Mark Steyn
National Post
Monday, March 17, 2003
A headline in Friday's Washington Post captures perfectly the Rumsfeld Effect: "Anti-U.S. Sentiment Abates in South Korea; Change Follows Rumsfeld Suggestion of Troop Cut."
"Change Follows Rumsfeld Suggestion": There's a slogan for the age, and fast becoming the First Law of Post-9/11 Geopolitics.
"The anti-American demonstrations here have suddenly gone poof," began the Post reporter in Seoul. "The official line from the South Korean government is: Yankees stay here."
What brought about this remarkable transformation? Why, a passing remark, an extemporaneous musing -- in other words, "a suggestion from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that U.S. troops may be cut and repositioned."
Other politicians sweat for weeks over a major 90-minute policy speech, hire the best writers, craft memorable phrases, and nobody notices. If you want to "re-shape the debate," as the cliché has it, all you need is a casual aside from Rummy. The concept of "old Europe" barely existed until Rumsfeld used it as a throwaway line a month-and-a-half ago. Within a week, it became the dominant regional paradigm. Belgium -- Old Europe. Bulgaria -- New Europe. The entire map of the continent suddenly fell into place for the first time since the Cold War. Even those who indignantly huffed about this unacceptable insult seemed unable to do so without confirming the truth of it: There was M. Chirac telling New Europe they'd missed a perfect opportunity to shut up. Instead, emboldened by Rummy, New Europe let rip.
Alas, last week Rummy's ruminations on rummy nations finally alighted, as they were bound to eventually, on the United Kingdom. The Defence Secretary made some mild remarks to the effect that, if Britain weren't able to participate in the war on Iraq, it wouldn't make much difference. Even some of his cheerleaders on the right thought this was a tad inconsiderate of Mr. Blair. And at the BBC they fell upon it deliriously as evidence that heartless old Rumsfeld would be happy to have Bush's poodle put down and served up at the South Korean farewell banquet with nary a thought: The Secretary, said correspondent Nick Assinder, had managed to "blow a series of holes in the Prime Minister's armour," he had "pulled the rug out" from beneath Blair's armoured feet, etc, etc.
But the thing is: He's not wrong, is he? Britain is helpful, but not necessary. And it would not be unreasonable if Rumsfeld, with a couple hundred thousand guys kicking their heels in the sand for six months, felt that America was being perhaps too deferential to the Prime Minister's domestic difficulties. After all, at what point does Britain's helpfulness cease to be helpful? There are no hard and fast rules, but when Baroness Amos, Britain's Minister for Africa, is chasing M. de Villepin around the dark continent because Guinea's presidential witchdoctor is advising against war (really), it's hard not to feel that, even by diplomatic standards, the whole thing has become too unmoored from reality.
That's Rumsfeld's function -- to take the polite fictions and drag them back to the real world. During the Afghan campaign, CNN's Larry King asked him, "Is it very important that the coalition hold?" The correct answer -- the Powell-Blair-Gore-Annan answer -- is, of course, "Yes." But Rummy decided to give the truthful answer: "No." He went on to explain why: "The worst thing you can do is allow a coalition to determine what your mission is." Such a man cannot be happy at the sight of the Guinean tail wagging the French rectum of the British hind quarters of the American dog.
Not everybody likes the Rumsfeldian approach. Germany was furious when Rummy lumped them with Libya and Cuba. Islamabad complained that he was "extremely callous" in offering Pakistanis serving with the Taliban two choices: "surrender or death." And even the Spanish Prime Minister felt obliged to suggest it might be better if Europe heard less of Rumsfeld and more of Colin Powell.
But it's hard to see why. Europe saw a lot of Colin Powell when he was negotiating Resolution 1441 with M. de Villepin, and a fat lot of good it did Washington. The present anti-Americanism in Europe doesn't distinguish between Mister Moderate and Rummy -- they're all crazed fundamentalist blood-for-oil warhawks. So you might as well give 'em the real thing and have a laugh, rather than sending Colin off to drone bromides about "my good friend Dominique" as the duplicitous French aristo stitches him up one more time.
For those who think world affairs can use a bracing shot of candour, Rumsfeld is the star of this war. At one Pentagon briefing on Afghanistan, some showboating reporter noted that human rights groups had objected to the dropping of cluster bombs and demanded to know why the U.S. was using them. "They're being used on frontline al-Qaeda and Taliban troops to try to kill them," replied Rumsfeld. It was a small indicator of a large cultural shift when NBC's Saturday Night Live introduced a weekly parody of his press conferences, mercilessly mocking not the politician but the dopey journalists.
Writing about Rummy after 9/11, I mentioned two salient facts: 1) He was the only Cabinet Secretary whose offices were attacked, who lost members of his staff and who helped pull the injured from the rubble; and 2) Before that date, he was widely seen as an anachronism -- not just a Bush Sr. retread like Cheney, but a Nixon/Ford throwback. The New York Times' elderly schoolgirl columnist Maureen Dowd mocked him as "Rip Van Rummy." In the last 18 months, she's become Rip Van Dowdy, and he's more relevant than ever. The comparison with Powell is instructive. Everyone understands that the State Department is institutionally problematic -- full of striped-pants appeasers who think the thing to do is roll over for the House of Saud and pass it off as realpolitik. But the Defence Department isn't ideal either -- Rummy inherited a bunch of Clintonian generals locked into an outmoded Cold War structure. The difference is that, unlike Powell, Rumsfeld's fixing the problem -- and, as The Washington Post would say, change is following.
When the Secretary of State was traipsing round the Middle East on his fool's mission last summer, the Defence Secretary (who served as Reagan's envoy to the region) was asked about the "occupied territories" and made you wish he'd been the one sent over to Yasser's boudoir: "My feeling about the so-called occupied territories," he replied, "is that there was a war, Israel urged neighboring countries not to get involved in it once it started, they all jumped in, and they lost a lot of real estate to Israel because Israel prevailed in that conflict."
"So-called occupied territories": There's one for Chris Patten, the EU's leading proponent of the theory of Yasserite inevitability. The Arabs would benefit from a little more straight talk: They're very bad at confronting the consequences of their recklessness. And that's one mistake Rumsfeld's never made, either at the Pentagon or in his pharmaceuticals business -- in both of which, as he points out, if you get it wrong, "people will die." Right now, on Old Europe, South Korea and much else, Rummy's getting it right. A few days after September 11th, he observed, "If you're going to cock it, you throw it." For the last year, we have had the world's longest cock. Let's throw.
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