Rice Has Over-dosed On The Kool Aid

By Janine Zacharia

Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush, riding high after his re-election two years ago, tapped his confidante and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to chart an ambitious, second-term foreign policy as secretary of state.

In February 2005, Rice, already the star of the Bush cabinet, described for reporters on her maiden cross-Atlantic trip as secretary ``the tremendous opportunities ahead of us,'' including spreading ``freedom and liberty to places they've never been.''

Two years later, few of those goals have been realized. Iraq, and possibly Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, are sliding into civil war, Iran is pursuing its nuclear ambitions unchecked, Russia is ignoring demands for political and economic openness, and China is building ties with U.S. adversaries.

Rice's public approval rating is slipping, and she is getting more of the flak for the prosecution of the Iraq war than ever before.

`Condi is seen as being the loyal implementer of the president's policy priorities, and as a result she's getting the same kind of treatment as her boss,'' said Lee Feinstein, a former State Department policy planner now at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

Last month, that new criticism was evident as Rice was pummeled in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee while trying to sell Bush's troop-increase plan for Iraq. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, even questioned whether Rice, 52, was capable of a wise decision in Iraq because she is childless and won't suffer a personal loss.

Iraq Hearings

The Jan. 11 hearing marked a shift for Rice, who had avoided the blame heaped on former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials for the deterioration of security in Iraq.

Criticism from lawmakers contrasted with adulation she received at the start of her tenure. In the first trip abroad, the spike-heeled, black boots Rice wore triggered a burst of camera flashes in Germany. A grassroots movement emerged to persuade her to seek the presidency in 2008. Rice has said she won't seek the office.

Rice defends the administration against criticism of its diplomacy, citing agreements such as a deal to provide India with civilian nuclear power technology, and efforts to insert U.S. diplomats deep into trouble spots like Sudan in what she's coined ``transformational diplomacy.''

`Awfully Impatient'

Rice, with all the Iraq criticism, regularly defends the decision to invade, saying the Iraqi people are better off without a dictator like Saddam Hussein. She told the New York Times last month that critics are sometimes ``awfully impatient'' with an Iraqi government that has been in power for only nine months.

When asked by Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, what she has done ``personally'' to deal with the crisis in Iraq, Rice said at the Jan. 11 Senate hearing that she had been pressing Arab states and the European Union to help.

She has shown an aptitude to snap into action in moments of crisis. Five days after North Korea detonated a nuclear device in October, the United Nations passed a resolution barring weapons sales to the reclusive nation after Rice helped win Chinese backing for the measure.

Still, throughout Washington, criticism of Rice stretches beyond Iraq to other policy areas and to her management skills. Senator George Voinovich, an Ohio Republican, said at a Jan. 30 Senate hearing for her incoming deputy, John Negroponte, that the State Department was ``hemorrhaging'' and drew an unfavorable comparison between Rice and her more popular predecessor, Colin Powell.

`Terrific Manager'

"She's actually a terrific manager,'' Rice's spokesman, Sean McCormack, said in an interview. "You'll find State Department morale is actually very high.''

There has been an exodus of high-level officials. Among the most prominent departures was Robert Zoellick, who resigned as deputy secretary of state in June. Rice's counselor, Philip Zelikow, who provided many of the ideas on North Korea, returned to academia, and her communications strategist, Jim Wilkinson, left for the Treasury Department.

Robert Joseph, undersecretary for arms control and international security, and John Hillen, the assistant secretary for political-military affairs who was just starting a Persian Gulf security initiative, also have quit. Neither publicly gave a reason for leaving.

In areas beyond Iraq, Rice has struggled to achieve foreign- policy objectives.

Iran, Sudan

She was forced to accept a watered-down resolution on Iran's nuclear program in the UN Security Council after Russia balked at tougher sanctions. The resolution has failed to persuade President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to stop the uranium enrichment that the U.S. suspects is a step toward a nuclear bomb.

In Africa, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir defies the diplomatic community by preventing a full UN force from patrolling Darfur. In Latin America, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is spreading his version of anti-American populism to Bolivia and beyond.

Rice also should be paying more attention to China and its growing economic and military clout, policy analysts say.

"More intensive and coordinated, senior level, State Department engagement with China would bring benefits that we're not seeing now,'' said Bates Gill, a China scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Soviet Scholar

Rice, a scholar of the former Soviet Union, is facing a Russia more resistant to U.S. policies. The U.S. has failed to thwart the rollback of democratic change carried out by President Vladimir Putin, win his full cooperation on Iran, or overcome concerns that Russia is using its oil and natural gas exports as a political tool.

Bush's nominee to run U.S. intelligence efforts, retired Navy Vice Admiral Michael McConnell, told a Senate hearing last week that he would focus more attention on Russia, because he is "troubled'' by some trends there.

It is now in the most unlikely of diplomatic arenas that Rice, with only two years to go, is looking for a victory -- the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She is weighing the readiness of each side to accept the parameters of a final peace, her aides say, trying to do what President Bill Clinton could not even as he devoted much of the last year of his presidency to the effort.

Rice will broker a three-way meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Feb. 19. ``It's time to deal with this problem,'' Rice said in a Jan. 25 interview with France-3 TV in Paris.

Allies and Influence

With the U.S. depending on Arab allies for help in Iraq, and those same allies clamoring for U.S. attention to peace efforts, "she is now putting the issue of Palestine on a higher priority because it fits in the new strategy in the region,'' said Ziad Asali, president of the American Task Force in Palestine, a Washington-based advocacy group.

Even if Rice scores a breakthrough, she will remain burdened by Iraq, her aides acknowledge.
"She's part of the Iraq policymaking,'' McCormack said. ``There's a lot of skepticism that's out there.''

"She doesn't take that personally,'' he said. ``It's part of her job.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Janine Zacharia in Washington at jzacharia@bloomberg.net or


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