor, who was faced with the charge of having employed an illegal immigrant. From the president’s vantage, the politics of the nomination process dictates that being ‘processed’ quickly is far more important than being vindicated at the end about personal integrity. Bush passed the final stage of this important early test of presidential influence when on February 1, 2001 the Senate confirmed the nomination of Attorney General, John Ashcroft. Bush got all his cabinet nominees into place within one month and avoided bitter clashes with Congress such as his father had encountered when he tried unsuccessfully to appoint the feisty senator John Tower for Secretary of Defense.

Given that his own transition time was cut in half by the Florida recount and legal controversy, George W. Bush has done well at getting his administration up and running. Where he was lagging behind in the late Spring of 2001 was in filling the important second and third-tier positions with people who actually make it possible for the secretaries to set and conduct coherent policies. Key Assistant Secretaries in State and in Defense were still awaiting nomination by early summer. By the same point in time, Ronald Reagan had twice as many people nominated (112) and Bill Clinton had nearly one third more people confirmed by the Senate (42).

While every new president since Jimmy Carter has campaigned as a ‘Washington outsider,’ it is critical for his early credibility that he does not ‘over’ appoint campaign staff or very junior staff to major White House positions who really do not have any executive experience. John P. Burke noted that President Clinton initially had too many White House staffers who “did not have enough Washington experience to catch presidential mistakes.” A mixture of new faces and senior, experienced Washington ‘insiders’ in a transparent management model that suits the personal decision ‘style’ of the incoming president is a sine qua non for a credible start. Beside having inexperienced help, both the Carter and Clinton administrations were widely criticized for lacking an effective and efficient decision making model early in their terms.

Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton suffered a loss in the ‘expectations game,’ what Neustadt would call persuasive power, when they identified and pursued a lengthy list of ‘priorities’ without a coherent strategy to deal with contradictions or opposing interests among them. Similarly, one of the weaknesses of the George Bush the Elder campaign in 1992 was that he offered a long list of priorities without a sense of which ones he would pursue with what determination and at what cost.

The George W. Bush administration appears to have made a strong start in terms of garnishing early ‘governing credibility.’

Bush has appointed senior aides with Washington experience such as Andrew Card Jr. and Vice President Richard Cheney in key positions rather than campaign staff and assistants to the Governor of Texas. Avoiding the mistake that Clinton made when he appointed his campaign spokesman, George Stephanopoulos, as press secretary, Bush immediately made Karen Hughes, his close Texas aide and communications director a senior counsel to the president. Similarly, Bush has put his chief strategist Karl Rove in a position as senior adviser to the president. Both are free to concentrate entirely on the President’s political fortunes and his public statements.

By appointing Andrew Card Jr. as chief of staff, Bush has signaled that he will have a structured but not a rigidly hierarchical organizational process. Perhaps the greatest temptation facing a well-respected chief of staff is to limit access to the president both in terms of personnel and papers. In the case of the younger Bush, it helps that he personally experienced the excessive ‘gatekeeper’ actions by George Bush I’s former chief of staff, John Sununu. In his campaign biography, written with Karen Hughes, Bush notes:

I had seen that problem in my dad’s administration. Key members of his staff had felt stifled because they had to go through a filter to get information to the President.

As a result, Bush did not employ a chief of staff in Austin, but instead appointed Joe Allbaugh as a type of first-among-equals executive assistant allowing direct access to himself. As Washington is far more complex than Austin, it appears wise on his part to appoint a chief of staff while being sensitive not to create a gatekeeper position.

In addition to Card, Vice President Cheney, who with Donald Rumsfeld has the most Washington managerial experience on Bush’s team, plays a role in management beside being one of the top personal advisers to Bush. A keen observer of “the pitfalls of White House hubris and amateurishness” who served as President Ford’s Chief of Staff, Cheney is used to a more tightly controlled inner circle, and during the transition time served Bush as a type of chief executive:

The only person who reports directly to Mr. Bush other than Mr. Cheney, transition officials said, is the White House staff chief, Mr. Card - who also answers to Mr. Cheney in a dotted-line relationship.

