From the Toronto Star

The editor of an American magazine who is exceptionally savvy politically was in town this week and had breakfast with some local journalists, including myself.

One of my questions was whether he judged that President George W. Bush had actually meant the comparatively encouraging comments he recently made about a possible Israeli-Palestinian peace deal — when Bush said he wanted to use his political 'capital' to create a democratic Palestinian state during his second four-year term — or had only said this to help out his election-bound buddy, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The editor said he didn't know which interpretation was true but that he could offer one way to measure whether Bush might be sincere.

The word going around Washington, he said, was that Secretary of State Colin Powell might stay on if he believed Bush really intended to apply himself to a Middle East peace deal.

A few hours later the story broke that Powell was, in fact, resigning.

Maybe the editor's story was never true. Maybe, no matter whether it's fact or fantasy, Bush may still actively promote an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. It was noticeable, though, that Powell at his post-resignation press conference was very cautious, almost off-hand, about the prospects for such a pact.

The story does have a ring of internal credibility. After four years at state, during which he was able to accomplish little while, far worse for him, his once stellar reputation went into partial eclipse, a real chance to make history in the Middle East would have been a powerful attraction for Powell to stay on.

Most probable of all, was that this option was never available to Powell. Rather than leaving because he wanted to — as, naturally, he now claims — Powell may not be staying on because Bush didn't want him to stay.

Instead, what Bush wanted was Condoleezza Rice as his messenger carrier to the world, and yesterday he nominated her as Powell's successor.

Rice isn't a neo-conservative ideologue in the manner of Vice-President Dick Cheney or Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, both of whom so effectively, and so brutally, undermined Powell. Rice, still National Security Adviser, is instead pure, unadulterated Bush. Probably only Laura Bush is closer to him than she is.

Their religious and sporting views are identical. She regularly spends weekends with him and his family at Camp David.

She fiercely supported the war on Iraq and strongly supported the doctrine of pre-emptive attack against potential threats (threats as the U.S. defines them, that is) and, therefore, of unilateralism.

As America's top diplomat Rice, thus, will have one significant advantage over Powell. Whenever she speaks, the world will know that it is Bush speaking. The price the world will pay for this is that from now on there will be only one voice, one attitude, one single, simple theme, coming out of Washington.

This will be, either you are for me, or you are against me, either my way, or the highway.

The moderates have been pushed out of the tent.

Almost as significant as Rice's appointment to the top post will be the rumoured choice of ultra-hawk John Bolton to be her deputy secretary of state.

After Bush's election victory, some commentators speculated that he would use his second, and last, term, to fashion a foreign policy legacy for himself, much as Ronald Reagan did when he made some bold disarmament moves — as at the Iceland summit — and reached out to the Soviet Union as the Cold War came to an end.

This analysis was right, but not in the sense that those advancing it intended.

Bush does intend to fashion himself a foreign policy legacy. But it will be his legacy, in other words, his version of how he wants to go down in the history books and not the version that the internationalists had in mind, of a peacemaker and a conciliator.

The legacy Bush has in mind will unquestionably be that of the victor of the war against terrorism and of the leader who brought — and imposed — democracy in the Middle East.

Powell's departure and Rice's arrival (plus that of Bolton in place of the moderate Richard Armitage, who was the top aide to Powell) signal that Bush's second term won't be just more of the same, but, rather, even more of the same.

As for the prospects for a serious attempt at Middle Eastern peace, Powell's caution, and off-handedness, were almost certainly justified.

In London, Blair, who undoubtedly was told what was coming when he was in Washington last weekend, could think of nothing more positive to say about future U.S. foreign policy than that it was 'evolving.'

Yes, it's evolving back to the rule that might is right.



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