Rice Takes the Stage as Bush Foreign Policy Adviser
Washington, Dec. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush's foreign policy adviser, emerged in October as one of the stars of ``Deutschlandspiel,'' a German dramatized documentary.
Centered on the political struggle behind the fall of the Berlin Wall, the movie depicts Rice as a hard-liner in the U.S. government arguing for full German reunification and against compromise with the Soviet Union. Her views won out, and the U.S. persuaded the Soviet Union to remove its troops from Germany.
``In a way, German television audiences know more about her role at the end of the Cold War than American audiences do,'' said Philip Zelikow, who teamed with her at the White House under Bush's father, President George Bush.
The 46-year-old Stanford University professor's profile will rise if the younger Bush wins his legal fight for the presidency. In his campaign, Bush said she was his candidate for the post of national security adviser, a job that brought great influence for men like Henry Kissinger and Sandy Berger. A Bush-Rice meeting set for today in Austin was postponed to tomorrow.
``Bush doesn't know much in this area so he's going to have to rely on (security) thinkers,'' said Ivan Eland, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington. ``Condi Rice will probably be the person he relies on the most.''
Rice would be the first woman to hold the position of national security adviser. She and retired General Colin Powell, a candidate for secretary of state, would be the highest-ranking blacks in a Bush administration.
Clarity and Confidence
Zelikow says Rice won support in the National Security Council with the clarity of her argument and her quiet confidence in a ``maximum approach'' of confrontation with the Soviets.
Rice's positions today -- reflected in Bush's campaign -- suggest she's skeptical of overseas partnerships. She backs a nuclear missile defense system, views China as ``a problem for and challenge to American interests'' and says U.S. troops are overextended across the globe. Rice declined requests for an interview.
Colleagues say Rice is a contemporary strategist who will restore morale to the military and set the country's security priorities straight.
Critics who've followed her writings say her views could undermine U.S. ties with Europe.
Bush created a media frenzy by calling for U.S. withdrawal from the Balkans during a presidential debate this fall. Rice was quoted in the New York Times saying ``the governor is talking about a new division of labor'' in which the U.S. would refrain from ``extended peacekeeping'' missions.
Ivo Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, called the position a sign of Rice's lack of understanding of the delicate post-Cold War security balance.
``She doesn't understand that we need to be (in the Balkans) to the extent that others need to be there,'' he said. ``If we're not there, where else should we be engaged in Europe?''
Birmingham to Stanford
Rice was raised in Birmingham, Alabama during the 1960s civil rights era and talks about her brushes with discrimination, said George Shultz, secretary of state in President Ronald Reagan's administration and a 10-year friend. ``She doesn't carry that on her sleeve though,'' he said.
Rice was taught to value education by a teacher father who got through college by winning a scholarship for future Presbyterian ministers, said Douglas Paal, who worked with Rice on the National Security Council.
After earning her undergraduate degree and doctorate at the University of Denver, Rice went to Stanford University as an assistant professor of political science. She was invited to work in Washington by National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft.
``She stood out among the younger crop of Russian watchers in that period,'' said Paal, now president of an Asian Pacific policy center in Washington.
She was invited to be a Senate candidate by senior Republicans in California when she left the White House in 1991; she declined, Paal said.
After her return to academia, Stanford made her a full professor in 1993.
Skeptical of Gorbachev
Rice is one of a few advisers regularly invited to the Bush family's vacation retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Advising Bush, Rice repeatedly appeared on television with him, as well as giving speeches -- one to the Republican National Convention -- and interviews.
On Soviet policy, Rice split with other Russia experts by remaining skeptical of Mikhail Gorbachev and his ``glasnost'' and ``perestroika'' reforms as president of the Soviet Union.
``She thought he was difficult to figure out and wasn't sure he was the man of the future,'' said Paal. She never changed that opinion, he said. ``I think her analysis still holds.''
Her academic writings have drawn notice for her skepticism about the Clinton administration's willingness to commit U.S. troops overseas in murky international conflicts.
``Foreign policy in a Republican administration will most certainly be internationalist,'' she wrote in an article in Foreign Affairs last January. ``But it will also proceed from the firm ground of the national interest, not from the interests of some illusory international community.''
`Fundamentally a Moderate'
Analysts say Rice isn't likely to encourage any rash new policies. ``She's fundamentally a moderate,'' said Frank Cevasco, a defense consultant at Hicks & Associates Inc. in Washington. He defended her cautious approach to committing U.S. troops. ``We're wearing out our (military) people and discouraging them from staying in service,'' he said.
Rice supports U.S. engagement to help overseas nations solve conflicts but she doesn't favor relying solely on the military to do it. Yet in office, Rice probably won't significantly scale back U.S. troops overseas, said the Cato Institute's Eland.
``She's in the mainstream of the Bush wing of the Republican party,'' he said. ``I don't see any radical departure from that.''
When a flap developed over Bush's comments about withdrawing from the Balkans, Rice moved quickly to tone down the rhetoric by dispatching her staff to call European security officials soon after the debate to say that the remark was being misinterpreted.
``The Republicans tend to want to ensure U.S. primacy and to do that, they intervene,'' Eland said.
Modulations in her hard-line positions don't mean Rice lacks backbone, said a former colleague. ``You can make no worse mistake than to assume she is a pushover,'' said Arnold Kanter, who worked with Rice on Soviet arms control issues.