{"id":302,"date":"2007-06-05T06:20:21","date_gmt":"2007-06-05T11:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=302"},"modified":"2007-06-05T07:09:48","modified_gmt":"2007-06-05T12:09:48","slug":"george-shultz-eminence-grise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=302","title":{"rendered":"George Shultz: Eminence Grise?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is Cheney all alone out there<\/title>Is Cheney all alone out there?<\/p>\n<p>Back in April, Bob Schieffer referenced Cheney’s alleged “isolation” in an interview with the vice president on <em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/htdocs\/pdf\/face_041507.pdf\">Face the Nation<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>SCHIEFFER: Senator Reid, who you mentioned earlier, the Democratic \tleader, said that he thought that President Bush had become more isolated \tover Iraq than Richard Nixon was during Watergate. You were around during \tthose days.<\/p>\n<p>Vice Pres. CHENEY: I was.<\/p>\n<p>SCHIEFFER: Do you think that’s true?<\/p>\n<p>Vice Pres. CHENEY: I do not. I think that’s a ridiculous notion.<\/p>\n<p>SCHIEFFER: It’s a ridiculous notion?<\/p>\n<p>Vice Pres. CHENEY: Yes.<\/p>\n<p>SCHIEFFER: Do you feel you have become more isolated?<\/p>\n<p>Vice Pres. CHENEY: I don’t think so. I spend as much time as I can, get out \tand–and do other things, be it home in Wyoming or, yesterday, I managed to \tgo shopping with my daughter for birthday presents for granddaughters. But \tI, you know, I obviously spend most of my time on the job.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course, Schieffer did not follow up to press Cheney on whether he felt <em> politically<\/em> isolated.<\/p>\n<p>In a January 2007 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/16843459\/site\/newsweek\/page\/0\/\"><em>Newsweek<\/em> interview<\/a>, however, Cheney did allude to the distance between himself and the “Baker\/Scowcroft” wing of the Republican foreign policy establishment:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Richard Wolffe: [There has been] criticism from Scowcroft about not \tknowing you anymore\u00e2\u20ac\u201dpeople have got quite personal, people you worked with \tbefore. You wouldn’t be human if it didn’t have some reaction.<\/p>\n<p>CHENEY: Well, I’m vice president and they’re not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The real question is whether Cheney has <em>any<\/em> allies within the larger foreign policy establishment.<\/p>\n<p>One has to go all the way back to the start of the campaign to elect George W. Bush to recall that there was once another <em>major figure<\/em> from the foreign policy establishment behind the throne of George W. Bush: George P. Shultz.<\/p>\n<p>When the Bush “campaign” <a href=\"http:\/\/select.nytimes.com\/search\/restricted\/article?res=F00C1FFF3E5D0C708EDDAB0994D1494D81\"> unveiled its foreign policy team to the public<\/a> in February 1999, Cheney was considered a key adviser.\u00c2\u00a0 The other major player was George Shultz.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mr. Bush… consults with two unofficial senior advisers, Richard B. \tCheney, President Bush’s secretary of defense, and George P. Shultz, Mr. \tReagan’s secretary of state.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Jim Lobe has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/lobe\/?articleid=4200\">suggested<\/a> that Shultz is “an <em>eminence grise<\/em> of the Bush administration” and the <em> Wall Street Journal<\/em> named Shultz as the “<a href=\"http:\/\/www.opinionjournal.com\/editorial\/feature.html?id=110008308\">Father of the Bush doctrine<\/a>.”\u00c2\u00a0 And yet, he never joined the administration and he has avoided much of the scrutiny and criticism associated with Bush foreign policy.<\/p>\n<p>As honorary co-chair of the neoconservative <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fightingterror.org\/members\/index.cfm\">Committee on the Present Danger<\/a>, Shultz has supported the most hawkish administration positions on the framing of the “<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hoover.org\/publications\/digest\/4484316.html\">war on terror<\/a>” and Iraq, providing justifications for the war <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/ac2\/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A43713-2002Sep5&notFound=true\"> before<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opinionjournal.com\/editorial\/feature.html?id=110004882\"> after<\/a> the invasion.<\/p>\n<p>Bob Woodward made news by<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/09\/29\/AR2006092900380.html\"> reporting<\/a> that Cheney frequently consults with Kissinger.\u00c2\u00a0 But Kissinger and Shultz appear to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A33959-2005Jan24.html\"> speak with one voice<\/a> in defense of the administration’s political goals in Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>The most urgent question, going forward, is how Shultz positions himself on Iran.<\/p>\n<p>Shultz hasn’t said much publicly about Iran.<\/p>\n<p>The place to watch on Iran policy may not only be the American Enterprise Institute but the “<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hoover.org\/research\/iran\/coordinators\">Iran Democracy Project<\/a>” at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hoover.org\/bios\/shultz.html\"> Shultz’s Hoover Institution<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Looking at Hoover Institution <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hoover.org\/research\/iran\/commentary\">chatter about Iran<\/a>, one finds something less than a full-throated endorsement of military intervention.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, one finds support for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/02\/23\/opinion\/23milani.html?ex=1329886800&en=976f92df43634c5a&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss\"> containment<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/2007\/0206\/p09s01-coop.html\"> diplomacy<\/a>, and “<a href=\"http:\/\/media.hoover.org\/documents\/beyond_incrementalism.pdf\">a principled long-term quest for<br \/>\npeaceful regime change<\/a>.”<\/p>\n<p>Does this less-than-fully hawkish outlook on Iran shed some light on forces guiding the current course of US policy?<\/p>\n<p>If Cheney is as hawkish on Iran as he is <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=300\">rumored to be<\/a>, then he may be feeling more isolated than ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is Cheney all alone out thereIs Cheney all alone out there? Back in April, Bob Schieffer referenced Cheney’s alleged “isolation” in an interview with the vice president on Face the Nation. SCHIEFFER: Senator Reid, who you mentioned earlier, the Democratic leader, said that he thought that President Bush had become more isolated over Iraq than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,3,10,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}