Rice, Powell Have Separate Styles of Diplomacy

Considering the dismal state of transatlantic relations, Colin L. Powell’s farewell trip to Europe as secretary of State last month drew an impressive outpouring of personal affection as he readied to convey his office to Condoleezza Rice.

Gifts, spontaneous applause and effusive praise from fellow foreign ministers at almost every stop testified to Powell’s renowned personal warmth and the conviction among many Europeans that his views somehow differed from those of his controversial president.

As America’s next top diplomat, Rice is unlikely to generate as much Old World affection on either count.

Although both Rice and Powell are talented overachievers and share a strong personal bond, their styles, skills and experience are a study in contrasts.

As Rice prepares to take over the nation’s daunting foreign affairs agenda -- including the task of repairing relations with important European allies -- she will be calling on very different strengths to get the job done.

Nominated by President Bush as secretary of State, Rice’s confirmation hearing will begin Tuesday. Although the Senate is expected to vote quickly to confirm her, Rice will face tough questioning, especially on the justification for the Iraq war.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said last week that she planned to challenge Rice’s actions and statements, including a comment implying that Iraq could someday attack America with nuclear weapons.

Powell, at 67 nearly a generation Rice’s senior, has drawn on lessons from a successful military career and his experience as a child of immigrant parents in New York’s inner city.

Rice, 50, grew up in a relatively privileged black family in America’s segregated South. Her parents saw education and achievement -- and she took in plenty of both -- as the way to conquer prejudice.

Her two great assets, according to those know her well: a dazzling, nimble mind and a close relationship with Bush.

Maintaining her friendship with the president could be a challenge, according to others who have served in top national security jobs. On Inauguration Day or shortly thereafter, Rice not only will move out of the White House, but will become the prime architect, chief negotiator and main public face of America’s relations with the outside.

In addition, she will take on the responsibilities of running a far-flung department with nearly 30,000 employees and a budget of more than $8 billion. As someone who has spent much of her six years in government -- with few notable exceptions -- toiling out of the limelight, the adjustment is likely to be considerable.

During her career, Rice has accumulated varying amounts of experience as a negotiator and an administrator. As the leading White House Soviet specialist to President George H.W. Bush, she helped shape America’s response to the collapse of communism in Europe in 1989. As provost of Stanford University during the 1990s, Rice earned a reputation as a tough and impatient executive with an expressed distaste for committee meetings.

Former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski believes the pressures of her new post are likely to generate a degree of distance between Rice’s thinking and that of the president.

“The relationship won’t be as close six months from now as it is today,” Brzezinski said. “Just the [reduced] physical proximity will make it different.”

Rice’s views on key issues also could change as she begins traveling frequently, meeting foreign leaders in their homelands and confronting issues first-hand, foreign affairs specialists said.

“She is going to bring the president a different kind of evaluation because it will be a different experience,” said Judith Kipper, a Middle East specialist for the Council on Foreign Relations. “This won’t be just cables coming over from the State Department; it will be more nuanced, more hands-on.”

It remains to be seen whether Rice, who aides say can be charming if she feels so inclined, can match Powell’s seemingly uncanny ability to connect with a broad range of people, including presidents and generals and the displaced victims of last month’s Indian Ocean tsunami.

Rice, who relaxes by playing piano, will have to find ways to get along with leaders such as Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, an important ally in the Muslim world who Powell said he probably talked to more than any other leader during his tenure.

Powell tended to come alive in his meetings with young people, who were invariably squeezed into his heavy foreign travel schedule. Rice once conceded to an interviewer that she preferred children mostly once they had reached 18.

Still, those who know Rice well believe the energy and intellectual vigor she devotes to issues will help make her succeed as secretary of State.

“She’s extremely disciplined in her thinking, yet she’s also open to new ideas,” noted a senior administration official who had worked with Rice and who spoke on condition of anonymity. “She’s a great conceptualizer who understands we’re in a new era and can reach out and embrace the unexpected.”

Insiders say she seized on the potential of an Arabic reform initiative launched last year at a meeting of leading industrial nations to foster economic development and the growth of civil society. The initiative has encountered resistance across much of the Muslim world.

In the heady days that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, Rice was credited by National Security Council colleagues with conceiving the broad framework that brought six nations -- including the U.S. and the Soviet Union -- into the negotiation of German reunification. She also urged the U.S. to override Soviet objections and push for German unity swiftly to avoid prolonged uncertainty in the center of Europe.

Her choice of veteran diplomat Robert B. Zoellick as her principal deputy is considered by at least some experts to add to Rice’s strengths rather than compensate for her weakness.

“Both are brilliant, but brilliant people do things quickly, sometimes without the right people skills,” Kipper said.

Rice will need to summon all her skills as she starts on the foreign affairs challenges that face Bush in his second term. With a huge budget deficit, a weak dollar and the financial and military drain of the war in Iraq, any headway the administration makes on other issues -- such as Israeli-Palestinian peace or nuclear proliferation -- probably will require the help of old friends.

It is that reality that drives what is likely to become the focus of Rice’s first weeks in office: Bush’s February trip to try to repair relations with European allies, which have not recovered from the fallout of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. By all indications, it won’t be easy.

“In principle, there seems now to be a feeling among Europeans that they need to repair the relationship with the United States, but the question is how deep it can go,” said Christoph Bluth, a specialist on terrorism and international security at Leeds University in Britain. “The fact that Bush’s personal foreign policy assistant is now secretary of State isn’t a good sign. There will be lots of papering over of cracks, but the divisions themselves will remain.”

Yet for all of Powell’s popularity, even those who dealt with him understood that his position as a perceived outsider within the administration on so many crucial issues diminished his abilities to influence the president’s thinking.

Whatever foreign leaders may think of Rice personally -- or the policies she advocates -- they will know she is a more powerful figure within her government than Powell.

“She will be seen as a credible interlocutor because whoever deals with her can assume that she has the backing of the White House; that was a problem with Colin Powell,” said Francois Heisbourg, a former senior French Defense Ministry official and now chairman of the Geneva Center for Security Policy. “We all liked Colin Powell, but he spoke largely for himself.”