The Foreign Service Journal, February 2005

50 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5 F O C U S O N T H E P O W E L L L E G A C Y U.S. D IPLOMACY IN THE P OST -P OWELL A GE ow different would the world look today had President George W. Bush not appointed as his Secretary of State the most impres- sive bureaucrat (and indeed human being) to hold that office since General Marshall? As Colin Powell hands over his office to Condoleezza Rice, State Department employees are fervently convinced that their leader had a positive impact. America’s interna- tional image is poor, but the Foreign Service thinks it would have been worse without Powell’s brains and charm and gravitas to soften the sting of U.S. unilat- eralism. Iraq is a shambles, but the shambles could have spread further than it did. If a similar role of damage limitation is the best Dr. Rice can offer the State Department, she will never win that same affection from her troops. However, she can invoke presidential authority to take on policy formulation roles Powell’s rivals denied him. If the State Department remains sidelined, it will be because Secretary Rice declines to use her relation- ship with the president to restore State as America’s outermost line of defense. Powell’s record was weak in by-the-numbers diplo- macy. He brought home no disarmament agreements, no peace treaties, no lucrative trade deals. Admittedly those missing scraps of paper tell us little about the changed odds for a nuclear strike, a terrorist attack, or a catastrophic economic meltdown. The State Department had at best a minor role in the dollar’s slide, the skyrocketing of oil prices, and the plummet- ing value of U.S. exports after 2000, the worst perfor- mance in the OECD. The Last Four Years Closer to Powell’s mandate, however, was the ero- sion of the U.S. as a pole of political attraction. Africa’s flirtation with democracy faded. Peace in the Middle East followed the undertakers, not the diplo- mats. Americans in Russia abased themselves to the new lords of the Kremlin or straggled home. Asians heeded irrefutable economic arguments in turning their gaze toward China. In Europe, NATO struggled to bridge the gulf between competing masters who seemed fundamentally indifferent whether it suc- ceeded or not. Sept. 11, 2001, was a turning point. Residual Cold War prudence had encouraged each administration to value the State Department as a necessary lubricant H W ILL S ECRETARY R ICE USE HER RELATIONSHIP WITH THE PRESIDENT TO RESTORE THE S TATE D EPARTMENT AS A MERICA ’ S OUTERMOST LINE OF DEFENSE ? B Y J OHN B RADY K IESLING