Daily Telegraph: Now comes the hard part. President George W Bush’s elegy to freedom yesterday and his vision of it flowering around the world fitted into the long tradition of inaugural speeches that blend America’s optimism with smugness about the reach and benefits of its power. But unlike most of his predecessors Mr Bush has repeatedly made clear that he sees “spreading freedom” as more than a slogan. For him it is a mission. The challenge for his aides now is how – and where – to act on his words. Daily Telegraph
By Alec Russell in Washington
Now comes the hard part. President George W Bush’s elegy to freedom yesterday and his vision of it flowering around the world fitted into the long tradition of inaugural speeches that blend America’s optimism with smugness about the reach and benefits of its power.
But unlike most of his predecessors Mr Bush has repeatedly made clear that he sees “spreading freedom” as more than a slogan. For him it is a mission. The challenge for his aides now is how – and where – to act on his words.
Mr Bush did make a rare admission that even America had its bounds, conceding in an apparent reference to difficulties in Iraq that its influence was “not unlimited”.
But officials know full well that Mr Bush will, if he thinks necessary, sweep Iraq’s problems under the Oval Office carpet and seek to bring an end to North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear programmes.
“I would put the chance of targeted strikes against Iran by the middle of Mr Bush’s term at 50-50,” said one conservative congressional source close to the White House.
“To watch as they [Iran and North Korea”> build nuclear weapons is out of the question,” said another source close to Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state-in-waiting. “If he [Bush”> leaves office with those two countries still with nuclear options, he will think he has failed.”
Yet even this ebullient White House accepts limits to its idealism. It does not share the views of those neo-conservatives who argue that freedom is non-negotiable and that even “friendly” autocrats should make way for democracy.
When Miss Rice named six “outposts of tyranny” earlier this week, she made no mention of Pakistan, Egypt or Saudi Arabia. The three are markedly undemocratic states but their support also happens to be strategically vital for Washington.
Instead Miss Rice pointed her finger at Belarus, Cuba, Burma, and Zimbabwe, along with the two surviving regimes from Mr Bush’s “axis of evil”, Iran and North Korea.
For officials in the State Department who felt that much of the globe in the past four years had been ignored amid the obsession with Saddam Hussein, the extra faces in Washington’s “rogues’ gallery” were a sign of a new focus on other trouble-spots. Yet there is only one “outpost” that is really exercising minds: Iran.
Entanglements with Iran bedevilled and almost destroyed the presidencies of two of Bush’s predecessors, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.
Iran’s President Mohammad Khatami confidently suggested yesterday that given the embroilment of 150,000 troops in Iraq the chances of an attack on Iran were slim. “I do not think the Americans would do such a crazy thing as carry out military attacks against Iran,” he said.
“The Iraqi problem is too complicated and so it does not seem they would think about attacking another country.” And, despite Mr Bush’s soaring rhetoric, notes of realism about Iraq, the first target of Mr Bush’s freedom campaign, are ringing in the White House.
Miss Rice conceded in her nomination hearings that some “bad decisions” had been made. Advisers are beginning to think the unthinkable: that the troops may have to pull out leaving Iraq somewhat short of the goal of a vigorous and secure democracy.
“I am not normally a pessimist but the lessons don’t bode well for Allawi’s [Iraq’s prime minister”> security dilemmas,” said Stephen Metz, a professor for national security affairs at the Army War College and a frequent visitor to Iraq since the invasion. “We’ve configured our army to be a sprinter… but we’re drawn into marathons.”
So talk of turning the tanks from Baghdad towards Teheran which prevailed 18 months ago after the fall of Saddam is over.
But the administration is convinced it is up to Washington to take the lead. Officials believe that European “engagement” is not only doomed to fail but positively emboldens Teheran.
Suggestions that Israel could do the dirty work and do to Iran what it did to Iraq in 1981, when it launched a successful strike against Saddam’s nuclear reactor at Osirak, are discounted, not least because of the far greater distance.
In her nomination hearings Miss Rice was careful to avoid talk of “regime change” in Teheran. She held out hope that Iran could yet be persuaded to follow the lead of Libya, which voluntarily dismantled its programme of weapons of mass destruction.
Groups in Washington are also pushing for the fomenting of an internal revolution. But all this is more hope than expectation. “There are two clocks ticking in Teheran, the clock of regime change and the clock of the nuclear programme,” said Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst who in the late 1990s was in charge of US policy towards Iran. “And the clock of regime change is ticking more slowly than the nuclear clock.”
He believes that Iran’s faltering economy is its “Achilles heel” and the threat of sanctions could lead to a climbdown.
But the Republican-dominated Congress is arguing for regime change to be an explicit goal of America’s foreign policy. For the moment, the US does not have an Iranian policy. But barring an utter disaster in Iraq, if Teheran spurns attempts to curb its nuclear ambitions, the administration will not turn its back.
“The idea that we will sit idly by is not right,” said Danielle Pletka, a prominent neo-conservative at the American Enterprise Institute. “And Europeans are very mistaken to think that George Bush is an empty vessel. He is the hawk in the administration.”
