With Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice having two years under her belt, now’s a good time to step back and consider her overall job performance. David Millikin makes the case that Rice has “few diplomatic successes to show for her efforts and fewer signs she plans to change course to improve the record.”
The violence in Iraq, and the Bush administration’s refusal to bring rivals Syria and Iran into efforts to stabilize the country, are widely blamed for the broader failure of US policy in the Middle East — where Lebanon teeters on the brink of civil war and Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts languish.
Elsewhere, Rice’s globe-trotting — 37 overseas trips totalling nearly 500,000 miles — has yielded little concrete success, with her few diplomatic victories clouded by poor or no follow-up. […]
“I don’t know that there have been concrete advances” under Rice’s diplomacy, said Joshua Muravchik of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, though he nevertheless went on to give her “high grades” for faithfully implementing Bush’s policy agenda.
The article paints a discouraging picture for the nation’s top diplomat. But are her setbacks and shortcomings her fault, or those of her boss? Millikin explained rather bluntly that “U.S. foreign policy experts said Rice must shoulder much of the blame for the lackluster diplomacy.”
“Great secretaries of state have compelling views of the world and/or are effective negotiators — Secretary Rice has so far demonstrated neither,” said Aaron Miller, who advised six secretaries of state before joining the Woodrow Wilson Center think tank in Washington.
I’m just not sure if that’s right.
It seems to me that being the nation’s top diplomat and “faithfully implementing” the president’s agenda is practically an impossible job — the responsibilities are often incompatible and contradictory.
For that matter, while I hardly consider myself a Rice backer (I’m generally stunned by mendacity and misplaced priorities), I can appreciate the fact that the administration is so dysfunctional, Rice hasn’t had a lot of opportunities for success. Donald Rumsfeld wouldn’t even return her phone calls, for crying out loud.
For that matter, consider this recent anecdote:
Consider a story in the latest Time magazine, recounting the efforts — before the [Iraq Study Group] was approved by Congress — of three supporters to enlist Condoleezza Rice to win the administration’s approval for the panel. Here is how Time reports it:
“As the trio departed, a Rice aide asked one of her suitors not to inform anyone at the Pentagon that chairmen had been chosen and the study group was moving forward. If Rumsfeld was alerted to the study group’s potential impact, the aide said, he would quickly tell Cheney, who could, with a few words, scuttle the whole thing. Rice got through to Bush the next day, arguing that the thing was going to happen anyway, so he might as well get on board. To his credit, the President agreed.”
The article treats this exchange in a matter-of-fact way, but, what it suggests is completely horrifying. Rice apparently believed that Bush would simply follow the advice of whoever he spoke with. Therefore the one factor determining whether Bush would support the commission was whether Cheney or Rice managed to get to him first.
Sure, Rice hasn’t had any successes to speak of, but given her superiors, should this come as a surprise to anyone?