It is always tempting to call a new Presidential-Vice Presidential relationship ‘unique’ and almost every president in recent history has claimed that he has given his Vice President more power than any of his predecessors. Some have called him the “super-charged” Vice President, others after September 11, dubbed him the ‘war minister.’ Cheney has a long career as a ‘number two man.’ Having served with a low-key style but with complete competence at the highest levels in the Ford and George Bush administrations and for ten years in the House, Cheney is both absolutely loyal to George W. Bush and an invaluable insider to the workings of executive and legislative government. I think the best way to envision his role in the Bush administration is as deputy president, never assuming Bush’s place or upstaging him, but always there to fill his place and provide guidance. How Cheney will relate to Andy Card as well as to cabinet secretaries and key White House aides, some of whom such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have broad experience themselves and hold strong views on what their portfolios should do for the Bush administration, remains a most interesting feature to observe.

While Condoleezza (Condi) Rice played a prominent role as foreign policy mentor to George Bush during the campaign, it is likely that Bush, Cheney and Powell see her role as a powerful but behind-the-scenes coordinator in the tradition of Brent Scowcroft. Indeed, it was Scowcroft who brought her into the National Security Council in 1989. The National Security interagency process laid out by Bush puts her in that central position. It should be remembered that even Zbigniew Brzezinski who later became such a high profile bureaucratic rival to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, actually kept a fairly low profile during the first year and a half of the Carter administration. So far, Rice has occassionally given detailed policy backgrounders and brief public explanations of Bush’s policies. The day before President Bush’ critical speech to Congress on the “Attack on America,” it was Rice who provided a lengthy briefing to prepare the Press and the public. She has maintained her key role as process guardian and has carefully refrained from siding with Rumsfeld or with Secretary of State Colin Powell on this or that issue. According to Edward Luttwak, she does not dominate policy meetings, but mostly “listens quietly, to later review the issues when alone with the president.” Yet, with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and more recently Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, she faces lots of competition for the president’s ear.

Bush’s decision and management style has been clear since he took the Governor’s seat in Austin in late 1994. It is to set the overall tone and direction of policy, to communicate this vision with the people, and then to delegate working out the details as well as the implementation of policy to his secretaries and assistants. He demands complete loyalty. In return, he gives his trust, is comfortable delegating responsibility and believes that those with responsibility will perform at their best. This approach is not the same as a complete ‘hands-off’ style of decision making, or what Helen Thomas suggested would be “they will do my thinking for me.” It does not imply a lack of involvement on the part of Bush, but it does mean that Bush will not try to micro manage details of policy or second guess his advisers. Several observers have speculated that Bush wants to emulate Ronald Reagan’s style of setting grand strategy and providing ‘vision’ to the people without becoming enmeshed in day-to-day decision making. There are indeed parallels, not least of which is the political connection Bush was able to establish with middle class American voters. But Bush’s style is not by imitation, it is his own. Throughout his own career he has favoured the case study method which he enjoyed at Harvard Business School. He likes to listen to the brief, hear out competing advice, and then make a clear and quick decision. His advisers whose loyalty is beyond question are encouraged by Cheney to provide ‘no holds barred’ advice. Bush listens at first and then makes the decision, if not at the meeting then in the presence of Cheney or Rice.

One observer of the Clinton administration noted that Clinton “failed to establish clear structures of delegation within his advisory system,” leading to a “free-for-all among his advisors.” It was widely rumored that dress code and social etiquette had declined in the Clinton White House. Bush’s personal and informal manner must not be confused with an informal approach to staff organization and interaction or decision making. Bush favors a more formal White House with more hierarchical organization. Bush insists on punctuality and while Governor of Texas would not let anyone brief him for longer than twenty minutes. The key decision makers meet regularly. Cheney meets with Bush early in the morning and throughout the day. Cheney also meets individually with Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell, and the four meet once a week at least for lunch. The Deputies, Richard Armitage from State, Paul Wolfowitz from Defense and Stephen Hadley from the National Security Council thrash out the options and run the bureaucracy. They may be in touch with each other up to twenty times a day.

