One way to get at this question would be to explore the thinking of Condoleezza Rice. Rice is as close to Bush’s alter ego as any adviser to the president has ever been (with the possible exception of Karl Rove). She has been his personal guide and aide through his foreign-policy journeys. Her own writings before coming into office displayed a disciplined realism about the world that mirrored–and probably influenced–the president’s original views.
I asked a senior administration official who is familiar with Rice’s thinking to explain the shift. Two forces seemed uppermost. First, the stark reality of a unipolar world. “Coming into office you realize what a tremendous vacuum there is in the world without the United States,” the senior official said, “and how enormous the gulf is between the U.S. and others in terms of maintaining stability.” Rice seems well aware that American activism can generate an anti-American backlash around the world, but she also knows that there is no alternative, especially after 9-11.
For Rice–and the president–September 11, 2001, completely changed American policy. As my source explained, “People who say that a single event can’t produce that much change are wrong. Pearl Harbor caused a massive shift in America’s engagement with the world. So did 9-11.” The official also noted the shift in Washington’s attitudes toward nation-building. “Nothing now is in the category of unimportant. Small countries, failing states, all become crucial in the war against terror.”
For someone who is careful not to reveal her own views, Rice has been forthright about the need for political reform in the Muslim world. She has said repeatedly that the United States is serious about helping Arab societies become more open and democratic, especially a post-Saddam Iraq. She has been an important voice in the administration’s support of nation-building efforts in Afghanistan. “If you get a democratic Afghanistan, a reformed Palestinian Authority and a democratizing Iraq,” the official said, “they will send a powerful signal across the Muslim world.”
A new emphasis on democratic reform has now been adopted throughout the U.S. government, even in the State Department, which had long worried that U.S. efforts to promote reform in the Middle East would produce instability in that vital oil-rich region, or derail the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, or lead to Khomeini-like takeovers. In an important speech last week, Richard Haass, a top State Department official, engaged in that rarest of acts in government, self-criticism. “In many parts of the Muslim world, and particularly in the Arab world, successive U.S. administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, have not made democratization a sufficient priority,” he noted. More significantly, the speech announced that Washington will now shift to a more “actively engaged” promotion of democratic reform in the region. In the next few months Colin Powell will provide details on new policy initiatives. This is a significant shift. You cannot really change American policy without changing State Department policy.
It is a daunting challenge. The Arab world does not have one full-fledged democracy among its 22 countries. More broadly, only 25 percent of the Muslim world is democratic, compared with well more than 50 percent of the rest of the world. But despite what Osama bin Laden and Pat Robertson say, there is nothing intrinsic about Islam or Arabs that means they must continue along this hopeless path.
Condoleezza Rice comes to this issue not only as a foreign-policy expert. She has told friends a story of her first year in college at the University of Denver. A professor was teaching the theories of William Shockley, who argued that blacks were genetically less intelligent than whites. Rice, who was 16 at the time, stood up in his class and objected. “But there isn’t any evidence to the contrary,” the professor said. Rice responded, “Let me explain to you: I speak French; I play Bach. I’m better in your culture than you are. Obviously it can be taught. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not you are black.”
This belief that anyone can aspire to anything is one of America’s greatest gifts to the world. And Condi Rice knows it not just in her head, but in her heart.
