Times Online
From Roland Watson in Washington
| LITTLE more than a week ago, Donald Rumsfeld was the whipping boy of Washington.
He had sent America to war undermanned and ill-prepared. Studios of armchair generals were shredding his strategy. Vietnam surfaced in headlines. The Rumsfeld political obituaries that were last being tweaked in the days before September 11 2001 were dusted off. After ten days that have shaken the Arab world, the Defence Secretary is once again the Goliath of the Bush Administration. Hawks are feeling the air in their wings. These are heady days to be a neo- conservative in Washington. The neo-con brand of aggressive American assertiveness, typified by Mr Rumsfeld’s abrasive diplomacy and daring deployment of US military superiority, is claiming Iraq as a sweeping victory. A significant slice of its relish derives from who and what it has vanquished: not Saddam Hussein’s Baathism, but the battlefield caution and political multilateralism of Colin Powell. The speed of victory leaves the spoils of war unmistakably in the hands of cock-a-hoop neo-cons, with implications within Washington’s beltway and along the axis of evil. To appreciate how far-reaching these may be, it is worth remembering that the policy of toppling Saddam began life as much more than a war. From its inception, the Iraq showdown was a strictly ideological project, only recently cast in post-September 11 pragmatism. Its largest tremor is easily lost in the chaos of toppling statues and looting: the US has dared to fight its first pre- emptive war, and overwhelmingly won it. Whether Washington develops an appetite for such escapades is yet to be seen. But the outcome in Iraq will serve to cement at the heart of US foreign policy the doctrine that provided the ideological backdrop for war. It was nurtured for a decade by the softly spoken neo-con godfather Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary, and states that as the cradle of modern liberty, the US should be unashamed about exploiting its military superiority to protect its interests and export its values. Corporal Edward Chin, the US Marine who unfolded the Stars and Stripes over Saddam’s statue in Baghdad, became its most vivid proponent. Despite its swift progress, there were shortcomings in US planning, most of them attributable to Rumsfeld’s hand. The fabled “shock and awe” aerial bombardment failed to prompt the regime’s predicted implosion. The Pentagon seriously underestimated the impact of the Fedayin’s willingness to fight. And the concerted US psychological operations campaign failed to spark widespread Republican Guard surrenders. But overall, Mr Rumsfeld’s strategy was seen to triumph. Going into battle relatively light worked. The US did not need a northern front, nor even the troops from the 4th Infantry Division that were to make up that front. Whereas General Powell, then the Chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, had insisted on more than 500,000 troops just to expel Saddam’s forces from Kuwait in 1991, Rumsfeld overruled his generals and insisted he would need fewer than 300,000 to topple him. He was proved right. His faith in air power was also not totally misplaced. Even if the initial blitz on Baghdad failed to bring down the regime, the precision bombardment of Republican Guard positions south of the capital paved the way for the extraordinary final US advance to the city’s gates almost without casualty. A Pentagon spending bonanza on Mr Rumsfeld’s pet priorities, such as special forces, high-tech bombs and other wizardry, and anything that enhances troop mobility, is on the horizon, taking the US military even further ahead of even the best-equipped Armed Forces in the rest of the world. The hawks may be in the ascendant now, but General Powell’s days of influence are far from over. A peerless political operator, he is astute enough to have avoided being on the losing side. Fed up with French intransigence, he stepped deftly into the Administration’s pro-war camp just at the moment when delay would have meant isolation. Even though Mr Rumsfeld’s military plan ripped up General Powell’s doctrine of “overwhelming force”, he refused to concede the point. When asked if America’s generals could do the job with the number of troops Mr Rumsfeld had given them, General Powell replied that of course they could, “because I trained them”. General Powell has been withering about the French and Germans in recent days. Asked about their call for a central postwar role for the UN, he said: “I am not quite sure what that means. They just say ‘central’ and then they go on to their next meeting.” But that does not mean that he has joined the hawks. Canny as always, he is reflecting the White House view that until Paris and Berlin can come up with something constructive, and grovel a little, they are irrelevant. He will, however, be there in the months ahead, impressing on Mr Bush the need to see through the President’s promises on the Middle East peace process in particular. As a strengthened Mr Rumsfeld and a momentarily eclipsed General Powell rejoin battle for the soul of the Administration, the question is, who will be next? Mr Rumsfeld’s targeting of Syria with claims that it has been sending military aid to Iraq is the opening of a new phase of “forward-leaning”, take-no-prisoners US diplomacy that infuriates European leaders and scares those in the Gulf. That, in part, is the point. Because the real question is not so much who is next — North Korea, Iran and Syria are all in the frame — but how the US chooses to confront them. Saddam was a relatively easy target, but one with whom the US could make a much larger point. Washington wants the other states to be watching Baghdad, shuddering in front of their televisions and deciding to change their ways rather than risk the wrath of the US military. However, North Korea presents insurmountable military problems; Iran and Syria huge political ones. |