Bush’s presidential management and decision style appears a mixture of collegiality and hierarchy. Unlike Franklin Roosevelt or John Kennedy, he does not invite or thrive on competition or rivalry among his aides. In making ample use of White House aides as well as Cabinet Secretaries, his organization appears less formalistic than that of Harry Truman. The most pertinent model for Bush is the collegial approach, but a tightly managed form of collegiality. One of the key characteristics of the collegial style is that advisers often gather in groups and act as members on one team that engage in problem solving. If we picture Karen Hughes and Karl Rove on the political side, and Rumsfeld and Powell on the policy side, it will be crucial for Rice or Cheney or Card to hold the team together.

All presidents promise cabinet government. Bush’s cabinet stands out for the combined private business and executive government experience around the table. Paul O’Neill, the Treasury Secretary worked in Ford’s Office of Management and Budget and then led the alumium giant Alcoa. Rumsfeld, former Chief of Staff under Gerald Ford, and now the first Secretary of Defence to hold that post twice, worked in between government jobs as a top executive at a pharmaceutical manufacturer. After serving as George Bush’s Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney led Halliburton which services energy companies. Paul Light, a transitions expert commented that, these senior people will not likely simply “sit around and wait for orders from some staff guy in theWhite House.” However, given Bush’s style to delegate, he may in fact end up with a more powerful and more widely used cabinet than his predecessors.

It is Bush’s natural inclination for personal relations that makes him more activist and more ‘hands-on’ than Ronald Reagan. Bush takes a real interest in people, giving them nicknames and writing little notes to them. Upholding a family tradition, he has always shown a personal interest in the welfare of people working for him. When his oil companies were absorped by larger players in the mid 1980s, he made sure to find all his employees work. As Governor of Texas, he made it a point to meet with members of the legislature early on. Even in foreign relations he has indicated he will emphasize “eye-to-eye diplomacy,” establishing personal friendships with other heads of state. As a result, George W. Bush is more likely to show a mixture of Reagan’s grand vision and his father’s penchant for reaching out in a collegial manner to all players engaged on an issue. In terms of ‘bringing people together’ and in personally ‘massaging’ all the individual players and in leading the process to a win-win situation for all, George Bush the Younger is an absolute expert. Biographical studies show that since his early days at Phillips Academy in Andover, he has had a knack for forming teams that follow him. He depends more on collegial discussion forums than on reading memos.

Bush made an extraordinary effort—spurred also by the unprecedented controversy surrounding the electoral college vote in Florida—in his first month in office to meet with Congressmen on both sides of the political spectrum, addressing even a Democratic Senatorial retreat. In meeting with them, he has exhibited a combination of charm offensive and a surprising command of policy objectives. He applied the same style to foreign relations, calling a long list of foreign leaders in the first weeks in office, then meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, Mexican President Vincente Fox, and spending a weekend at Camp David with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. His aim, according to White House aides, is “to create a bond before he has to raise contentious subjects, ‘or ask for something.’”

Bush’s presidential character and personal style appears to follow James D. Barber’s type of active-positive president. While Bush is not a bookish intellectual and has no passion for public policy such as President Clinton had, he is not a president who remains aloof. Bush is not an active president like Jimmy Carter who would rise at 5:00 AM and read 300 pages in an average day. Bush does not like debating policy points till the wee hours of the morning as Bill Clinton often did. Rather, he uses a combination of instinctive smarts, traditional conservative values, and quick learning combined with a finely honed skill of reading people to make his choices. What Bush lacks in policy curiosity he makes up for in people curiosity. At Yale university, the course that truly appealed to him was the study of human leaders in history.

