US presidents during the Cold War almost always operated in a realist framework. During this period, every US president was concerned first and foremost with the containment of Soviet aggression. Even the less realist presidents like John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter—notwithstanding their hopes and speeches—ultimately sacrificed morality and principles at the altar of power and security. Kennedy ordered political assassinations and escalated the US intervention in Vietnam. Carter tackled the spread of Marxism in El Salvador and Afghanistan while announcing what has become known as the Carter Doctrine: that the United States would not allow the Soviet Union to extend its sphere of influence to the Middle East. Two presidents who came into office with high hopes for human rights eventually pushed their liberal agenda to the backburner as they quickly became preoccupied with balance of power politics.

The events and trends of the 1990s—increased democratization, increased institutionalization, and increased globalization—led the administration of US President Bill Clinton to expand its priorities to include peacekeeping, free trade agreements, environmental protection, third world development, and women’s rights. Even AIDS was deemed a national security threat by Clinton. One member of Clinton’s national security team who was “present at the expansion” of the international agenda was Richard Clarke (who also served in national security capacities under US Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush). Under Clinton, Clarke was charged with integrating counter-terrorism and infrastructure protection into the administration’s policy priorities. Surrounded by scholars-turned-practitioners who subscribed to liberalism (Anthony Lake, Madeleine Albright, and Joseph Nye, among others), Clarke helped acclimate the United States to a new paradigm that moved beyond traditional Cold War concerns, such as great power balances and arms control.

Rice’s Realism

During the 2000 US presidential campaign, Texas Governor George W. Bush criticized the liberal foreign policies of the Clinton administration. Under the guidance of his chief foreign policy advisor Condoleezza Rice and other similarly-minded advisors, Bush promised a return to a more traditional foreign policy. The first glimpse of this policy appeared in January 2000, when Rice published an article in Foreign Affairs that outlined what would become the Bush administration’s foreign policy during its first eight months in office. The article, which Rice recapped in a variety of commentary pieces and speeches, is crucial to understanding what she felt were the priorities for the foreign policy community in a post-Clinton era; however, it is today equally valuable not just for what it addresses, but for what it fails to address.

Rice’s belief is that “Power matters ... Yet many in the United States are (and have always been) uncomfortable with the notions of power politics, great powers, and power balances. In an extreme form, this discomfort leads to a reflexive appeal instead to notions of international law and norms...The ‘national interest’ is replaced with ‘humanitarian interests’ or the interests of ‘the international community.’” Rice concluded her Foreign Affairs article by declaring, “Foreign policy in a Republican administration will ... proceed from the firm ground of the national interest, not from the interests of an illusory international community.”

Steered by this premise, Rice identified what would become the top three foreign policy objectives of the Bush administration: first, re-orienting US military forces away from peace operations and back to the task of deterring, fighting, and winning major wars; second, prioritizing great power politics, with a focus on the potential threats posed by China and Russia; and third, countering the weapons of mass destruction threats posed by three rogue states, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Conspicuously absent from her formulation was a discussion of the variety of post-Cold War issues that the Clinton administration had stressed, in particular terrorism from fundamentalist, non-state actors like Al Qaeda.

In her testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Rice conceded that she had followed her realist beliefs during the first “233 days” of the administration’s tenure. As she admitted, prior to September 2001, there were 33 meetings of the NSC Principals Committee, but not a single one addressing with terrorism. Most of these meetings dealt with US armed forces, great power issues, the Middle East, and the control of rogue state armaments.

When asked to explain the failure to prevent the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Rice emphasized “structural and legal impediments” to the way intelligence and law enforcement agencies interacted. But when pushed by the commissioners, Rice admitted that, at least prior to September 11, she believed that the NSC should not oversee domestic law enforcement. As she testified, “I didn’t manage the domestic agencies.” This was confirmed when 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman asked her a list of questions probing her awareness on domestic matters related to terrorism. On nearly every question, Rice answered that, prior to the attacks, she was not aware of the issue being raised.

Rice also admitted her state-centric bias when the commissioners asked her why she had not implemented the counterterrorism recommendations proposed by Richard Clarke in January 2001. It was Rice’s view, even in hindsight, that Clarke’s suggestions would lead the United States down the “wrong direction” because they centered on a non-state actor (Al Qaeda) without addressing the relevant states (Afghanistan and Pakistan). According to Rice, state sponsors of terrorism had to be the primary targets of any counterterrorism policy because they cooperate with the most effective terrorist groups.

If her articles and speeches failed to make it clear, her testimony before the 9/11 Commission did: Condoleezza Rice is a realist. Her understanding of international relations is state-centric. Her policy ends are filtered through national self-interests. Her privileged means are military. And her understanding of world events is demarcated by a clear division between international and domestic realms.

Rice, moreover, is not alone in the Bush administration in subscribing to realism. With the exception of US Secretary of State Colin Powell, whom neo-conservative foreign policy strategist Max Boot has described as a “liberal internationalist,” the highest tier of the Bush administration’s national security team is, again in Boot’s words, a group of “self-styled realists;” they are “traditional national-interest conservatives who, during Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign, derided the Clinton administration for its focus on nation building and human rights.”