In U.S. Overtures To Foes, New Respect For Pragmatism

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
March 1, 2007
Pg. 1
News Analysis

By Helene Cooper
WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 — In the span of just two weeks, the United States has agreed to hold high-level contacts with Iran and Syria, and to start down the path toward formal diplomatic recognition of North Korea.
Has the Bush administration gone soft on its foes?
As recently as Jan. 12, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repeated what has been a constant of Bush foreign policy: a refusal to bestow on Iran, Syria and North Korea the legitimacy of diplomatic engagement as long as they refuse to bend on disputed issues.
“That’s not diplomacy,” Ms. Rice said before a Senate panel, in defending the administration’s stand on Iran and Syria. “That’s extortion.”
Administration officials insisted Wednesday that the new overtures, including an agreement to join Iran and Syria in talks on Iraq, did not mean there had been a change in policy. “There is no crack,” the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said. “A number of people have been characterizing U.S. participation in a regional meeting as a change in policy; it is nothing of the sort.”
But foreign policy experts, administration critics on Capitol Hill and former diplomats disagreed, saying the administration appeared to have recognized the extent to which it had tied its own hands by insisting on talking only to friends. Even Ms. Rice had called the opening to Tehran and Damascus a “diplomatic initiative.”
“The question isn’t whether the axis of evil is dead; it’s alive as it was yesterday,” said Daniel P. Serwer, a vice president at the United States Institute of Peace and a former diplomat who served as executive director of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. “The question is whether the concept, as it was applied, is dead. And it’s absolutely clear to me that you have to talk to who you have to talk to, in order to get things done.”
Within the administration, there has long been a tug of war between advocates of engagement, represented by the diplomats at the State Department and sometimes led by Ms. Rice, and those who have sought to isolate enemies, a group led by Vice President Dick Cheney and defended by the former United Nations ambassador, John R. Bolton.
In the period leading up to the start of the Iraq war in 2003 and in the years immediately after, those pushing for isolation appeared to have the upper hand.
But last November’s election results, along with the morass in Iraq and a yearning for some foreign-policy home runs as the clock winds down on the Bush administration, have made room for proponents of engagement.
A senior administration official who advocates at least limited contacts with America’s enemies said, “There wasn’t one big ‘Aha!’ moment, when suddenly we were being heard.”
But, he said, “there seems to be more of a recognition of the limited success” of the approach.
At a dinner and lecture on Tuesday night at the Library of Congress, it looked like a reunion of the pro-engagement crowd. Seated at the front was former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, along with the new deputy secretary of state, John D. Negroponte; also in attendance was Robert L. Gallucci, the former chief United States negotiator during the North Korean nuclear crisis of 1994.
It was a veritable bevy of advocates of realpolitik, headlined by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who told the audience, “America must be prepared to talk to our enemies.”
Ms. Rice has come under criticism from conservative hard-liners, both in and out of the administration. So far, her close relationship with President Bush has allowed her to prod the administration toward more engagement, while at the same time taking pains not to push Mr. Bush further than he is willing to go, administration officials said.
In the North Korea case, Ms. Rice pressed for United Nations Security Council sanctions after it exploded a nuclear device in October. Then, three months later, she telephoned Mr. Bush directly from Berlin, where she was traveling, to get his approval for the United States to pursue an accord with North Korea on nuclear issues. In doing so, she bypassed layers of government policy review that had derailed past efforts to negotiate an agreement, administration officials said.
The State Department announced Wednesday that as part of the agreement, in which North Korea agreed to shut its main nuclear reactor in exchange for food and fuel aid, the United States and North Korea would hold “working group talks” on Monday and Tuesday on the normalization of relations.
In the case of Iran and Syria, Ms. Rice followed a similar strategy. In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s shift, she joined the rest of the Bush administration in increasingly confrontational oratory toward Iran. She accused Iran of aiding Shiite militias in attacks against American troops. She referred to “increasing lethality” in those attacks, which she said the United States would not stand for.
One senior administration official said the hard line helped Ms. Rice answer critics who accused her of being too soft. It also allowed the United States to sit at the table with Iran and Syria from a position of strength, the official said.
“The government of the U.S. now feels as though it has leverage,” another senior administration official said. “People ask, ‘What’s changed?’ That’s what’s changed.”
It remains unclear whether an administration that has been committed for so long to not talking to its enemies can make a sincere about-face. At this point, administration officials caution that they have no plans to negotiate one-on-one with Iran or Syria.
But they said the same thing about talks with North Korea, maintaining that Washington was willing to talk to the North only within the context of six-nation talks, while American officials were actually meeting one-on-one with their North Korean counterparts.
Still, there are not many people in the administration who believe that Vice President Cheney has suddenly changed his mind, and now favors engagement.
That means that Ms. Rice will be under pressure to show results quickly, a tall task. “You can’t expect miracles here,” said Lee H. Hamilton, a co-chairman, with Mr. Baker, of the Iraq Study Group, which advised the United States to engage Syria and Iran.
“There has to be a sustained effort,” Mr. Hamilton said. “Successful diplomacy requires very careful preparation and very extensive follow-through.”
 
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