The Foreign Service Journal, January 2005

54 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 5 B OOKS Forging a New Foreign Policy Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet James Mann, Viking/Penguin, 2004, $17.65, hardcover, 372 pages. R EVIEWED BY D AVID C ASAVIS In the halcyon years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 attacks, the looming question at State was: What now? What grand construct should displace the Cold War policy of containment? In response, President George H. W. Bush declared a “New World Order” of liberal democracies, and there was no shortage of candidates for alliances and partnerships. For a while it even seemed that both major political parties were on the same page, until around 2000. Enter the Vulcans, a band of six foreign policy thinkers and practi- tioners who named themselves after the Greek god of fire and metal- working. Although several of them had held high-level positions in pre- vious Republican administrations, and some have been collaborating in and out of government for over 35 years, it was George W. Bush’s elec- tion that put them in the position to implement their radically different approach to statecraft. Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet is perhaps best described as a group biography profiling six of the most prominent Vulcans: Colin Powell, Richard Armitage, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney. Journalist James Mann shows us a youthful Major Colin Powell walking into a Quonset hut in Da Nang to take his GRE, paving the way for him to earn an MBA at The George Washington University — early evi- dence of the lifelong devotion to the value of professional education and training that he would bring with him to Foggy Bottom in 2001. We watch his steady rise through the ranks of the Army to the position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the Clinton administration, where an atmosphere of endless unstructured meetings enrages and disgusts him. The reader who recalls Powell’s oft-used term “a skunk at the picnic” will find out where it came from in these pages. We are introduced to an equally youthful Armitage returning from Vietnam with a genuine concern for Southeast Asia. “I was tired of being on the pointy edge of the spear, and I wanted to see who was chucking the spear,” he says. Mann’s account helps us understand why Powell and his Deputy Secretary of State have been such a close-knit team. The Vulcans’ foreign policy vision is founded on the principle that the United States should be unafraid to wield unchallengeable military strength. That power is coupled with confidence in America’s virtue and its natural role as world leader. Mann quotes National Security Adviser — now Secretary of State- Designate — Rice as saying, “People may oppose you, but when they real- ize you can hurt them, they’ll join your side.” He also offers a tantalizing insight into the Secretary-designate. While she has taken care to avoid alienating conservatives, she has avoided being swept up into factional disputes between Republicans. She helps the president to straddle policy divides while advocating a dramatic break with ideas of the past. As we have seen during the past four years, Europe — at least “Old Europe,” as Defense Secretary Rumsfeld puts it — is no longer at the center of U.S. strategic thinking. Nor do the Vulcans regard international organizations, or even the alliances of the New World Order, as necessary. Mann quotes Paul Wolfowitz’s view that allies should be treated as duck- lings that would inevitably get in line behind their American mother. Rise of the Vulcans explains the reasoning behind our occupation of Iraq and the direction of American foreign policy for at least the next four years — and possibly far longer. According to the Vulcans, nearly every political thinker at State today is obsolete. Indeed, after 9/11, when Pakistan’s ambassador tried to explain the background of his coun- try’s relationship with the Taliban, Dick Armitage cut him short. “History begins today,” he said. Whatever one thinks of that view- point, and the assumptions that sup- port it, this book makes for com- pelling reading, backed by painstak- ing detail. Here are the behind-the- scenes struggles and the building