Bush’s outlook is intensely positive. He is not someone who broods or looks back at his decisions. His sense of optimism and his jovial ‘can-do’ attitude resembles that of Ronald Reagan. Bush is a self-proclaimed hater of introspection, which he calls “psychobabble.” When he suffered set backs as an oilman or whenever people around him indicated he was not living up to his last name, George W. would merrily plod on, being confident that things would work out in the end. Friends have noted that Bush’s successful acquisition of the Texas Rangers Baseball team, and its subsequent success in building a new stadium and turning around the fortunes of the team have given him a superb sense of confidence. Bush is not driven by political ambition. He bought his ranch at Crawford in the beginning of the 2000 campaign, signalling he would be happy to retire there if defeated.

Bush’s Core Beliefs

Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” is an active type of social vision. In the words of a Texas Democrat:

He’s willing to step out on issues that have long been contrary to the interests of the Republican Party….He has figured out a way for Republicans to actually be for something.

Bush’s brand of active conservatism has allowed him to define the ‘new’ debate on education and on faith-based crime reduction. It allows him to deal with typical ‘Democrat’ issues by given them conservative solutions. Rather than simply delegating education powers to ever more local control, Bush insists on Federal test score powers as well as vouchers and is actually calling for more Federal spending on education. Rather than adding more police officers and longer jail terms, Bush offers an alternative by proposing that religious institutions can have a role in social services that has even some Liberal advocates suggesting they are worth a try.

Compassionate Conservatism, the key theme of W.’s 2000 campaign, was not entirely original. While George Bush the Elder used the slogan “responsible conservatism” in the 1960s, “compassionate conservative” was the phrase used by the Christian Herald to describe him in 1987. George Bush’s idea of a thousand points of light, a symbolic way of suggesting communities and charities helping those in need, contains elements of the same idea. But George W. made it far more specific. George W. is not harshly against government the way House Representative Bill Archer from Texas may be viewed, or even his ideologically more conservative brother Jeb, who called himself a “head-banging conservative” with a “healthy disrespect for government.” All things being equal, less government is better than more. But George W. wanted the state of Texas to pay more not less for education, and the state to administer and review literacy tests. Personal responsibility and personal accountability is another key feature of Bush’s thinking. The idea of blaming society, the culture or some other broad stream of socio-economic causes for your own predicament has not sat well with George W. since his early days at Yale. Personal responsibility is a recurrent theme. Family ties and respect for authority are two other ones. Bush is not a negative thinker, not an accuser like Pat Buchanan declaring a war of values. His thoughts are positive vignettes in the Ronald Reagan tradition. Compassionate conservatism, in Bush’s own words, “is conservatism with a smile, not a frown.”

Karl Rove has fed books and ideas to George W. teasing out beliefs the latter had all along. Then, with the help of speech writer Mark Mckinnon, formulating these ideas into people-friendly statements. Rove fed George W. books by Myron Magnet, David Horowitz and Marvin Olasky, which describe the 1960s generation and the counter-culture as major causes of societal ills, including excessive government regulation and a mentality of government dependency by the urban poor. In his campaign book which Karen Hughes helped to write, Bush makes an eloquent case for his core beliefs:

I am a conservative because I believe in the worth and dignity and power of each individual. My philosophy trusts individuals to make the right decisions for their families and communities, and that is far more compassionate than a philosophy that seeks solutions from distant bureaucracies. I am conservative because I believe government should be limited and efficient, that it should do a few things and do them well.

After outlining his conservatism in defence issues, free markets and family values, Bush returns to government in his definition of compassionate conservatism:

It outlines a new vision of the proper role for the American government. Government…has an important job within its bounds…We must correct it and limit it, not disdain it. I differ with those who want to dismantle government down to the last paper clip…Government is neither the enemy nor the answer.

He goes on to explain that compassionate conservatism helps unlock the formula whereby the federal government sticks to its mandate, the state and local governments to the tasks they can do best, and most importantly how government can re-direct resources to neighbourhoods, communities, schools, faith-based organizations, parents and individuals.

