The Lost Administration

David Frum says some things I've been thinking ever since the 2004 election:

Something has gone very, very wrong in this second Bush administration. That is obvious to everyone. One of the few merits of this week’s North Korea nuclear deal is that we can get a clearer view of what exactly the problem is – or should I say, what the problems are?

First problem: The deal demonstrates a lethal failure of strategic vision.

The Bush administration entered office determined to take a tougher line on North Korea than Bill Clinton. In February 2002, he warned in his “axis of evil” speech that North Korea was arming to threaten the peace of the world. In October 2002, his administration confronted the North Koreans with proof that they had cheated on their 1994 deal with the United States, secretly starting a whole new nuclear program, this one using enriched uranium.

All excellent moves – if you have a plan to follow through. But it turns out: there was no plan.

North Korea responded (predictably) by accelerating its nuclear development, completing half a dozen bombs, and testing a nuclear device in October 2006. Now, five years after “axis of evil,” the Bush administration finds itself signing almost exactly the same deal that the Clinton administration bequeathed it, with no more safeguards against cheating than before. The only difference is that North Korea has become a declared nuclear power in the interim. And it will remain a declared nuclear power: Last week’s deal does not call on North Korea to surrender its existing weapons.

All this raises the question: What was the point of confronting North Korea in the first place?

Second problem: The deal reveals a breakdown of the administration’s decision-making process.

It’s always a good idea in government to hear lots of points of view. But as David Sanger reports in Thursday’s New York Times:

“To win approval of a deal with North Korea that has been assailed by conservatives inside and outside the administration, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice bypassed layers of government policy review that had derailed past efforts to negotiate an agreement, several senior administration officials said this week. … ‘There was no process here,’ said an official who has been deeply involved in the issue. ‘Nothing. There was no airing of whether this is the way to deal with the North Koreans.’”

(Rice talks often to Sanger: his reporting on her actions can be taken as authoritative.)

This is not the first time Rice has practiced management-by-avoidance. As National Security Adviser in the first Bush term, it was Rice’s job to broker and reconcile disagreements among the national security bureaucracies. But when State, Defense, and CIA quarreled over how postwar Iraq was to be governed, Rice backed away from this absolutely essential issue. Each bureaucracy went on its own contradictory way. The US arrived in Baghdad with no consensus at all on what was to happen next. Result: chaos.

In the Korean case, Rice’s bypassing of the rest of the government again means that important questions went unasked.

Bush started off on the right note, emphasizing loyalty and teamwork.

Then he let Colin Powell and Dick Armitage screw him at State, with Powell memorably pushing for a SecState veto over the Iraq War.

He let George Tenet undermine him at every turn, with hostile factions at CIA leaking selectively to hostile journalists to undermine Bush foreign policy.

He left Don Rumsfeld and the Pentagon to flap in the breeze in wartime, and when the enemies Rumsfeld made in order to do his job in the face of outright resistance from Langley and Foggy Bottom called from Rumsfeld's head, he gave it to him, installing a CIA apparatchik in his place.

Condi Rice, who proved too weak as National Security Advisor to get Powell, Tenet, and Rumsfeld to play nice, took over at State and promptly went native.

This is not an administration with a shared vision, much less a plan for achieving it.

Bush's reaction since 2004 seems to be that of a man who simply wishes the world would go away.