White House Week
Get Ready for Some Real Base-Closing Blowback
Taking their cue from an angry Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the newly elected Republican who was flummoxed by the proposed closing of his state's Ellsworth Air Force Base, other GOP members with bases on the Pentagon's hit list are poised to retaliate. House and Senate aides say some members are prepared to vote against key Bush agenda items, even Social Security reform, if bases in their districts are shuttered. Unsettled by the negative congressional reaction, President Bush, in his next round of speeches, will launch a sympathy offensive, expressing concern for those whose lives would be disrupted. "It's understandable for members of Congress [whose districts] will lose jobs to react this way," says a senior White House adviser. But he didn't hold out hope that the White House would save many--if any--bases.
Tough Words From an Old Team Player
Richard Haass, who was director of policy planning at the State Department during most of the Bush first term, offered a tough critique last week of his old boss's foreign policy--one of the first to come from a team known for its loyalty and discretion. Haass, who is now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the administration has "lost valuable time" by being overly concerned that six nations be at the table with North Korea. Haass wants the United States to be more specific about what it will offer in return for North Korea's abandoning its nuclear programs, what the Bush administration considers an acceptable outcome to the current standoff, and what it will do if defiance continues.
When he was at the State Department, Haass says, he opposed the Iraq war, but if he knew then what he knows now about Iraq's lacking chemical and biological weapons, he would have been even more strongly opposed. The Iraq venture has consumed enormous amounts of money, manpower, and time of decision makers, Haass says, and has reduced Bush's freedom to maneuver in his second term: "We're not going to have the choice of large-scale interventions."
Haass, whose new book, The Opportunity, has just been published, argues that the administration should work to integrate developing countries, and rising powers like China and India, into a system of free-market democracies. The go-it-alone instincts of some Bush policymakers, he warns, risk "alienating the world" and inducing "reflexive opposition" to the United States.
Sometimes, It's Just All in the Name
Nearly four years after 9/11, officials have finally figured out who the enemy is. The White House's new counterterrorism strategy, now being revamped at the National Security Council, will focus more sharply on Islamic extremism, not terrorism. One important sign of the change: Policymakers are ready to abandon their shorthand for the conflict--GWOT, or the global war on terrorism. The likely new name is simply WOE--the war on extremism. The reason, explains a senior national security official: "Terrorism is the method rather than the enemy."
With Paul Bedard, Kenneth T. Walsh, Julian E. Barnes and David E. Kaplan Paul Bedard, Kenneth T. Walsh, Julian E. Barnes and David E. Kaplan Paul Bedard, Kenneth T. Walsh, Julian E. Barnes and David E. Kaplan
This story appears in the June 6, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.