Pentagon Shapes the Bush Policy Team

No one’s noticing, but American foreign policy is about to be turned over to the Pentagon Alumni Assn.

If George W. Bush becomes the next president, as seems increasingly likely, the foreign policy team he is assembling will have a distinctly defense-oriented cast--much more so than in any recent presidency, including the last Bush administration.

The flavor of U.S. foreign policy, it seems, is about to shift. Over the last eight years, the leading figures in the Clinton administration have come from the world of trade law and investment banking (Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger and Robert E. Rubin).

Now we’re going to see a return of The Commanders, the team that won the Persian Gulf War nine years ago.

The trend starts near the very top. Bush’s choice for vice president, Dick Cheney, spent his most recent years in government as Defense secretary. Bush’s probable secretary of State, Gen. Colin L. Powell, was a career military official and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Richard L. Armitage, a powerful figure in the Pentagon during the Reagan administration, is expected to end up in a senior post, probably deputy Defense secretary. Paul Wolfowitz, formerly one of Cheney’s top Pentagon aides, is likely to join the administration’s senior ranks too.

And the Pentagon orientation of the new administration, it seems, may filter down through the ranks to the working levels.

Navy Veteran May Be East Asia Hand

Take Asia. The leading candidate to be Bush’s assistant secretary of State for East Asia is said to be James A. Kelly, a Navy veteran who served as a Pentagon aide and later on the National Security Council in the Reagan administration. The Defense Department’s Asia policy job may go to Torkel Patterson, another retired Navy official who worked in the Pentagon and on the NSC in the last Bush administration.

In some respects, the Pentagon origins of many of the Bush foreign policy advisors may prove beneficial.

Certainly the Bush administration would be in a strong position to cut out unneeded weapon systems and waste in the Pentagon budget, if it chooses to do so. Few people would be in a better position to say “no” to the Joint Chiefs of Staff than Cheney and Powell.

Over the years, the Defense Department often has proved less addicted to conventional wisdom about foreign policy than the State Department or CIA. Among the few senior military leaders to serve as secretary of State was George Marshall, the revered architect of the Truman administration’s Marshall Plan for Europe.

“He was one of the great” secretaries of State, says historian Warren B. Cohen. “He reorganized the department and set up policy planning. When the Joint Chiefs came to him and said if we send 10,000 troops to China, we can turn around the Chinese civil war, Marshall said, ‘Bull----, it’d take a million.’ ”

Of course, the other side of this argument is that a military background may be of less help today than in Harry S. Truman’s time. America is not fighting the Cold War any more, or for that matter the Persian Gulf War.

It’s unclear yet whether the Pentagon alumni who would return to government in Bush II are prepared to deal with a new challenge--a world where international economic issues loom larger than they did a decade ago.

Moreover, even on security issues, these former officials may find, like Rip Van Winkle, that the world has changed since the glory days when the United States assembled the Gulf War coalition against Saddam Hussein.

Back then, Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s Soviet Union stood solidly with the United States in dealing with Iraq. Now, Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia doesn’t--and neither do France or China.

Some within the Bush team (notably Wolfowitz) have advocated a tougher policy toward Iraq; they have pushed for stronger U.S. support for the exiles seeking to overthrow Saddam. By contrast, most Arab governments now seek an easing of the embargo against Iraq.

Bush’s Father Relied on Kissinger Aides

The last Bush administration didn’t draw so heavily on the Defense Department for its foreign policy team. Indeed, the patron saint of Bush I was, in some ways, Henry A. Kissinger.

Two top-level officials (Brent Scowcroft, the national security advisor, and Lawrence S. Eagleburger, the deputy secretary of State) had been top aides to Kissinger; so had the assistant secretary of State for Asia, Richard Solomon.

To be sure, not everyone in the new Bush team has a strong Defense Department pedigree. Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s likely choice for national security advisor, gained most of her experience as Scowcroft’s protege on the NSC--although even Rice worked briefly in the Pentagon in 1986-87.

If there is any single guiding spirit behind Bush’s incoming crew, it would appear to be not Kissinger but Caspar W. Weinberger, who was President Reagan’s Defense secretary.

Both Powell and Armitage rose to prominence in Weinberger’s Pentagon. And it was Weinberger who enunciated a doctrine for strict limits on deploying U.S. forces overseas--a caution that Powell largely embraced as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Under the Weinberger doctrine, set down in 1984, American troops should be sent into conflict only in cases vital to U.S. national interests and only where there is overwhelming public support and a well-defined objective.

George W. Bush voiced similar ideas during this year’s campaign--thus setting the tone for the Pentagon mind-set of the incoming administration.

Jim Mann’s column appears in this space every Wednesday.