Rice’s current foreign trip is a display of incompetence and unwillingness to understand the other side of the table. But in this she is only a sample of the general U.S. foreign policy establishment. There is little hope that the next administration’s policies might be in better shape.
Rice’s visit to Russia, together with SecDef Gates, was a low point as it resulted in exactly zero.
Unprepared and without any item to negotiate about, Rice allowed Putin to run PR rounds around the U.S. team. Only on the second day some hastily improvised package on missile defense was offered. As this was in no way thought through and did not contain any compromise, Russia rejected it.
Rice’s lack of self awareness in her comments about a presidency with too much power was slightly amusing. But her personal lowest point must have been a meeting with the chairwoman of a Russian human rights organization:
[The woman] contended that the United States had “lost the high moral ground,” and thus should join with European countries to make it clear to Mr. Putin that a drift further away from democracy was unacceptable diplomatically.
“The American voice alone doesn’t work anymore,” she said after the meeting. “The Russians are not influenced by it.” She said Ms. Rice had bristled at the criticism, replying sharply, “We never lost the high moral ground.”
Views on that issue seem to differ …
All the while a foreign policy crisis was brewing in Turkey. As there is obviously no other urgent business, the Democratic congress stired up harsh protests from Ankara for acknowledging some ‘genocide’ the Ottoman empire committed on Armenians. Turkey was founded years after this happened as a counterpoint to that empire and will certainly never acknowledge any responsibility for its deeds.
U.S.-Turkey relations are already on the edge as Ankara wants to go after the PKK in Iraq. Rice hastily dispatched two envoys, but as these too where unprepared and offering nothing, their mission failed. Turkey lauched artillery attacks on Kurdish hamlets in Iraq and a vote for a full fledged invasions of northern Iraq is on its parliament task list.
But Rice’s worst performance is her current trip to Israel. While she today says ‘Now is time for Palestinian state’ she is lacking any will to pressure Israel for compromise.
Olmert hinted Monday that he is ready to share control of Jerusalem, saying for the first time that Israel could do without controlling some of the holy city’s outlying Arab neighborhoods.
A big meeting was planed for November as proof to the U.S. Middle East allies that some progress can be made. It will likely not take place at all. Not even the most sycophantic Arab dictator can accept and sell ‘outlying Arab neighborhoods’ in the holy city of Jerusalem as more than an outright insult.
On all three issues – Russia, Turkey and the Middle East – Rice had nothing to offer and accordingly nothing to gain. It is likely that her trip was the last attempt of the Bush administration in the foreign policy field. From now up to the next president, there will only be erratic misbehaviour.
Unfortunately it is not certain that a new administration will do any better.
At the end of the U.S. empire, Le Monde Diplomatique remarks, there could be cooperation:
Yet it is just as likely that US policy will be unpredictable: as all post-colonial experiences show, de-imperialisation is likely to be a long and possibly traumatic process.
Rice’s non-diplomacy might thereby only be the beginning of a long period of U.S. foreign policy chaos.