It was on compassionate conservatism that the Bush campaign made its stand, the ditch in which it was prepared to die. With Joshua Bolton in overall charge, Larry Lindsay on economic issues, Steve Goldsmith on domestic policy and Condeleeza Rice in foreign policy, the team wrote specific policy ideas from this compassionate conservative script. Polls and focus groups were used to package—but not create—the message. The Bush campaign of course carried major components of economic conservatism and the Christian Right, but it was not beholden to either of these blocs and at times played them off skillfully. Bush was and is pro-life, but not about to re-open Roe vs. Wade. Rather he would emphasize teen counselling, abstinence and adoption plans. The message is always positive. While Pat Robertson endorsed George W., James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family at one time accused him of “double talk.” It is no small feat that George W. was able to get the Christian conservative vote without becoming beholden to the big Christian lobbies.

Bush and Congress

A new president is tested on his decisiveness; his ability to make clear decisions and stick to them. The Bush team ignored the advice of many pundits to interpret the close election outcome as a rejection of his legislative plans. Bush has stuck to his 1.6 trillion tax cut since his New Hamphire campaign, making it the center piece of his first address to the Congress and the nation. In an early success, the House passed Bush’s core proposal for across-the-board tax cuts on March 9. After a minor compromise, the Senate followed suit. Bush scored a legislative victory early and it has given him a reputation for being able to govern.

Bush is a genuine conservative, but he is also a businessman who knows he needs to make a deal to keep the company prosperous. His political instincts are respected by friends and foes alike. However, Bush’s genuine conservatism should not be confused with being a mere mouth piece for right-wing interests or having a blind attachment to ideology. In order to govern and wield power effectively, Bush is quite prepared to be pragmatic and make compromises. While a clear defender of Taiwan, he chose not to sell them the Aegis anti-missile system. While believing strongly in parental choice for schools, Bush is willing to drop the voucher provision in the face of Democratic opposition in Congress in order to keep the strict accountability measures in his education proposals. Realizing that presidential power is limited resource, Bush only expends his influence in Congress on issues that are crucial to him. Bush is also an acknowledged tactician. When Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle appeared quite obstructive to some of Bush’s legislative plans, Bush created a personal working relationship with Senator Ted Kennedy and was able to get compromise bills on education and patient’s rights.

Bush issued about 50 executive orders in his first year, including to ban federal aid to overseas groups that provide abortion, to ban federal financing for any new embryonic stem-cell research, the order to create a White House Office for Faith Based and Community Initiatives, and the directive set up the Office for Homeland Security. However, executive orders per se tell little about the long-term governing credibility of a president.

Nothing is more important in the quest for prestige and reputation in order to wield persuasive power than an early legislative victory. Bush achieved this when Congress passed his tax cuts bill. Emboldened, Bush went on to work on two broad fronts (one domestic policy, one security policy: educational reform, and missile defenses as part of a complete overhaul of military strategy and spending. The Bush White House avoided the pitfall of ‘cluttering’ these publicly staked objectives with too many other legislative initiatives. The defection of Senator James Jeffords to the Democratic Party, did complicate Bush’s legislative agenda, but only a little. Most truly controversial issues such as drilling for oil and gas in the Artic Preserve require in fact 60 votes to force cloture.


Bush’s Foreign Policy

Incoming presidents are inevitably judged by the reputation of their immediate predecessors. Though George Bush I had a stronger foreign policy background than most presidents, he was publicly labeled a ‘whimp’ in reference to Ronald Reagan’s record. His very forceful actions in Panama in 1989 helped dispel that reputation. When George W. ran for the White House, he was measured against the command of policy issues on the part of both Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. Especially, on foreign policy, George W. was at first vulnerable. Bush’s gaffes during the various pop quizzes on names of foreign leaders thrown at him by journalists did nothing to inspire confidence. Some felt that he chose Cheney as running mate to dispel fears of inexperience. As recently as September 2001, just after the terrorist attack on New York and Washington, the Economist intoned the all to common perception that George W. Bush is “a neophyte whose main contribution to foreign policy until September 11, …was to invent ingenious ways of irritating his allies.” Soon after the attack, people began to re-evaluated their first impressions.

