Colin Powell's metamorphosis and democratic implications

Who is Colin Powell? Defining himself as the "reluctant warrior" who claims "force should be a last resort, but it must be a resort," our Secretary of State has received much admiration at home and abroad for his diplomatic, multilateralist approach to foreign policy. To our war-wary European allies (or colleagues, or whatever you want to call them), Mr. Powell has been somewhat of a diamond-in-the-rough, a statesman among swads, a dove among hawks. As the main voice in the Bush administration who urged the government to seek the approval of the United Nations before jumping into a second Persian Gulf War, Powell received much veneration across the Atlantic.

Then on Jan. 23, things changed. Despite evidence that Iraq was not entirely complying with the U.N. weapons inspectors demands, France and Germany publicly refused to support any hasty military action. Here, this trans-Atlantic love-affair between Powell and antiwar Europeans had gone awry. The Secretary of State's dovish persona began to morph.

In Powell's memoirs published after the first Persian Gulf War (where he served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), he wrote that he opposed the use of force in Baghdad in 1991 because of the casualties that would ensue and the instability it might cause in the Middle East. There is no reason why this logic should not stand today, yet Mr. Powell has conspicuously changed his stance on the current Iraqi situation, and has blatantly contradicted himself.

The question is, why?

Powell's aides said that he was deeply offended by France and Germany's terse remarks after bending over backwards to accommodate Paris and Berlin's respectable reservations. But rather than stick to his diplomatic approach of "war as a last resort" and continue to muster the world's support for Iraqi disarmament, Powell switched camps entirely; today, he is the hawkish-administration's biggest supporter pleading with the United Nations to approve a militaristic solution for Iraqi disarmament. His transformation is further evidenced by his recent calling of the UN weapons inspectors as irrelevant and his consideration of implementing regime change without foreign support — two notions that Powell adamantly persuaded the Bush administration to consider several months ago.

But this is not a sincere change of heart for Mr. Powell, but rather a childish reaction to an even more naïve European stance. By doffing his statesmen pinstripes for his dusty fatigues, Powell has not morphed into a dove, but a parrot — mimicking the every word of his war-minded cabinet colleagues.

Yet many pundits suggest that Powell's recent shift into the Bush's belligerent camp is also for tactical reasons, not just personal ones. As a New York Times analyst wrote, "Mr. Powell cannot afford to be a Secretary of State out of tune with the president." These pundits speak for a larger audience that believes any sign of dissent or disapproval of the President's words within his own cabinet would be a sign of weakness, of vulnerability.

Recent history tells a different story. Foreign policy disputes publicly revealed within the presidents' cabinets are nothing new, nor nothing to be feared. In the Nixon administration, Secretary of State William Rogers and then national security adviser Henry Kissinger constantly bantered over foreign policy. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance held his position against the use of military force in the Iran-Contra hostage crisis ultimately causing him to resign in protest of President Carter's position. And in a triumphant stance, Secretary of State George Shultz convinced the Reagan administration to keep the Cold War cold (that is, not to use the weapons the US had amassed) after repeated threats that he would resign.

The point is that the United States does not need a government full of parrots to look strong. Dissent, dispute and debate within the highest echelons of the government can only strengthen each other's side of their argument — if it does not change minds entirely.

Furthermore, Mr. Powell's recent metamorphosis speaks to a larger, more abstract issue. My disappointment with the secretary of state is not needless caviling. Regardless of the reasons for the pending war with Iraq — gaining security, ridding the Iraqi people of a despotic ruler, easy access to oil, or a combination of the three — it seems irrefutable that any longterm success in Iraq, and the Middle East as a whole, depends on the implementation of stable democratic governance. But the alacrity with which Powell, and indeed many of the countries liberal-minded thinkers, has come into cahoots with the administration's militaristic stance presents the democracy we wish to promote as a monolithic, homogeneous body — something it was never intended to be. Certainly, America's two hundred and twenty-six year experiment with democracy was founded on notions of dissent and divergence of viewpoints. This is not a sign of weakness, but of freedom. As the world now studies the United States under the microscope, it is crucial that our leaders, and our society, holds strong to its varied opinions not out of recalcitrance, but because of belief in them.

As the late J. W. Fulbright, the United States politician and architect of what was to become the United Nations, fittingly stated, "In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects."