The Foreign Service Journal, February 2005

peripatetic foreign adventures. She called instead for “a disciplined and consistent foreign policy that separates the important from the trivial.” “It takes courage,” she went on to say, “to set priorities because doing so is an admis- sion that American foreign policy cannot be all things to all people.” Indeed, it cannot. As Secretary of State, she will be better placed than ever before to make good on her earli- er rhetoric. In this context, the logic of humanitarian military intervention, combined with the related premise of promoting democracy by force of arms, poses the cen- tral challenge for Rice in her new role. As Secretary of State, Rice must either prioritize America’s strategic interests and aims, coddling some dictators while con- fronting others, which will open her and the Bush administration to charges of hypocrisy; or she will make good on the Bush administration’s implicit pledge to support democratic movements anywhere in the world, which will lead to imperial overstretch and ruin for the United States. The just-completed presidential campaign did not prompt the fundamental debate concerning the object and direction of U.S. foreign policy that we should have had in this country soon after the end of the Cold War. Must we rid the world of brutal dictators, invading and occupying sovereign states solely on the grounds of what the leaders of these countries do to their people? If the answer is yes, that we do have an obligation to lib- erate all of the oppressed, that we must remove or destroy all undemocratic governments (not just the ones that are not useful to us), and remain in place until a lib- eral democracy takes root, then we have a very long, hard fight ahead of us. There are alternatives, however. If any single person were capable of refocusing the president’s attention, and returning U.S. foreign policy to its realist roots, Rice is that person. If she will not or cannot do that, she will bear the burdens of selling a grandiose foreign policy to an increas- ingly cautious and skeptical public. And she will share the blame, with the other members of the Bush foreign poli- cy team, if the policy goes awry. n F O C U S F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 49