Condeleeza Rice, Gates
Khue Bui for Newsweek
Friends With Cabinets: Rice (left) and Gates upend the usual dynamic
POLITICS

State and Defense: For Once, Opposites Attract

The comity between the two is a '180- degree turn' from Rumsfeld and Powell.

 
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Some of the most bitter battles in Washington have been fought between the secretaries of State and Defense. They are often competitors for resources and the president's ear, though not always along predictably dovish or hawkish lines. In the Clinton administration, the interventionist was the secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, while Defense Secretary William Cohen resisted sending forces into harm's way. In the Reagan administration, Secretary of State George Shultz was constantly sparring with Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger over arms control. In the Truman administration, Defense Secretary Louis Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Acheson openly despised each other. Johnson fed so much damaging information to the press about Acheson that Truman forced his Defense secretary, weeping, to resign. In George W. Bush's first term, Secretary of State Colin Powell felt cut out by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. After a trip to Australia in the first year, Powell did not travel abroad with Rumsfeld; Powell's chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson doesn't even recall the two men aboard Air Force One at the same time.

So Washington insiders have noted with interest that Rumsfeld's Pentagon successor, Robert Gates, has taken three trips in the last 10 months with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. For security reasons, the two secretaries tend to fly separately even when headed to the same place. But last summer Rice abandoned her C-32 official aircraft to fly with Gates from Egypt to Saudi Arabia aboard his more cushy E-4B (similar to the jets that serve as Air Force One). In the past year, Rice and Gates have traveled twice together to Russia.

The two are not just traveling companions but allies in every significant way. Both Russian experts, they served in national security during the Bush 41 years (Gates was Rice's boss). "They are friends, not just colleagues," said Gates's press secretary Geoff Morrell. The two secretaries' tandem travels are a "great indication of how well State and [the Pentagon] are working together," said Sean McCormack, Rice's chief spokesman. A senior official, who declined to be named discussing sensitive relationships, described the comity between the two secretaries as a "180-degree turn" from the fractious Powell/Rumsfeld dynamic.

Rice and Gates are both believers in "soft power," emphasizing economic and diplomatic ties. Some right- wingers complain that the Rice/Gates axis is producing a moderate foreign policy, isolating a small circle of hard-liners around Vice President Dick Cheney (who remains influential). But even some conservatives see a plus side to State-Pentagon cooperation. "A lot of people in the [Pentagon] believe that the State-Defense feud went too far" during the run-up to the Iraq War, says Michael Pillsbury, a conservative Pentagon consultant on China. "People are relieved at the détente."

At a speech at Kansas State University last November, Gates spoke out for giving the State Department more tools for soft power, including more diplomats and economic aid, as well as a "dramatic increase" in funding and personnel for the Pentagon's old bureaucratic rivals at the State Department. In Washington, where budgeting is often a zero-sum game, that's true love.

© 2008

 
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Member Comments
  • Posted By: getzel @ 04/19/2008 10:06:58 AM

    Comment: Condoleezza Rice has an oil super tanker transporting oil to and from the mid east: named on the side of the supertanker CONDOLEEZZA RICE; ok they erased her name when she went in politics and parade her as a provost. Google it to see a picture of her super tanker. That fact should get your suspicion up that something is terribly wrong.

    BUSH/CHENEY/RICE/GATES DEMAND creating A NEW SHARIA TERRORIST STATE ON THE WEST BANK & GAZA. Can there be any dispute that a state created on the West Bank & Gaza will continue being a terror state like Iran & Syria et al. Yet Rice demands it.

    Most Arab countries policy is peace equals no Israel. So Israel can not do anything to make peace other than cease to exist.

    We can now understand that Bush/Cheney/Rice got the exact outcome in Iraq that they desired when they sent in troops in 2003.

    Bush/Cheney/Rice/Gates policies, actions, support creating terror states in the West Bank and Gaza and Pakistan and Iraq and Lebanon and Kosovo, and Chechnya and elsewhere. Bush/Cheney/Rice/Gates actions are only consistent with creating Sharia terror states. When words are not consistent with actions only follow the actions.

    Iraqi women were the happiest in the region and were free to wear whatever and became lawyers and scientists. Now they are 100% veiled from head to toe and living in constant fear. Iraq used to have the best infrastructure and universities in the region and was envied for that, The Americans destroyed the Secular terrorist Iraqi state that we knew & created an Islamic terrorist state!

