Changing tactics, US turns to diplomacy
WASHINGTON -- On the last leg of a presidential term that will be remembered for a willingness to take unilateral action, the Bush administration yesterday relied on some uncharacteristic diplomacy and horse trading to win international support for its Iraq and Mideast initiatives.
Badly in need of international legitimacy for the US-led project in Iraq, as well as foreign funds and troops, US diplomats rolled up their sleeves and offered major concessions to secure a new UN resolution -- just 18 months after the US said the world body could become "irrelevant" if it didn't back the US-led war effort.
The resolution endorsing the interim Iraqi government passed unanimously in the 15-member Security Council yesterday -- after four revisions and many US compromises, including language giving the interim Iraqi government the right to order US-led troops to leave Iraq and a sharply limited mandate for forces to remain in Iraq that expires in January 2006.
The resolution gives Iraqi leaders control over their own security forces and a say on "sensitive offensive operations" conducted by the US-led force, though not an explicit veto over coalition military actions.
Also yesterday, at the G-8 summit in Georgia of the world's major industrialized nations, Bush administration officials circulated a draft of a significantly revised proposal to promote democracy in the Middle East that incorporated the views of Arabs and Europeans who had been angered by an earlier US plan.
Under pressure from plummeting credibility in the Middle East and a desire to announce the new initiative at the end of the summit, the United States changed what is now called the "Broader Middle East Initiative" to include a reference to the need to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, the most contentious human rights issue for many Arabs, and to include language compatible with the Arab League's own declaration on reform, adopted last month.
Even France -- a thorn in the side of the Bush administration's policies in Iraq and the Middle East -- has given guarded praise for the new US flexibility and apparent willingness to take the agenda of other countries into account.
"We were quite happy to see the current text incorporated some of our ideas," said a French diplomat at the G-8 meeting of the Mideast democracy plan, speaking by telephone under the condition of anonymity.
Bush officials lauded the developments as important progress, and proof that the administration continues to have sway in the diplomatic world, despite the fissures opened by the president's decision to go to war in Iraq without UN cooperation.
"These nations understand that a free Iraq will serve as a catalyst for change in the broader Middle East, which is an important part of winning the war on terror," Bush said.
Critics of the administration also cheered, because they said the developments indicated a softening of the bravado with which the Bush team criticized the UN, weapons inspectors, and Western European allies in 2002 and 2003.
"For the first time, the Bush administration and the president himself are confronted with the limitation of American power," said Ivo Daalder, whose book "America Unbound," criticizes Bush's foreign policy. "The president is finally figuring out that being alone means that you may in fact be less powerful than if you were working with others."
The new UN resolution represents a "180 degree difference" from the plan described by State Department and Pentagon officials in congressional testimony just over a month ago, which envisioned "limited sovereignty" and Iraqi troops being led by US commanders, Daalder said.
"On issue after issue after issue, the administration has buckled under pressure from the British and French and Russians and others to shift quite fundamentally," he said.
The new plan to promote democracy in the Mideast, which will be unveiled today at a luncheon expected to be attended by representatives from Jordan, Turkey, Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, and Afghanistan, as well as Iraq's new interim president, represents the "first attempt by the US to make this a multilateral, coalition process," said Tamara Wittes, a fellow at Brookings Institution.
The Mideast plan is designed to help G-8 countries coordinate all programs to promote democracy in the Middle East, and provide additional financial support to promote literacy and economic growth in the private sector.
The language in it is an "immense change in tone" from Bush's speech in November of 2003 during which he described the "spread of freedom" in the Middle East as an American task, Wittes said.
But tensions remain as many wonder if the administration's new openness to outside opinions is merely a temporary move based on necessity rather than a real shift in vision.
Wittes said that the need for international support and legitimacy in Iraq left US officials with little choice but to change the way they deal with diplomacy.
"What has doomed our project [in Iraq] thus far is the lack of legitimacy," Wittes said. "It clearly true that the US is being more flexible, but that is an acknowledgment of reality rather than a real shift in fundamental approach."
The new aura of cooperation comes on the heels of months of violence and chaos in Iraq, and a decision to use shuttle diplomacy with militants in Fallujah and Najaf rather than force. Some see the pullbacks from conflict in Fallujah and Najaf -- and the handover of security operations to Iraqis -- as the first signs of a US willingness to be flexible and cede control.
"We were basically saying we were willing to give up control of a lot of military operations in Iraq," said Walter Russell Mead, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "At that point, it becomes much easier to become flexible at the UN."
The US approach also has shifted since Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, made stronger coalitions and ties with allies a central point in his campaign, asserting that the war in Iraq had so badly damaged relations that only a new president can fix them.
US officials working on Middle East policy in Washington concede that realities on the ground have prompted a change of tactics, but the administration is not eager to portray itself as having shifted its approach.
"Some see compromise as caving," said one administration official whose office has collaborated on the Middle East initiative. Referring to recent newspaper articles criticizing the Bush administration for bending to European demands, he said: "It's damned if you do, damned if you don't."
Despite strengthened cooperation, the Bush administration is likely to face an uphill battle.
State Department officials and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice have said that they don't expect a large influx of foreign troops to help police Iraq.
And today's meeting over the Middle East initiative is likely to face serious opposition, both from Arab regimes resistant to democratic reform and reformers who question the sincerity of the United States in working with Arabs.
Farah Stockman can be reached at fstockman@globe.com.
