[A-List] US imperialism: policy continuities

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

Shultz still holds sway in halls of power
By James Harding
Financial Times: November 21 2002

When George Shultz addressed the UN general assembly in 1982, the newly
sworn-in US Secretary of State set out what he saw as the three fundamental
elements of American foreign policy: realism, strength and diplomacy - in
that order.

The Bush administration has seemingly followed his prescription in the past
two months.

First it published a National Security Strategy setting out in stark terms
the shadowy terrorist networks and rogue tyrants it sees threatening the US,
as well as Washington's willingness to unleash its unprecedented military
power, pre-emptively, to neutralize them.

Then it sent aircraft carriers and special forces to the Gulf, as well as
relocated 600 staff from General Tommy Franks' central command in Florida to
sit on Saddam Hussein's doorstep.

Finally, the White House naviagated through the reefs of the UN to secure a
forceful resolution returning weapons inspectors to Iraq.

All of this smacks of Mr Shultz's old trinity -- and it should come as no
surprise. The principals of the Bush government - including the president -
have been schooled by the 81-year-old.

So when the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq was launched quietly last
week to press the case for the removal of Mr Hussein and a strong commitment
to rebuilding the country after his fall, the prominent involvement of Mr
Shultz suggested that the Committee is more than just another Washington
lobbying outfit.

"A committee like this gets a lot of impetus from the White House," says Mr
Shultz, suggesting that the Committee's purpose is to serve as a public
outlet for some of the more private thinking within the hawkish realms of
the administration. "It is an outside group which can be briefed and sound
off."

Even as the White House publicly backs the UN weapons inspections process
and the possibility of peaceful disarmament, the Committee is designed to
ensure that the US does not weaken its resolve to remove Saddam Hussein.

"We all know how equivocal the UN security council can be and how people
don't like to face up to something tough," says Mr Shultz. He adds that Mr
Hussein - "a menace to world peace" - is already teetering on a material
breach of the UN resolution. Having claimed that Iraq possesses no weapons
of mass destruction, any discovery or admission of biological, chemical or
nuclear weapons could serve as a trigger for "serious consequences".

Most likely, concludes Mr Shultz, "there will be military action? I would be
surprised if we have not acted by the end of January."

The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq - which has a bipartsan membership
including former House speaker Newt Gingrich, the Teamsters leader James
Hoffa as well as Senators John McCain, a Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, a
Democrat - is eager to see the US maintain a long-term commitment to the
reconstruction of Iraq's political and military institutions.

Sitting in his sunny corner office at the Hoover Institution, the walls
lined with photographs and cartoons from a career of public service
stretching from the Eisenhower administration to the George W. Bush
presidential campaign, Mr Shultz is ultimately optimistic about regime
change.

In the Reagan years, he recalls, "they said the same about Asia as they are
now saying about the Muslim world", only to witness new governments ushered
in, from Taiwan to the Philippines.

Iraq, he points out, is a "much more secular country" than some of its
neighbours. Turkey, a secular state, has just voted in an Islamic government
without triggering the interference of the military.

The Iraqis, he says, "look over their shoulder" at elections in Bahrain and
Qatar. "It is not a monolithic world out there." Such optimism is precisely
the thinking which has informed the Bush administration's stated aim of
spreading "modern and moderate government, particularly in the Muslim
world".

There are many supposed godfathers of the Bush administration. George W. is
seen by many as the 'mini-me' of his father, President George H.W. Bush,
even if he may be temperamentally closer to his mother. The cabinet is often
described as a reunion of the alumni of President Gerald Ford's
administration, even if it would rather drape itself in Reagan's colours.

Mr Shultz makes no such claims to influence. His views, he says, are
informed only by what he reads in the papers and sees on television. As a
Hoover fellow, he can offer academic opinions - for example, on NATO.

When asked whether the world still needs the Alliance, he says: "Maybe we
don't." But, he cautions against any hasty move which forgets history: "You
guys [ the Europeans] got two massive wars going and we tried to stay out of
them, but we could not and we wound up with a lot of Americans killed. A lot
of blood and treasure lost? Nato is a response to that. A pre-emptive strike
for peace."

His underlying suspicion, though, is that Europe will not have the resources
or the appetite for military action further afield. As populations fall in
several European countries and European citizens enjoy comfortable
lifestyles, Mr Shultz says: "If there is a problem somewhere which means
sacrifices in terms of manpower and resources," then Europeans are going to
ask: "Why?" Demography, he says, is one reason for the US and Europe to keep
drifting apart: "Europe wants to have its own military force, it says. I
don't see any way that can happen."

Mr Shultz acknowledges that he remains very close to the Bush cabinet: "They
are all very close friends of mine," he says.

Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and Dick Cheney, the vice president,
reported to Mr Shultz when he was President Richard Nixon's Treasury
Secretary. Paul O'Neill, now the Treasury Secretary, worked for Mr Shultz
when he was director of the Office of Management and Budget. Colin Powell,
the Secretary of State, worked at the National Security Council across from
Mr Shultz when he was President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State.

When candidate Bush was out in northern California ahead of the 2000
presidential election campaign, Mr Shultz hosted a day of policy
brain-storming at his home. It was, Mr Shultz recalls, the occasion of the
first substantive conversation between Mr Bush and Condoleezza Rice, then a
fellow academic at the Hoover Institution and now Mr Bush's National
Security Adviser.

Given Mr Shultz's close ties to the top figures in the administration, his
opinions have been treated as tracer fire, illuminating the direction of
White House thinking.

After a summer of editorials from former Republican foreign policy
mandarins, Mr Shultz published an Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post two
months ago which seemed to draw a line under the debate. "Are we to be the
Hamlet of nations, debating endlessly over when and how to act?" he asked
and went on to call for the removal of Mr Hussein and a multilateral effort
to rebuild Iraq.

Not that Mr Shultz has any qualms about the evident wrangling within the
administration. Referring to the apparent arguments between Messrs Cheney
and Rumsfeld on the one hand and Mr Powell on the other over the merits of
multilateralism, weapons inspectors and military action in Iraq, Mr Shultz
says: "This crowd has shown that they argue. But, when the president steps
up and makes a decision, they salute and go."

If there is more than a faint hint in the Bush administration of the turf
wars of the Reagan years between the Secretary of State and the then defence
secretary Caspar Weinberger, Mr Shultz chooses to point out which side he
was on: "When I was in office, I was the one who was pounding the table and
saying terrorism is a menace and we have to be able to use our forces."

The advantage of robust argument around the cabinet table, he says, is an
administration which is feeling its way towards a new reality. "One of the
things that happened in the 1990s is the world played a game of illusion.
People did not say what was really so. They said what they would like to be
so," he says.

"One of the things the administration may be doing is that they are trying
to state the reality as they see it - even if the reality is unpleasant."