Cheney’s power play

Working behind the scenes, the vice president is taking over foreign affairs at the White House

By Seth Gitell

CHENEY: shadow man.

A “shadow national security council.” It sounds like something out of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, but it isn’t. Washington is abuzz with talk of Vice President Richard Cheney’s attempt to create just that.

The Jerusalem Post has mentioned it, as has The New Republic. And rumor of the body seems to have captured the imagination of a capital city starved for gossip. “Cheney’s obviously putting together his own foreign policy team,” whispers one Washington insider. “People are talking about it as a shadow national security council. A lot of the conservative people around town think that’s where the action is going to be.”

For all the cloak-and-dagger connotations of its name, the shadow NSC is not a body that will secretly convene in a fortified bunker miles beneath the earth. Rather, it refers to the group of foreign-policy advisers Cheney is said to be assembling under his own banner. Just two weeks into the new administration, it’s already become clear that Cheney is going to assemble a foreign-policy team that’s larger and more influential than the staffs of previous vice presidents — who typically employ only a handful of foreign policy advisors. Al Gore, for instance, who was perhaps the most active vice president on the foreign-policy front, had his own National Security Advisor in Leon Fuerth. But Fuerth was two rungs down the ladder in seniority from National Security Advisor Sandy Berger. And while Gore played a fairly active role in foreign affairs — such as serving as the point man on special negotiations with his Russian counterpart to address America’s international environmental stance — Washington sources say something very different is happening with Cheney.

Consider that Cheney reportedly wants as many as a dozen foreign-policy advisors to run individual policy desks, say close observers of Washington-based foreign policy. He’s already hired Lewis “Scooter” Libby — who will serve both as Cheney’s chief of staff and as his assistant for national security affairs. Libby made a name for himself on the commission headed by California Congressman Christopher Cox, which investigated Chinese spying at American research bases. Meanwhile, Zalmay Khalizhad, a Rand Corporation official and Iraq expert, is under consideration for a posting to the Department of Defense. Should this fall through, he is expected to join Cheney’s team, foreign-policy sources say. People who devour journals such as Foreign Affairs and the National Interest will read a decision to join Cheney as a significant sign of the strength Cheney will wield.

But even more significant, say foreign policy insiders, is the success Cheney appears to be having in getting a key ally, Paul Wolfowitz, installed in the number-two position in the Pentagon. Wolfowitz — one of the “Vulcans” who advised George W. Bush on foreign policy during the presidential campaign — served both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush as an advisor on foreign policy and defense issues. Wolfowitz is a strong backer of the democratic Iraqi resistance movement, the Iraqi National Congress, and believes human rights should play a role in determining US policy. Although Wolfowitz appeared to be overshadowed during Bush’s campaign by Bush’s new National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld want Wolfowitz in the Pentagon, where he can magnify the influence of Cheney’s foreign policy team.

Writing in The New Republic, Lawrence Kaplan rightly cast Cheney’s shadow NSC in the context of a behind the scenes power struggle between Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell — a battle in which the real National Security Adviser, Rice, is merely a bystander. Figuring out who’s who in this struggle amounts to much more than a Beltway parlor game, however. What’s at stake is the potential for America to revert to isolationism or worse. As Wolfowitz wrote in the January 2000 issue of Commentary: “ The worst imaginable indictment would be if future generations, looking book, were to conclude that our generation could have prevented a global war, but failed.”

With stakes so high, Powell’s track record looks flaccid. During his tenure as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell — as Kaplan and others have reported — opposed the Gulf War, denied the request of the Rangers to use AC-130 gunships in Somalia (a decision which contributed to the spectacle of dead American troops being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu); and balked at intervening to stop ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.

Cheney’s camp, on the other hand, is filled with people who believe that force can be used to foster liberty and American values abroad. Given that The London Telegraph is reporting that Saddam Hussein has completed two atomic bombs, the raison d’etre for Cheney’s foreign-policy team becomes clear. How America gets through what is beginning to look like a very difficult period — with the threat of a regional Middle East war looming and China saber-rattling over Taiwan — will depend on whether Bush has an active, alert, and engaged foreign-policy team in place.

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So, what is Cheney up to exactly? Foreign-policy experts don’t all agree that the vice president is forming his own foreign-policy team, but they acknowledge that something different seems to be afoot. For example, there has even been talk out of Washington that Bush has declared national security to be within Cheney’s purview. “There was nothing like this under Gore,” says the Washington insider.

Still, some are skeptical of the talk that Cheney is assembling his own national-security team. “I wouldn’t call it a shadow NSC,” cautions Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “It’s been clear since Cheney was the [vice presidential] candidate that he was going to have an unusually responsible role in the administration. Given Bush’s lack of experience and lack of gravitas, one would expect the vice president staffing up for a more active role.”

Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, notes that Cheney may be too busy to play foreign-policy czar at the White House. “It’s going to be very difficult with Cheney spending so much of his time on Capitol Hill and playing so many other roles to dip into foreign policy in a really big way,” says an unconvinced Ornstein. “If you get in the vice president’s office six or seven professionals on foreign policy, then I’ll change my mind about what kind of strong role he will play.”

Cheney hasn’t made six or seven high level foreign policy hires yet, but consider this: in early January when Israeli Knesset member Natan Sharansky was in New York City, he made sure to travel to DC for a high-level meeting with the vice president. Sharansky will have a high-ranking role in a government headed by Ariel Sharon if the Likud Party candidate wins — as Israeli polls suggest he will. He is also revered by Cold Warriors as a prisoner-of-conscience who helped bring down the Soviet Union. (When the Soviets released Sharansky from prison he moved to Israel to form his own Russian political party.) Sharansky provided Cheney with a full briefing on the Middle East situation, and the meeting lasted for an hour. Sharansky spokeswoman Vera Golovensky, speaking to the Phoenix from Israel, says, “I think it’s obvious why it’s important to see Cheney. Having an opportunity to meet with somebody who’s the vice president seems to be quite an important opportunity not to pass up.”

