The Dangerous First Year: National Security at the Start of a New Presidency by William I. Hitchcock & Melvyn P. Leffler

Author:William I. Hitchcock & Melvyn P. Leffler [Hitchcock, William I. & Leffler, Melvyn P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, History & Theory
ISBN: 9780813939605
Google: ozUzDQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 32511031
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2016-10-28T08:00:19+00:00

Trust but Clarify

George W. Bush’s National Security Team Was Beset with Rivalries

Melvyn P. Leffler

On taking office, President George W. Bush quickly turned his attention to his domestic agenda—lowering taxes, reforming education, and implementing a strategy of compassionate conservatism through faith-based initiatives. But he faced a real challenge: His foreign policy advisers were saying contradictory things.

“For the first time in decades,” commented Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in March 2001, “the country faces no strategic challenge. . . . We don’t have to wake up every morning thinking something terrible is going to happen.” But two months later, George Tenet, director of the CIA, warned Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, that “100 percent reliable information” suggested an impending “spectacular” terrorist attack against American or Israeli interests. “This is real. . . . We are going to get hit,” he told skeptics within the administration.

Nonetheless, in mid-July, when Rice asked State Department officials to begin drafting the administration’s national strategy statement, they slighted the terrorist threat, noted the absence of any global rivals, stressed America’s “unparalleled strength,” and heralded a “time of opportunity.” Rumsfeld was otherwise preoccupied. On September 10, before a large audience at the Pentagon, he declared: “The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America. . . . It attempts to impose its demands across time zones, continents, oceans, and beyond. . . . It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk.” That adversary, Rumsfeld pronounced, was the “Pentagon bureaucracy.”

These remarks reflect the discord and the lack of urgency during the Bush administration’s first few months. While ambiguity and uncertainty are not uncommon in newly installed presidencies, the first year of the Bush administration illustrates how important it is for a president to impose his own imprimatur on the nation’s foreign policy goals and priorities, and how essential it is to bring together a team of advisers who embrace those goals, trust one another, and share confidence in their own decision-making machinery. These advisers must also think strategically, rigorously assessing and ranking threats, delineating priorities, and linking tactics and goals.

Bush’s presidential campaign got off to a good start in 1999. A Texas governor and former businessman, Bush did not have much knowledge of foreign policy or national security, and he knew it. So he invited Condoleezza Rice, a former Russia expert on his father’s national security staff, to tutor him and put together a team to formulate overall policy direction. The group, known as the Vulcans, included Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, Robert Zoellick, and Dov Zakheim, among others.

The team fashioned several excellent speeches for candidate Bush and prepped him for his debates with Al Gore, the Democratic candidate. In his campaign speeches and debates, Bush emphasized the importance of military strength yet wanted the United States to act with humility and empathy. The United States, Bush declared, must not withdraw, and must not drift.

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