Richard Armitage sums up U.S. foreign policy--and reveals something else

Disappointments and what to do now

Richard Armitage was Deputy Secretary of State during Bush's first term. Now he, along with Colin Powell, are out. As he was preparing to leave office, Armitage gave an interview to an Australian reporter, Greg Sheridan. Sheridan wrote about that interview in a January 20, 2005, article entitled "Reflections of a straight shooter."

Sheridan noted that "With his best friend and boss Colin Powell, Armitage, according to Bob Woodward's account of the period leading up to the war in Iraq, was the member of the Bush administration who urged the greatest caution in going in to Iraq, though he certainly wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein." We all know that caution is not exactly what we exercised in regards to Iraq. Remember this, for I will be raising this point again.

In the interview, Armitage listed his three disappointments. The first two are:

1. "I'm disappointed that Iraq hasn't turned out better."
2. "And that we weren't able to move forward more meaningfully in the Middle East peace process."

These are significant concessions, but Armitage's third disappointment is to me the most important:

3. "The biggest regret is that we didn't stop 9/11. And then in the wake of 9/11, instead of redoubling what is our traditional export of hope and optimism we exported our fear and our anger. And presented a very intense and angry face to the world. I regret that a lot."

Here we have the second-highest ranking diplomat in the country--a man who is in a prime position to know what we are exporting in terms of our foreign policy, and he says that under Bush we exported fear and anger. More than that, he notes that these exports are antithetical to what the world traditionally has expected from America. I have mentioned before that my sister lived in Spain for five years and traveled throughout Europe. During that time, she concluded that Americans are the most optimistic people in the world. More than one person told her in effect that America was the hope for the world, and that is why the Iraq war bothered them. One British man who had lived all over the world told her that America was the shining example that gave hope to people everywhere. And yet with how we handled the entire Iraq situation, he saw old patterns that Europe has known all too well, and he said to my sister, "If America cannot get it right, there is no hope for the rest of us." That is the perception produced by exporting fear and anger.

Armitage also talked about U.S. efforts in the tsunami relief effort, citing it as an example of how America has been viewed traditionally.

Still, he acknowledges that the response to the tsunami presents the US in its traditional and authentic guise of offering hope. That is true, he says, both of the Government response "and in terms of private donations, which are quite high here. That's a source of satisfaction because that's the country that I know and that I want to serve, not the one that presents an angry face to the world. I don't look on the world as a dark place to be feared. I look at it as a place that can be warm, that can be embracing, and that can raise the level of all. I think that's our job in the world."

Will we continue to do such things? I certainly hope so. However, our actions in Iraq have for many people around the world come across as hypocritical, and there has been a breaking of trust. Please keep in mind that how the Bush administration's actions are viewed in this country is largely irrelevant to my point. Whether or not those actions are right, wrong, justified, or unjustified is largely irrelevant to my point. The point rests on how those actions are perceived by the rest of the world. We can restore the trust I speak of, but trust, once broken, is difficult to restore. I hope that Bush will work hard in that regard; however, I have yet to see anything that gives me significant hope. The recent elections in Iraq provide some hope, but we have a long way to go. (See Some quick thoughts on the Iraqi election and Two more commentaries on the Iraqi election.)

The Pentagon's primacy in foreign affairs

There is another truth in Armitage's words that might not be readily apparent. That point is that America's foreign policy--especially concerning Iraq--has been determined by the Department of Defense, not the State Department (which is supposed to control foreign policy). As I have said before, Iraq has been a DoD show all along. A big part of the reason "Iraq hasn't turned out better" is the horrific lack of planning for the occupation and reconstruction, and DoD was put in charge of that effort. As I pointed out in Franks on planning for the post-war period, the agency initially responsible for the post-war period was the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (OHRA), which was a part of DoD.

The extent of DoD control is seen in James Fallows's "Blind Into Baghdad." Fallows described the work that the State Department did starting a year before the war to plan for the post-war period. That effort was The Future of Iraq Project, and although it was not perfect by any means, Fallows wrote this:

But whatever may have been unrealistic or factional about these efforts, even more of what the project created was impressive. The final report consisted of thirteen volumes of recommendations on specific topics, plus a one-volume summary and overview. These I have read—and I read them several months into the occupation, when it was unfairly easy to judge how well the forecast was standing up. (Several hundred of the 2,500 pages were in Arabic, which sped up the reading process.) The report was labeled "For Official Use Only"—an administrative term that implies confidentiality but has no legal significance. The State Department held the report closely until, last fall, it agreed to congressional requests to turn over the findings.

Most of the project's judgments look good in retrospect—and virtually all reveal a touching earnestness about working out the details of reconstructing a society.

All this work was basically rejected by the Defense Department. Retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner was put in charge of ORHA. His problems with DoD were documented by Fallows:

Garner was also affected by tension between OSD and the rest of the government. Garner had heard about the Future of Iraq project, although Rumsfeld had told him not to waste his time reading it. Nonetheless, he decided to bring its director, Thomas Warrick, onto his planning team. Garner, who clearly does not intend to be the fall guy for postwar problems in Baghdad, told me last fall that Rumsfeld had asked him to kick Warrick off his staff. In an interview with the BBC last November (2003), Garner confirmed details of the firing that had earlier been published in Newsweek. According to Garner, Rumsfeld asked him, "Jay, have you got a guy named Warrick on your team?" "I said, 'Yes, I do.' He said, 'Well, I've got to ask you to remove him.' I said, 'I don't want to remove him; he's too valuable.' But he said, 'This came to me from such a high level that I can't overturn it, and I've just got to ask you to remove Mr. Warrick.'" Newsweek's conclusion was that the man giving the instructions was Vice President Cheney.

You can find the BBC interview here.

Clearly, Armitage wanted a better post-war operation, as did the rest of the State Department. That is why The Future of Iraq Project was formed and worked for a year. Just as clearly, Armitage did not want the Iraq situation to show that America was acting out of fear and anger and trying to get other countries to be fearful, and yet that is exactly what has happened. As the former #2 man at State and a very close friend of the former #1 man, a reasonable assumption is that Armitage expressed the views of the State Department as a whole. The fact that a very different approach prevailed indicates that the State Department was never calling the shots.

As I discussed in Rice's "Welcome remarks" in light of Bush's press conference, I think it is unlikely that the State Department will ever be allowed to have control of foreign policy in Bush's second term. Instead, I believe State will simply be required to implement the policy set by the Pentagon. I really hope I am wrong.