The first point about Bush’s foreign policy is that he ran as a domestic policy president and was elected on domestic politics, just as Bill Clinton had been in 1992. Karl Rove is considered the master of ‘message discipline.’ He and George W. confined Bush’s campaign against popular Texas Governor Ann Richards in 1994 to five policy issues, or what they called the “food groups.” Similarly, when George W. did address foreign policy in the 2000 campaign it was confined to three themes: re-investing in the lives of the men and women in uniform, drawing back from nation-building schemes begun under Clinton, and building a comprehensive missile defence system. In line with this emphasis, the Bush administration has concentrated on domestic issues with the exception of missile defense.

In early February 2001, Bush instructed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to conduct a comprehensive defense review:
I have given him a broad mandate to challenge the status quo as we design a new architecture for the defense of America and our allies. We will modernize some existing weapons and equipment, a task we have neglected for too long. But we will do this judiciously and selectively. Our goal is to move beyond marginal improvements to harness new technologies that will support a new strategy.
Rumsfeld delivered on an ambitious package of reforms in early May. Though the U.S. military downsized considerably after the end of the Cold War, the Clinton administration never enunciated a clear new strategy in the last four years of its term. In accordance with the lessons of Kosovo, Rumsfeld is proposing a more advanced, highly mobile and light army. In the next three years, the military forces will face “radical reforms,” away from the largely conventional doctrine of fighting two major regional wars at once to lighter forces using information-based technologies, counter proliferation and missile defences of various kinds.
Despite criticizing Vice President Albert Gore for using American forces for nation-building, Bush has not abandoned nation-building in Kosovo and Macedonia. He has kept the United States engaged in the Balkans and as a result, European apprehensions about the new administration’s approach to NATO have eased considerably. In July 2001 as Western governments felt the pressure to mediate a settlement between the Albanian insurgents in Macedonia and the Slav majority, Bush said: “The cooperation of the United States, NATO and the EU in Macedonia is a model that we can build on in the future …We will not draw down our forces in Bosnia or Kosovo precipitously or unilaterally. We came in together and we will go out together.” But he stayed in by providing intelligence and logistics, not by having U.S. troops in Macedonia.

Fortunately for the Bush team, elections in Israel provided them some time before having to step into that complex fray. Moreover, having observed Chairman Arafat reject the most generous offer of peace ever tabled by Israel, the Bush administration was not about to go against the public mood in Israel by pushing Ariel Sharon even further than Clinton had pushed Ehud Barak. The collision-forced landing of an American reconnaissance plane off the coast of China created a good deal of bilateral tension. However, the Chinese were careful not to mistreat the U.S. crew and were able to make their point of protest without escalating the conflict. Bush used strong words, but never acted rashly.

The Bush administration knew it faced a dilemma in Iraq. Existing policy had stopped working after the UN inspection team had been evicted, and sooner or later the United States would have to deal with Iraq’s production of weapons of mass destruction. Shortly after striking against Iraqi air defense targets on February 16, 2001, Colin Powell revealed a set of proposals for “smart sanctions.” The plan was to ease restrictions on civilian goods and tighten imports that could have military use. Most likely, the Bush administration would try to rebuild an international consensus to push Hussein away from weapons of mass destruction or out of office.

What changed most dramatically in American foreign policy before September 11 was the tone and orientation of Washington’s relations with Europe. Bush received a good deal of negative Press in Europe in his first months over his handling of the crisis with China, his statements of strong support for Taiwan, his apparent cold shoulder to South Korea’s soft-line rapprochement strategy with North Korea, his bowing out of the Kyoto environmental accords, and his total commitment to missile defence and declared intent to withdraw from the ABM Treaty.

The Bush administration rejected the Kyoto Accord which was received as an insult in Europe. However, a careful look at George W. Bush’s environmental views will show that he has always believed that environmental policy cannot harm economic development and must come as a complementary effect of economic restructuring. Having calculated that Kyoto would have significant economic costs, magnified by the economic downturn which began during the Fall of 2000, Bush made a bold choice rather than muddle through as is so tempting to do in international negotiations. Right or wrong, his choice was clear and the Europeans did not like it. But the general view inside the Bush administration is that European states have a tendency to use multilateral structures such as the United Nations or multilateral negotiation such as Kyoto to shape or curtail American policy. As in the case of missile defence, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld want to make it clear that they intend to set their own agenda, at the risk of being called unilateralists.