Cheney’s high profile shouldn’t come as a surprise. Bush, after all, didn’t choose Cheney as his running mate to be the Dan Quayle of the ticket. Yet some of what Cheney is supposedly doing carries a lot of risk — especially for the first Republican administration since 1992. The last time anyone talked about a shadow NSC was in the mid-’80s at the height of the Iran-Contra affair to describe the NSC’s “Crisis Management Center.” This talk of a shadow NSC could bring back memories the Republicans want to forget.

And if it is true that Cheney — and not Powell and/or Rice — is the real foreign-policy force in the administration, then that could be seen as tarnishing the luster of Bush’s groundbreaking move of picking two high-ranking African Americans for his administration. In fact, if Cheney is forming his shadow NSC “it would be a disaster,” says Ivo Daalder, a senior fellow and foreign-affairs expert at the Brookings Institution. “You have the potential for two power centers in the White House. That would be a nightmare.”

Even with these negatives, the positives of Cheney’s operation outweigh them. A contrast with the Clinton years shows why. Back then, most of the big foreign-policy decisions started at the top. As numerous columnists have pointed out, the most important thing to Clinton was winning a Nobel Prize (the former president even went so far as to hire a Norwegian marketing company to help him snare one). Clinton calculated that the best way to achieve this would be to devote an extraordinary amount of energy to the peace process — both in Northern Ireland and in the Middle East. So Clinton instructed underlings to draft policy analyses that meshed with his goals and told other acolytes to carry them out. The joke in Washington is that Clinton knew more about the intakes of the Middle East Peace Process than the chief State Department negotiator Dennis Ross.

But Clinton’s style came with huge negatives — the chief among them being it was almost impossible to introduce an alternate analysis into the mix. So when Clinton’s approach failed, such as when the Middle East exploded into violence last fall, the Clinton administration had no other alternative than to encourage both sides to hurry back to the same kind of negotiations that prompted the violence in the first place. Cheney’s policy team will be able to provide Bush options that sole reliance on Rice and Powell would prevent. And when Rice stumbles, the thinking goes, Cheney’s team will pick up the pieces.

It’s unclear how all this will affect the real national security advisor, Rice. There are, however, a couple of well-reasoned speculations. One suggests that it serves Rice. During the campaign, Rice jealously guarded her access to Bush and blocked other foreign-policy viewpoints from getting to the presidential candidate. When she needed somebody to sub for her at a high-level foreign policy conference at Harvard, she turned to Richard Haass — who the Cheneyite foreign-policy hardliners revile — instead of Wolfovitz.

The other holds that this is simply how everything is supposed to work. Bush has already made one move to minimize Rice’s role. During the campaign, the Bush camp floated the possibility that Rice would be elevated to cabinet-level status. Once selected, Rice had no such luck. She’ll attend cabinet meetings, but her official status will be lower than that of Rumsfeld and Powell. Explains the Washington insider: “She’s just a White House employee. Her job is general coordinator. Her job is to be the face that presents this stuff to Bush, but not to be the policy honcho that runs these fellows.” The policy honcho, it seems, is Cheney.

Part of what is happening reflects the experience of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell relative to Rice. Rice’s biggest job previously was to be a mid-level bureaucrat in the National Security Council. Both Cheney and Rumsfeld have served as Secretary of Defense; Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Still, Rice had the juice to install her ally Haass of the Brookings Institution as the head of policy planning at the State Department. Though, even this placement of Haass as the head of policy planning at State may not be a true victory for Rice. A Haass occupied in an inward-looking policy planning job is a neutralized Haass.

If Cheney trumps Rice, which he most certainly does, what about the popular Powell? Cheney has him beat so far as well. Cheney edged Powell out in getting Rumsfeld — or “Cheney’s twin,” as Washington wags like to refer to him — into the Pentagon. Powell already indicated he opposed Bush’s missile defense proposal, but just last week Rumsfeld stated the administration will move forward with it. Even less promising for Powell is the institution he has control over. The cash-poor State Department lacks the money, staff members, and sexy toys of the Pentagon. Still, this does not necessarily constitute a defeat for Powell. Even if Cheney has a team of advisors watching over the world’s hotspots, Powell still gets to criss-cross the globe to meet with world leaders. The charismatic Powell will be dispatched to Europe and Japan to handle relations with America’s allies, who are sure to bristle at the administration’s missile-defense plans.

If the emerging arrangement keeps Cheney happy and busy on national security and Powell satisfied as America’s chief diplomat, that could be exactly how Bush wants it. It’s obvious — and a point hammered home in the Kaplan story — that there is a serious policy difference between Powell and Rumsfeld. Bush needs somebody to decide between these two heavyweights. It’s more than likely that questions will first go to Rice, and then to Cheney. Says Ornstein: “I’m sure Bush sees Cheney as playing a role here when disputes come up here between secretaries, and I think [Bush] sees himself as the final arbiter.”

But these dynamics — and whether or not they were deliberately set up — remains unclear. Nobody knows whether Cheney will succeed in putting together his team, and nobody really knows how influential it will end up being. As the new administration continues its campaign-style attempt to manage information each week — last week was education, this week is faith-based organizations — the real test won’t come until it’s forced to deal with the unexpected. And that’s when the relationships between Cheney and Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice, will really play out. Whether Cheney’s shadow NSC is in place will signal which faction may win. The smart money is on Cheney. And with Saddam Hussein readying his atomic weapons, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Seth Gitell can be reached at sgitell@phx.com.