Exit Powell

COLIN POWELL'S role within the Bush administration was that of the loyal opposition. In a crew of blinkered unilateralists, the outgoing secretary of state functioned as a lonely devotee of what has been the mainstream internationalist tradition in US foreign policy since 1945.

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The disasters wrought by President Bush and advisers such as Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would likely have been even worse if not for Powell's presence. Although his soldier's notion of loyalty kept him from airing his dissent in public, Powell remained until yesterday's announcement of his departure a steadfast advocate of the old diplomatic virtues that Cheney, Rumsfeld, and company disdained.

First among those traditions was an appreciation of the value of America's alliances. Following in the footsteps of former secretary of state James Baker, who helped the first President Bush form a broad coalition to drive Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991, Powell persuaded the current President Bush to seek what became the unanimous UN Security Council Resolution 1441 demanding that Saddam comply with all previous UN resolutions.

That was an intramural argument, a crucial one, that Powell won. It was not his fault that CIA officials gave him bad intelligence to support the war or that Bush subsequently failed to preserve international solidarity. And when the initial phase of the fighting in Iraq was over -- a war that Powell tried to warn Bush would saddle the United States with difficult nation-building responsibilities -- it was Powell who steered the administration back to the United Nations to legitimize the creation of an Iraqi interim government and the holding of elections in January.

Powell also understood the pragmatic need to negotiate with the Stalinist dictatorship in North Korea. Unlike hard-line rivals in the administration who operate on the irrational assumption that some other way may turn up to dismantle Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program, Powell wisely pushed for a deal, recognizing that there is no other way to thwart what is perhaps the single greatest security threat to Americans.

Powell was right about the influence-magnifying value of America's alliances, about the urgency of funding the war against AIDS in Africa, and about the necessity of peacemaking in the Middle East. He was also right to persevere as long as he did, fighting a good fight.

As leader of the men and women in the Foreign Service, Powell inspired an exceptional degree of loyalty. Diplomats from other countries looked on him, properly, as the embodiment of those qualities that once made the United States first among peers in the community of democracies. For the good of the country, we can only hope that Powell's replacement has some of his old-fashioned virtues.