Rice Reshaping Foreign Policy

Condoleezza Rice began her term as secretary of State with a tour of Europe and the Middle East last month that showed off her skills as a fence mender. The weeks that followed have revealed another side of her style.

After clashing with the Egyptians, Rice canceled a visit to Cairo. Amid tensions with the Canadians days later, she abruptly postponed a trip to Ottawa. She recalled the U.S. ambassador to Syria within 24 hours of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, as accusations of Syrian involvement swirled.

And Rice has spoken publicly in blunt terms rarely heard from her predecessor, Colin L. Powell. “States that don’t recognize that the Middle East is changing, and, indeed, try to halt that change ... need to be isolated and condemned,” she said in a recent PBS interview.

The tough new tone is just one of the changes that have been occurring in Foggy Bottom, the Washington neighborhood that is home to the department, since President Bush’s former national security advisor was sworn in Jan. 26.

Among other changes, Rice has begun assembling an inner circle that will assert close control over key diplomatic issues. She also is seeking to speed decision making and action. Above all, she is trying to reshape an administration’s foreign policy that has had many voices so that it has just one -- that of Bush, her boss and confidant.

“We’re not even two months into the second term, and it does appear that there’s a marked shift in style,” said Michele Dunn, a Middle East expert who worked at the National Security Council during the first Bush term and earlier at the State Department.

Because of Bush’s strong support, many predict Rice will be an unusually powerful secretary. She is likely to face less competition in influencing foreign policy from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is focusing on internal Pentagon reform.

At the same time, Vice President Dick Cheney is expected to continue to wield major, if often unseen, influence. Last week, a longtime Cheney ally, State Department arms control chief John R. Bolton, was nominated to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Rice, who this week embarks on a trip to Asia that will include stops in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Japan, China and South Korea, has only begun to make changes in the department. Although none of her newly appointed secretaries are yet at their posts, some differences from her predecessor are already visible.

In his four years, Powell often felt his role was diplomatic “damage control,” in the words of one former top aide -- restoring relationships strained by clashes over Iraq and other issues. Powell’s public language was shaded with nuance, and he often stressed both sides of issues.

“He was always charisma and harmony,” said one State Department official who, like others who shared the same views, declined to be identified. “If there was a tough message to deliver, he would often deliver it in private, so that harmony was the main vibe in public.”

The change in approach comes at the beginning of a second term that Bush aides hope will be focused less on war and more on diplomacy, if in a sometimes blunt form. With Iraqis preoccupied with building a government and the war on terrorism getting less public attention in the United States, the administration hopes it will have more time to focus its energy on building a record for Bush as an advocate of democracy rather than as a “war president.”

During her tour of Europe and the Middle East in the opening days of her tenure, Rice showed that she could charm the French and the Germans. But she also demonstrated that, like Bush, she was willing to deliver a message in public that the other side might not like.

In February during an appearance with the Egyptian foreign minister in Washington, Rice offended many Egyptians by saying the United States had “very strong concerns” over the jailing of opposition leader Ayman Nour. Two weeks later, Rice called off her trip to Cairo because of Nour and what the Bush administration views as the Egyptian government’s sluggish efforts to push for democratic reform in the region. Under international pressure, the Egyptians released Nour on bail Saturday.

And she has put off a visit to Ottawa amid friction over Canada’s decision last month not to join the U.S. missile defense program. U.S. officials blamed a “scheduling conflict,” but the move was widely read in Canada as a sign of Rice’s unhappiness with the missile decision.

Rice has shown that “she’s comfortable delivering a tough message,” said Dunn, the former NSC official. “She is willing to pay the price of creating an uncomfortable situation if it’s going to advance the policy agenda.”

Dunn speculated that Rice was ready to take such strong stands because the secretary of State was certain Bush would agree with them. Although many Cabinet officials hesitate to be blunt for fear the boss might have a different view, Rice is more confident.

“She knows Bush’s mind,” Dunn said.

Rice’s directness has been a hit with conservatives who believe State Department officials too often paper over differences when they need to get tough.

Rice’s bluntness with the Egyptians was “very unusual, and very refreshing,” said Danielle Pletka, a onetime aide to former Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and now a vice president at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

“Diplomats are always trying to sweeten the message,” Pletka said. “In the Middle East, they take that as a sign that the Americans are willing to put up with what they’re doing.”

With Rice echoing Bush’s message, it will gain added force around the world, diplomats say.

With Bush and Rice, there is a similarity of “tone and words and even facial expression that is remarkable,” said the former top aide to Powell. “I’ve never been able to figure out whether she’s picking up on his thoughts or the other way around. But the message is identical.”

But the former aide said he worried that if the president and secretary of State both are delivering tough messages, the job of maintaining relationships would be left to diplomats who have less clout.

“You could begin to injure and alienate your friends around the world more and more often,” making it tough to continue cooperative efforts, he said.

And some former department officials said it would be harmful if the new similarity in thinking between top State and White House officials meant that Bush heard fewer opinions on complex foreign policy issues in internal meetings, as he did when Powell was secretary.

There are already signs that Rice will put more decision making on key issues in the hands of her inner circle, most of whom work on the seventh floor of the State Department building.

Powell, with long experience managing vast U.S. military bureaucracies, believed in empowering the chain of command at the department to solve diplomatic problems. He described them as “field commanders.”

Rice is returning to the management model used by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who held the post under President George H.W. Bush. Baker focused on a handful of top issues, hoping to generate diplomatic victories and favorable headlines, while leaving other matters to the staff.

Rice’s inner circle includes three veteran diplomats who have worked closely with her and are generally seen as pragmatic internationalists. They are Deputy Secretary Robert B. Zoellick, former U.S. trade representative; R. Nicholas Burns, recently the U.S. ambassador to NATO; and Philip D. Zelikow, a lawyer, diplomat and historian who was staff director of the Sept. 11 commission.

Rice wants to accelerate the pace of the department’s work. One sign: Her office issued guidelines to the staff that reports and briefing papers headed for her inbox be as succinct as possible.

Rice and the rest of the administration’s foreign policy team already appear agile.

Rice’s public pressure on the Egyptians over the jailing of lawmaker Nour was notably quick. When Egyptian officials jailed democracy advocate Saad Eddin Ibrahim in 2000, U.S. officials were unhappy but applied only limited pressure over three years, then cut off $130 million in aid to Egypt. Ibrahim was acquitted in 2003.

After the assassination of Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, Rice recalled the U.S. ambassador to Syria and began leading an international campaign to force withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.

“I think they are trying to become more nimble,” a recently departed official said. “They seem to be trying to change the whole pace.”

With help from a Rice State Department, some administration officials say, they hope Bush will move into his second term much as Ronald Reagan did. In his first four years, Reagan faced criticism from Europe that he was a cowboy and warmonger. Many saw him differently in the second, when he held a series of summits with his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, and signed deals limiting nuclear arsenals.

The first important tests for Rice and the rest of the administration foreign policy team will come this summer with elections in Lebanon, progress toward a new government in Iraq and a planned Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. “It would be huge for them,” said a senior House GOP aide. “But we’re 10 car bombs away from civil war in Lebanon. So it’s a big, big if.”