White House Re-election Plan: Clip Wings Of Neo-con Hawks

by Jim Lobe

Although internal fights within the administration on issues such as Syria, Iran and North Korea remain fierce, there are growing indications that the influence of the hawks, the 'Likkudite' neo-conservatives in particular, is on the wane.

Key foreign-policy figures are mounting almost daily attacks on the neo-cons, as well as hardliners in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office over Iraq and Afghanistan.

While Bush himself still deploys the soaring "we're- bringing- democracy- to- the- Arab- world" rhetoric that has been a neo-conservative trademark for the past 15 months -- most recently in his trip last week to Britain -- the growing consensus here is that the decision to accelerate the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government belies a sharp reduction in those ambitions.

Similarly, the speed with which Washington is trying to recruit former Iraqi soldiers and police -- with only pro-forma training and superficial vetting for past loyalties to the Ba'ath regime of Saddam Hussein -- marks a major departure from the thoroughgoing de-Ba'athification programme that neo-conservatives said was absolutely necessary if democracy was to have a chance in Iraq.

Even some neo-conservatives themselves, such as 'Weekly Standard' Editor William Kristol, have conceded that the new plans suggest the administration is looking for an "exit" strategy, rather than a "victory" strategy.

The apparent dimming of neo-conservative influence is also visible beyond Iraq.

Bush's announcement during his trip to Asia late last month that he was willing to put into writing his verbal commitment that Washington would not attack North Korea marked a significant victory for the realists in the State Department, leading former CIA operative and ambassdor Donald Gregg, a Korea expert close to Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, to declare "the administration's pragmatists are in charge".

Other recent straws in the wind included the abrupt resignation late last month of a major hawk, Assistant Defence Secretary for International Security J.D. Crouch II, and the announcement by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage that Washington intended to resume a dialogue with Iran in the near future, although the latter remains a source of great contention within the administration.

But Washington's quiet agreement this week to not press for a resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that would ask the United Nations Security Council to consider sanctions against Iran for maintaining secrecy about its nuclear program -- in other words, to defer to the advice of France, Germany and Britain -- marked a defeat for the hawks.

Secretary of State Colin Powell also scored another major -- albeit little-noticed win -- in another conflict with the hardliners, including his ultra-unilateralist undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, John Bolton.

The administration decided to waive sanctions against six Central European countries that have refused to sign bilateral treaties that would have barred them from handing over U.S. citizens to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigation or prosecution for crimes against humanity or war crimes.

Bolton, who is close to both the neo-conservatives and Cheney, has been on an 18-month global crusade to punish countries that refuse to sign such agreements, and the administration's waiver, which was also urged by a unanimous Senate Foreign Relations Committee, could undermine his efforts and credibility.

Analysts detect in these moves the growing influence of several officials, not least of whom is Karl Rove, Bush's closest political adviser, who is reported to have warned already in September that there should be "no wars in 2004," advice that makes a lot of sense in view of Bush's precipitous drop in the polls, much of it due to a growing lack of confidence about his Iraq policy.

The fact that only a minority of voters now believe the president's reasons for going to war -- Iraq's alleged ties to al-Qaeda terrorists and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs -- were based on real evidence has clearly undermined the hawks, who were most insistent about the threat Baghdad supposedly posed to the United States.

Similarly, their patent and continuing failure to anticipate the post-Saddam resistance in Iraq has clearly weakened their hand in internal deliberations.

This was clearly signalled by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in early October when she formed the Iraq Stabilization Group (ISG) based in her National Security Council, a move that displeased Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld.

More important was her hiring of former U.S. Ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, who appears to have effectively taken control of Iraq policy and a great deal more at the expense of the hawks.

Blackwill, who was Rice's boss in the first Bush administration, is considered on the right, but with a far more pragmatic temperament than the neo-cons.

The recent announcement that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which is officially controlled by Rumsfeld, is doubling its number of foreign-service officers to 110 -- most of them from the State Department's Near East bureau -- marks a major defeat for the neo-cons, who had vetoed virtually all of the State Department's Arabists for top CPA positions before the occupation due to suspicions that they were too pro-Sunni.

Worse, CPA chief L. Paul Bremer appears to be working directly with Blackwill in the White House, effectively circumventing Rumsfeld and his neo-conservative aides.

According to the 'Washington Post', the two men have a "close relationship" dating back some 30 years. The newspaper quoted one unidentified friend of both who characterised them as "basically conservative ... but focused on national interest and power -- not neoconservatism. They are not ideological dreamers."

Their mutual loss of confidence in the hawks was suggested by Bremer's sudden return to Washington two weeks ago with a pessimistic CIA report, the existence of which was promptly leaked to a reporter in an apparent effort to pressure the White House to accelerate the transition process in Iraq.

Bremer, according to one source, attached a personal endorsement to the report by the CIA -- which is considered as much of a 'bete noire' of the neo-cons as State's Near East bureau -- in what was seen as another slap at the hawks.

In this context, the publication by the Post on Sunday of a comprehensive attack on the hawks' push for unilateral war in Iraq by Powell's former director of policy planning, Richard Haass, also suggests growing confidence on the part of the realists, of which Haass, now president of the ultra-establishment Rockefeller-financed Council on Foreign Relations, is an exemplar.

His column argues that unilateral "wars of choice" -- including Iraq -- can be fought successfully only on two conditions: first, the U.S. public must be "on board ... to the extent of being psychologically prepared for the possible costs;" and second, Washington must "line up international support," lest it be "stretched too thin or go deeply into debt."

Haass, who left the State Department only last summer and served the elder Bush as a top Middle East aide, not only made clear that he felt neither condition had been met in Iraq; but that "American democracy ... does not mix well with empire" and that "the United States is not geared to sustain costly wars of choice."

He depicted the recent decision to speed the transition process as both a politically realistic move that will necessarily fall short of the neo-cons' more ambitious goals.

"Such a mid-course correction in U.S. policy reflects in part the political realities of Iraq ... even more, though, the policy shift reflects political realities at home. Domestic tolerance for costs -- disrupted and lost lives above all -- is not unlimited. As a result, the president is wise to reduce the scale of what we try to accomplish."

Assuming that Haass' analysis about the motives for the White House's change of course in Iraq is correct, it still begs the question of whether it, as well as the administration's softening on North Korea, Iraq and the ICC, represents a major shift in the balance of power in favour of the realists or a mere tactical feint designed to ease growing popular concerns in advance of next year's election.

Neo-conservatives, who have shown uncharacteristic disarray in response to setbacks in Iraq, still insist they have full confidence in Bush to follow their policy advice as part of the global war on terrorism, including in Iraq.

Some even argue that stepped-up "Iraqification" is what they had recommended for years before the invasion, and that the president and Bremer have now come around to those views.

But it is clear that the process now underway bears little relation to their original plans, and the fact that the dreaded Near East bureau and veterans of the Bush I administration appear to be gaining control of Iraq policy suggests their displays of confidence may be unfounded.

Similarly, recent speculation here that Bremer and Blackwill -- rather than Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Cheney's national security chief, I. Lewis Libby -- might inherit the State Department and the national security adviser post, respectively, in any second Bush term adds further evidence to the notion that the neo-cons might be in eclipse.