    Sharia people are at war with The West because Sharia people believe Islam can not survive against: a free market economy with free speech to criticize Islam.

    War ends We win: when we pass a law that makes the minimum price of gasoline at the pumps: $1.75/gallon.

    The ethanol investors do not build ethanol distilleries because monopoly OPEC would lower the price of crude/gasoline to rust out the billion dollar/million barrel a day ethanol stills.

    Brazil is energy independent: ethanol; All their cars come built running on ethanol; The gas station fills the tanks with ethanol, no gasoline.

    Archer Daniel Midland made millions in the USA selling $1.00 gallon ethanol in the 1990s;

    That trumps any canard/invalid objection to ethanol. Use Cellulose sugar ethanol, not corn sugar ethanol.

    Moo cows extract the sugar from grass: cellulose; man on moo n, cars on mars send back moo ving pictures; but USA can not get sugar from grass like the moo cow in the field.

    The Bush/Cheney/Rice/Gates doctrine of LET US HAVE A NICE LONG LASTING WAR AND SELL LOTS OF WEAPONS & finance the bad guys war against the USA with high oil prices.

    Now you know why Bush would rather YOU fight than switch: to ethanol.

    Intelligence analyst: Getzel

    The leadership that sponsors these terrorist suicide murders are the Heads of state in Tehran, Riyadh, Damascus, and the .

  • Posted By: getzel @ 04/19/2008 10:05:20 AM

    Comment: PatheticDummy: Condoleezza Rice has an oil super tanker transporting oil to and from the mid east: named on the side of the supertanker CONDOLEEZZA RICE; ok they erased her name when she went in politics and parade her as a provost. Google it to see a picture of her super tanker. That fact should get your suspicion up that something is terribly wrong.

    BUSH/CHENEY/RICE/GATES DEMAND creating A NEW SHARIA TERRORIST STATE ON THE WEST BANK & GAZA. Can there be any dispute that a state created on the West Bank & Gaza will continue being a terror state like Iran & Syria et al. Yet Rice demands it.

    Most Arab countries policy is peace equals no Israel. So Israel can not do anything to make peace other than cease to exist.

    We can now understand that Bush/Cheney/Rice got the exact outcome in Iraq that they desired when they sent in troops in 2003.

    Bush/Cheney/Rice/Gates policies, actions, support creating terror states in the West Bank and Gaza and Pakistan and Iraq and Lebanon and Kosovo, and Chechnya and elsewhere. Bush/Cheney/Rice/Gates actions are only consistent with creating Sharia terror states. When words are not consistent with actions only follow the actions.

    Iraqi women were the happiest in the region and were free to wear whatever and became lawyers and scientists. Now they are 100% veiled from head to toe and living in constant fear. Iraq used to have the best infrastructure and universities in the region and was envied for that, The Americans destroyed the Secular terrorist Iraqi state that we knew & created an Islamic terrorist state!

    Sharia people are at war with The West because Sharia people believe Islam can not survive against: a free market economy with free speech to criticize Islam.

    War ends We win: when we pass a law that makes the minimum price of gasoline at the pumps: $1.75/gallon.

    The ethanol investors do not build ethanol distilleries because monopoly OPEC would lower the price of crude/gasoline to rust out the billion dollar/million barrel a day ethanol stills.

    Brazil is energy independent: ethanol; All their cars come built running on ethanol; The gas station fills the tanks with ethanol, no gasoline.

    Archer Daniel Midland made millions in the USA selling $1.00 gallon ethanol in the 1990s;

    That trumps any canard/invalid objection to ethanol. Use Cellulose sugar ethanol, not corn sugar ethanol.

    Moo cows extract the sugar from grass: cellulose; man on moo n, cars on mars send back moo ving pictures; but USA can not get sugar from grass like the moo cow in the field.

    The Bush/Cheney/Rice/Gates doctrine of LET US HAVE A NICE LONG LASTING WAR AND SELL LOTS OF WEAPONS & finance the bad guys war against the USA with high oil prices.

    Now you know why Bush would rather YOU fight than switch: to ethanol.

    Intelligence analyst: Getzel

    The leadership that sponsors these terrorist suicide murders are the Heads of state in Tehran, Riyadh, Damascus, and the .

  • Posted By: PatriotDolly @ 04/19/2008 8:23:06 AM

    Comment: We need Rice as McCain's running mate. She would be an excellent vice president and would satisfy the needs of those who need a woman and/or a black in the oval office.

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