Rice’s Promising Start

When President Bush nominated his loyal national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, to run the State Department, hard-liners hoped she would purge it of moderates who pushed for more diplomacy and better relations with U.S. allies.

But Rice’s first big moves since her nomination -- picking U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick as her deputy and prompting the resignation of Undersecretary of State John Bolton -- indicate that she is taking a measured approach that is already being greeted with approval in Europe.

In contrast to neoconservative pit bull Bolton, Zoellick is a staunch internationalist. He played a key role in negotiations with the former Soviet Union to bring about the peaceful reunification of Germany. He will not revel in actions such as Bolton’s needless attacks on the United Nations and sabotaging of its 2001 bioweapons conference. Bolton also deliberately deep-sixed nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea and undermined Secretary of State Colin Powell by publicly attacking its leader, Kim Jong Il.

Zoellick has more moderate underpinnings, but he is no pushover. He cut his political teeth working for a famously flinty negotiator, James A. Baker III, when Baker was secretary of State under the first President Bush. Zoellick, who was in the Reagan Treasury Department as well, has since been a tough negotiator in U.S. trade talks. In Zoellick’s words, “Negotiating a free-trade agreement with the U.S. is not something one has a right to -- it’s a privilege.” Zoellick’s accomplishments include bringing China and Taiwan into the World Trade Organization and easing congressional passage of the Trade Act of 2002.

Rice is reportedly tapping other former colleagues from the George H.W. Bush presidency, including Philip Zelikow, who was a staff director of the Sept. 11 commission and who later co-wrote a book with Rice about German reunification.

Rice is reaching out to professionals rather than ideologues. Moderation and competence may be boring, but they are virtues that the Bush administration needs. With her closeness to the president, Rice could ensure that the State Department is more than a doormat in Bush’s second term.