September 11 compelled Bush into a ‘war presidency.’ Unlike the Bay of Pigs fiasco during the Kennedy Administration, the attacks on New York and Washington have cemented the already established lines of how national security decisions were made in the Bush White House. Cheney’s central role simply became even more central. While many critical commentators now refrain from calling George W. a ‘smirk’ and a lightweight, the successful handling of the response to the attacks is not only due to the decisive style of George W., but also due to the quality of his advisers and the structure of the decision making process.

The new Office of Homeland Security, headed by the former governor of Pennsylvania and close friend of George W. Bush is the first new cabinet-level position since 1989. Like Cheney and Rice, Ridge also enjoys wide-open access to the President. After September 11, both Ridge and Attorney-General John Ashcroft have joined the almost daily NSC meetings. In conjunction, the ‘Domestic Consequences Policy Committee’ met daily in the fall, and also includes top economic advisers and cabinet secretaries. Earlier, Bush had made FBI Director George Tenet a full member of the cabinet. It is not clear yet whether Ridge’s role will be strictly a coordinating function (of the more than 40 existing agencies and departments involved in national security) with a minimal level of its own bureaucracy (like the National Security Adviser) or whether his new office will become a new department. In the latter view, several existing agencies would be rolled into a single homeland agency. Given the Congressional oversight that comes with having a department, the Bush adminstration will try to stay away from that option in order to keep maximum maneuverability.

The strategic objectives, which may eventually be called the Bush Doctrine, have subjugated all other foreign policy objectives to second tier, with the exception of missile defense. They reflect clear priorities: finish off the Al Qaeda network, prevent and pre-empt and follow-on groups from forming, and “compel” regimes that are developing weapons of mass destruction and may be friendly to terrorist activities to choose “between conflict or cooperation.” A likely casualty of the September 11 aftermath is robust military reform as the Pentagon’s requests for across-the-board increases cannot easily be turned down by Congress in these circumstances.


Conclusion

“For by wise counsel thou shalt make thy war: and in the multitude of counsellors there is safety.” (Proverbs 24: 6)


Bush has both wise counsel and many advisers with direct access. He has assembled “one of the most impressive foreign policy teams in living memory.” Bush’s key challenge will be to avert either open conflict among or to lose their joint creativity. Reagan was much better served by the Troika composed of James Baker, Edwin Meese, and Mike Deaver, than by his possessive Chief of Staff, Donald Regan. While Bush insists on loyalty and no one upstaging him, Bush is not immune to dangerous policy fissures among his advisers and the harmful effects of ‘bureaucratic politics.’ Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld all are “undoctrinaire, unflamboyant, and experienced at managing big organizations.” Yet, on almost all major issues, Secretary of State Colin Powell has been the voice of caution, negotiation and possibly compromise. About policy toward North Korea, Powell said at first that he “hoped to pick up where President Clinton …left off.” In his early Middle East trip, Powell also emphasized the shifting of sanctions to relieve Iraqi civilian suffering, while Cheney and others have emphasized getting rid of Hussein. All of this may simply be a function of dividing executive responsibility and sending several messages at the same time.

While this goes with the job of being Secretary of State, Powell’s line is often distinctly softer than Rumsfeld’s or Rice’s. It is likely that Cheney helps achieve a common position at the end of the day, but this may not preclude Bush from having to choose between Powell and Rice or Powell and Rumsfeld. On some issues, Rice appears more conservative and ‘hawkish’ than Powell. It will be crucial for Rice to remain in the background in order to manage potential policy divergence between these strong advisers so that Bush does not end up with two foreign policy spokespersons or two chief diplomats. If Bush must begin to arbitrate policy disputes between a highly popular Powell and his close mentor Rice, or between the political strategy camp led by Karl Rove and the policy camp led by Cheney, the risk of bureaucratic politics, back-channels, and incoherent policy will be high.



Endnotes