By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Dec 5 1996 (IPS)

President Bill Clinton’s new foreign- policy team, announced at the White House Thursday, drew decidedly mixed reviews from insiders and independent analysts alike.

Senior State Department officials, speaking on condition they not be identified, voiced dismay at the appointment of U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright as Secretary of State, insisting that she lacked both experience at managing a large bureaucracy and substantive knowledge of many issues which currently confront U.S. diplomacy.

Other analysts also raised questions about the appointments of both the current National Security Adviser, Anthony Lake, to head the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and retiring Republican Senator William Cohen to run the Pentagon.

Like Albright, neither one has any experience of running a major bureaucracy, particularly ones which have been difficult for outsiders to penetrate, let alone transform.

“This is not a good for U.S. foreign policy,” said one veteran Congressional staffer. “The only one who can claim victory is (Vice President) Al Gore. He lobbied heavily against anyone with star quality who might challenge him in the year 2000.”

That appeared to rule out at least one key candidate for Secretary of State — former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Gen. Colin Powell who was strongly favoured by many experienced foreign service officers as the man who could restore the ailing agency’s stature and budget.

It also made retiring Georgia Senator Sam Nunn, a conservative Democrat, a more problematic choice for Secretary of Defence.

“Gore kept all the big guys out, and now he gets a team of relative midgets,” the Congressional aide added.

Not all reactions were so cynical or severe. “Bringing in a woman is certainly a big historic step and adding Cohen could give him more influence with Republicans in Congress,” said I.M. Destler, a foreign policy specialist at the University of Maryland, “But this is basically moving the same people — plus Cohen — around, rather than bringing in new strength.”

If only because of her status as the first woman in charge of U.S. diplomacy, Albright will certainly attract the most interest. An academic by profession, Albright worked her way up through Democratic foreign-policy ranks first as the foreign policy aide to the late Senator George Muskie, then as legislative liaison for the National Security Council (NSC) under former President Jimmy Carter.

She became publicly prominent only after her appointment by Clinton to the U.N. post where she was known for her pugnacious defence of U.S. policy.

An early advocate of what she called “assertive multilateralism,” she changed her tune dramatically after the failed U.N. mission in Somalia, even delighting the ultra- rightwing Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, Jesse Helms, who Thursday all but endorsed her nomination.

Those ties to Capitol Hill, which controls the State Department’s pursestrings, may be her strongest card, according to independent analysts. The U.S. international affairs budget — at about 10 billion dollars a year — has fallen to half of what it was in real terms just 10 years ago, while U.S. foreign aid has fallen to its lowest point since World War II.

Turning that around will be “job number one” for any secretary of state, said one senior official who expressed scepticism that Albright’s ties to the Republican-controlled Congress will be strong enough to get the job done. “Powell could have done it; I doubt that Albright, particularly given her lack of policy and management experience, can do it.”

Others were more blunt. “Compared to her, (retiring Secretary of State Warren) Christopher is a giant,” said one Congressional aide with long experience in foreign policy issues. “She’s Madame Soundbite.”

Moreover, said one senior official, “she has virtually no experience with Asia (a major foreign policy priority) or Latin America. Not only has she alienated much of the Middle East and Africa by leading the campaign against (U.N. Secretary-General Boutros) Boutros-Ghali, she’s also played the lead in denying the U.N. any role in the Arab-Israeli peace process.”

If his choice of Albright will draw the most controversy, Clinton’s decision to move Lake to the CIA was the most surprising, even though it had been rumoured for weeks.

Lake’s appointment will be “devastating for morale at the CIA,” according to Mel Goodman, a retired career CIA official who now teaches at the National War College. Not only is Lake’s move from the NSC an effective demotion, but Lake’s own history marks him as someone who is deeply sceptical of the agency, particularly its powerful covert action wing.

A protege of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Lake, for example, resigned from the foreign service to protest the U.S. invasion of Cambodia in 1970. He was head of the State Department’s policy planning wing during the Carter administration when covert actions were sharply reduced, and in 1993 he hired Morton Halperin, an outspoken critic of covert operations, onto the NSC staff.

“This could be a turning point for the agency,” said Goodman. “For the first time, it could be run by a serious substantive person with access to the president …at a time when the clandestine services are in trouble.”

“The problem is he has no experience whatsoever in dealing with a large bureaucracy,” says Goodman. “If he has sharp enough elbows bureaucratically, I just don’t know.”

Cohen will face similar problems, according to analysts who do not see him as the kind of reformer Lake could be.

“He’s likely to get swallowed up,” noted one administration official. Between trying to pacify his Republican colleagues, working as a team player with a Democratic administration, and controlling the nation’s biggest public bureaucracy, he’s going to have his hands awfully full.”

Meanwhile, the NSC will be run by Lake’s deputy, Sandy Berger, who may yet, according to some analysts, emerge as the key foreign- policy player. A consummate political fixer with close ties to both Clinton and Gore, Berger will play a key coordinating role at the White House.

“Today’s announcements mean one of two things: either Clinton doesn’t care about foreign policy, or he intends to run it out of the White House,” the veteran Congressional staffer told IPS.

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