SIVACRACY.NET

In today's Washington Post, David Rothkopf of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argues persuasively that Dick Cheney is no longer much of a factor in US foreign policy, for which all of those who don't actually have bomb cellars should be grateful.

At the risk of losing my Sivacracy membership, I'll also point out that I find the description of Condoleezza Rice quite convincing: "Diplomatic, thoughtful and a good listener, she is the Un-Cheney. She has the ear and trust of the president and she has been embraced by U.S. allies for her efforts to repair the damage to ties frayed by first-term policies."

The problem, however, is that the damage is largely done. A State Dept. source tells Rothkopf that if the second quarter (?) of the Bush presidency was about Iraq and the third about Rice's taking over, the fourth will be about Iran, and the diplomat is strikingly pessimistic. Add to that the recent morale-building trip to India that essentially placed a bilateral US-India agreement above the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That this caused tension in the US-Pakistan relationship is pretty unsurprising; even more fascinating is how the gracelessness of the visit managed to worsen the tense conditions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Former Afghani president Sibghatullah Mojadidi, who today survived a bomb attack that killed four other people, blamed Pakistan and its continued relations with the Taliban.

Cheney bet the farm and cast the die several years ago, and we're facing grim consequences far outside of the borders of Iraq. The unnamed diplomat's comparison of phases of Bush's foreign policy to the four quarters of a football game is apt only if one thinks about what a game looks like when a team goes down by, oh, about about six touchdowns in the second quarter. Iraq isn't just a blip, a mistake, a problem that's corrected once the vice-president is (mostly) safely out hunting quail. It's an enormous albatross around the neck of the United States, limiting the flexibility of our armed forces, draining the national budget, and absorbing an extraordinary amount of attention from America's diplomatic and security corps.

I hope that Rothkopf's right about the trajectory of foreign policy, and I've been far more impressed with Rice as a Secretary of State than as a National Security Advisor. But it worries me that even with this relatively upbeat appraisal of her performance, the best we seem to be able to hope for is that things won't get much worse, except for Iran's becoming a nuclear power. Yikes. As much as I'd love a plane of my own, I wouldn't want to trade places with the Secretary.