Ehsan Ahrari
When 500-pound gorillas fight
Thu Oct 16 16:50:40 2003
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When 500-pound gorillas fight
By Ehsan Ahrari

The sudden primacy of President George W Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza "Condy" Rice, as the person in charge of a newly formulated "Iraq Stabilization Group", which is responsible for overseeing the reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, is causing considerable controversy. Rice herself does not seem to be comfortable with her newly acquired visibility, a development that is not in harmony with her own vision of her role. That may not turn out to be a welcome development for the success of a policy whose effective implementation, even without this controversy, faces enormous odds.



When Bush picked Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld to become secretaries of state and defense, respectively, he indeed selected two heavyweights to conduct the national security policy of his administration. The clash between these two 500-pound guerillas was expected; it goes with the turf. Bush also chose Condy Rice to be his national security adviser. She may not have been of the same caliber as Powell and Rumsfeld in the realm of national security affairs, however, because of her close ties with Bush, she was expected to play an important role. In the American national decision making system, the chief strength of a national security adviser always stemmed from his or her personal relationship with the president, since he looks at that person for candid recommendations and advice on some of the most contentious but heady issues of his tenure. Almost all powerful national security advisers came to the job with a long tenure of personal friendship with the president.

Two "models" of the role of a national security adviser stand out. The first one is about what the job entails: coordinating inputs from various agencies and forwarding them to the president with recommendations for his decision, and making sure that other national security agencies are properly implementing the presidential preferences and objectives related to all major policy issues.

Henry Kissinger established the second model of the role of national security adviser during the administration of former president Richard M Nixon. In the "Kissingerian" model, the adviser remains a visible advocate of policy options. He often rode roughly over other agency players in order to make sure that his perspectives remained inordinately visible, compared to those of others. Obviously, this model assigns undue primacy to the national security adviser, however, the very existence of that primacy depends on the wishes of the president.

The Kissingerian model may be viewed as sui generis because of Nixon's Watergate-related troubles. When he was bogged down by that scandal, Kissinger became more important than he would have been otherwise. After all, foreign policy was definitely a forte of Nixon's when Kissinger entered.

It was assumed that only another national security adviser of the professional stature of Kissinger might become that powerful again. Zbigniew Brzezinski came pretty close to emulating the Kissingerian model in his role as the national security adviser to former president Jimmy Carter. The operating force even in that instance was the close mutual rapport between Carter and Brzezinski going back to the former's involvement in the Trilateral Commission - a non-governmental policy-oriented discussion group formed in 1973 by private citizens of Japan, European Union countries and North America to foster closer cooperation with shared leadership responsibilities - when he was governor of the state of Georgia. Brzezinski also brought to his job a professional reputation similar to that of Kissinger.

Rice's professional credentials are no match to Kissinger or Brzezinski. However, she has the personal confidence of Bush. But Rice's vision of her role is not like that of either Kissinger or Brzezinski, nor did she bring to her job the mega-egos of her two predecessors. Her preference has been to play the role of a policy coordinator. Rice's approach to her job also suited the larger-than-life egos of Powell and Rumsfeld, who often strongly disagreed on the conduct of US national security policy.

During the US military campaign in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld did play a significant role. But as Bob Woodward describes in his book, Bush At War, the major credit of creating a potent warfighting strategy that resulted in the dismantlement of the Taliban regime goes to Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet. That strategy combined the use of special forces with air power to supplant ground attacks of the Northern Alliance on the Taliban forces. It seems that Rumsfeld did not want to be outshone by any other agency player next time around. So he and his department played a central role in creating the warfighting strategy during the Iraqi military campaign.

The US invasion of Iraq, unlike the Afghan campaign, revolved around the use of conventional military forces. Even though special forces did play an important role in that operation in the northern and western parts of Iraq, the ground forces carried the brunt of the battle that toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein. In fact, Rumsfeld 's decision to use lighter forces in Iraq - a decision that all off-the-record sources alluded to the secretary of defense, but he himself gave credit for that strategy to General Tommy Franks, Commander of the Central Command - did come under heavy criticism from a number of retired US general officers.

The US Department of Defense came under heavy censure during "phase four", aka the post-conflict phase, of the Iraqi campaign. The acute looting of Iraqi cities, while the US forces either looked away or remained focused on guarding oil fields, created an environment of bitter resentment among the Iraqis. The US occupation forces could never reestablish a large reservoir of goodwill in that country since then. The saboteurs, pro-Saddam forces, and even alleged Islamic forces from other Middle Eastern countries, seem to be making sure that the anti-US feelings in Iraq do not subside. Thus, while the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority, under the administrative leadership of L Paul Bremer, is attempting to rebuild Iraq, the anti-US forces are busy destroying the infrastructure, conducting a campaign of terror against US forces, and against those Iraqis who are cooperating with the US.

As the security situation continued to deteriorate in Iraq, Bush finally decided, towards the end of September, to bring about a major change in the bureaucratic leadership that is in charge of rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan. Now the new entity, the Iraq Stabilization Group, is under the leadership of Rice.

Rice is currently faced with two intricate challenges. First, the rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan is challenging enough by itself and is full of numerous landmines that threaten to blow up without any advance notice. Taliban and al-Qaeda forces are regrouping in Afghanistan. Some Afghan warlords have also resumed the age-old internecine warfare that threatens to further corrode the already weak authority of leader Hamid Karzai. On October 14, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed a resolution expanding the 5,500-strong North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led force in Afghanistan to areas beyond the capital. Even though this is a major victory for the Karzai government, one has to reserve judgment whether it would indeed enhance the stability of Afghanistan.

At the same time, the security situation in Iraq seems to be getting more complicated with the impending insertion of Turkish peacekeeping forces. The Turkish embassy in Baghdad has already come under a terrorist attack, on October 15. Despite the endeavors of the Bush administration to garner the support of other countries to widen the presence of multinational peacekeeping forces in Iraq, the outcome is far from satisfactory. The trouble is, Washington wants the international community to help out in Iraq, but is not willing to offer concessions either in terms of handing over a major share of governing authority to the UN, or transferring sovereignty to the Iraqi Governing Council. Some major breakthroughs are vital on these issues before the impending conference of the donors countries for Iraq in Madrid towards the end of the month. Rice has to remain fully focused to ensure progress on all these heady issues.

The second challenge for Rice is that she must continue to massage the egos of Rumsfeld and Powell and make sure that the frequency or intensity of interagency squabbles does not result in bureaucratic inertia for which Washington is legendary. Such inertia emerges when a major policy is not going well for a sitting president. And now it seems to be just that time for Bush, involving Iraq and Afghanistan. He is quite conscious of that reality, and is very much on the offensive to ensure that the American public is hearing his side of the story: That considerable progress is being made in Iraq.

Rice is also doing her bit to divert the attention of the media by stating that she will continue her role as a policy coordinator. The sad part about these ongoing interagency battles is that the important business of rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan is likely to be lost, especially if security situations in both those countries continue to deteriorate. As former president John F Kennedy observed many decades ago in the context of the "blame game" - another idiosyncrasy of Washington - "Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan." In the wake of the continued worsening of the internal affairs of Iraq and Afghanistan, Rice will get the lion's share of the blame. She is already coming under heavy fire for the "dysfunctional" nature of the functioning of the National Security Council under her leadership.

Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.

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