[A-List] US state: Powell victory?

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Powell leads 'realist' counterattack
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, November 14 2002

WASHINGTON - After three months of infighting, it appears that Secretary of
State Colin Powell, who was largely marginalized by Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney after the September 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks, has clawed his way back into contention.

Last Friday's unanimous approval by the UN Security Council of a new arms
inspection resolution for Iraq that omitted provisions authorizing
Washington to take unilateral military action marked a clear comeback for
the beleaguered Powell and his fellow realists in the administration of
President George W Bush.

Powell allies include professionals in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
and much of the Pentagon's uniformed brass, whose relations with Rumsfeld
and his neo-conservative aides - never very good - have reportedly declined
markedly in recent months.

Powell backers outside the administration, notably men closely associated
with Bush's father, George H W - not to mention the former president
himself - also appear to have played key roles in reducing the influence of
the unilateralists in the Pentagon and Cheney's office.

The realists' advance is not confined to the UN resolution on Iraq. They
also appear to have scored at least tentative victories in other areas, most
notably on North Korea and, to a somewhat less clear extent, on China, with
which Rumsfeld grudgingly resumed high-level military exchanges this past
week after an 18-month hiatus.

On North Korea, the administration has not only committed itself to pursuing
a multilateral response, based on consultation with North Korea's neighbors,
to Pyongyang's declaration that it is developing nuclear weapons. It has
also, reportedly under orders from the president himself, declined to
declare the 1994 US-North Korean Framework Agreement dead, as administration
and Congressional hawks have long demanded.

But the battle for control of Bush foreign policy is far from over, and
Powell's victories may prove fleeting. Bush has made clear that he does not
believe Iraqi President Saddam Hussein will comply with the terms of the
Security Council resolution, even if he accepts them on paper.

And while insisting that he prefers a peaceful resolution to the disarmament
question and has reduced his public references to "regime change" in Iraq,
Bush has already approved a military plan for invading the country and will
seize just about any non-compliance as a pretext for launching an attack,
possibly without seeking another resolution from the Security Council.

But the fact that Bush yielded to Powell's arguments in September to ask the
Security Council for a new resolution on inspections and then agreed to
compromise on several key elements after eight weeks of debate marked a
signal defeat for the hawks.

As noted in this week's Weekly Standard by neo-conservatives William Kristol
and Robert Kagan - who are particularly close to Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz - "... it is impossible to ignore the fact that the weeks of
negotiations carried out by the State Department have eroded the president's
position, not terminally, but worryingly".

"Indeed, one of the most disturbing features of the current process is the
extent to which it takes control of American foreign policy out of President
Bush's hands and puts it in the hands of people who, to put it mildly, have
no interest in furthering President Bush's goal of regime change in Iraq",
argued the two neo-cons in a lengthy lead editorial entitled "The UN Trap?"

Powell's apparent comeback is remarkable. By early last August, he appeared
to be on the ropes, with many analysts suggesting that he had become no more
than a multilateral fig leaf for the most unilateralist and belligerent
administration in the past century. The former general had lost battle after
battle in internal debates since September 11 - from the administration's
withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia and the new
International Criminal Court to its backing for Israeli demands that
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat be ousted from power.

"What is the point of fighting on, unless you occasionally win?" asked
Philip Gordon, a Powell supporter at the Brookings Institutions on July 31.
By the end of August, Rumsfeld and Cheney were publicly ridiculing Powell's
notion of going to the Security Council for a new round of arms inspections
as dangerous and a waste of time. But it now appears that the two men were
speaking less from confidence that they were winning than in defense of
their position against a furious campaign by Powell's champions, especially
those around Bush's father.

One by one, Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger, and retired
general Norman Schwarzkopf - the elder Bush's national security adviser, two
former secretaries of state and a Gulf War commander, respectively - argued
publicly that the younger Bush must go through the Security Council for a
new round of inspections. The elder Bush, while refusing to speak on Iraq
policy, offered harsh criticism of (neo-conservative) efforts to depict
Saudi Arabia as a sponsor of terrorism.

Meanwhile, dissident intelligence analysts and military commanders became
increasingly bold in leaking information designed to embarrass the hawks.
Detailed plans for an offensive against Iraq were disclosed amid suggestions
that the civilians were not heeding the military's concerns, while a number
of unidentified intelligence sources repeatedly refuted the administration's
claims that Saddam Hussein was linked to al-Qaeda.

At the same time, not-so-subtle attacks were launched against Richard Perle,
who, as chairman of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board and the top
foreign-policy figure at the neo-conservative think tank the American
Enterprise Institute, has been perhaps the foremost exponent of both the
alleged Iraq-al-Qaeda connection and war against Baghdad.

Senator Chuck Hagel, a Powell ally and 30-year Washington veteran whose
influence and network among hawks both in and out of the administration is
unmatched, called for Perle to lead the first wave of attacks on Baghdad, in
remarks that provoked a flood of commentary about "chicken hawks" -
right-wing officials and commentators who favor war but avoided military
service themselves.

The neo-conservatives are still smarting from the August events. Kristol and
Kagan lamented that last week's Security Council resolution resulted from
"the late-summer onslaught against removing Saddam", while Danielle Pletka,
who works with Perle, described the latest events as "the policy of Bush I
vs Bush II".