Politics: Freelancing at the DoD

A disturbing item from this morning's New York Times discusses the role that the Department of Defense has created for itself in what should be the exclusive province of the State Department. I have argued before that the off-the-reservation behavior of the Defense Department are all attempts to control every aspect of our international relations: they want to pick enemies, outline the concerns of the United States, set the terms for victory, and build the team that makes the big plays.

As the Times' piece makes clear, the North Korean situation is another place where the DoD has decided it wants to run things.

Just days before President Bush approved the opening of negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear program, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld circulated to key members of the administration a Pentagon memorandum proposing a radically different approach: the United States, the memo argued, should team up with China to press for the ouster of North Korea's leadership.

What David Sanger's item doesn't spell out exactly is how the State Department responded to this offensive shot across their bow. Rumsfeld's memo essentially counter-proposed diplomatic actions to whatever was coming out of the State Department. And the State Department was pushing for some kind of talks, which are supposedly taking place soon. As Sanger writes: 'But the memo's main argument, that Washington's goal should be the collapse of Kim Jong Il's government, seems at odds with the State Department approach of convincing Mr. Kim, in the words of one senior administration official, "that we're not trying to take him out."'

The U.S. Department of Defense has participated in -- and in some cases instigated -- an incredible emasculation of U.S. diplomacy, the work of the State Department and SecState Colin Powell. Throughout the buildup to the Iraq war, Powell's position, his ability to command attention in the White House, and his dignity have been steadily eroded by the relentless work of hawks in the Department of Defense like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith along with Dick Cheney. This has created a de facto shadow Diplomacy shop inside the Pentagon, which writes memos, advocates policy and at times executes policy (notice how Powell disappeared from view as his attempts to head off an actual war in Iraq became meaningless). The DoD's mini State Department is the foreign policy night-time fantasy of all the neo-cons who engineered so much of the Bush presidency. In this world, diplomacy is something you do while you get ready for war. Black and white are the only colors.

Sanger's piece contained a frightening element which may play into Rummy's hands: 'On Friday, in its first explicit comment on the Iraq war, North Korea said it had learned something from the fall of Mr. Hussein. "The Iraqi war teaches a lesson that in order to prevent a war and defend the security of a country and the sovereignty of a nation," North Korea said in a statement, "it is necessary to have a powerful physical deterrent."'

So the work of our Defense Department has taught North Korea that it must build nuclear weapons and be prepared to use them, or we will surely invade and over-run them. Next, our Secretary of Defense advocates in a secret memo leaked to the press that regime change in North Korea should be our course of action. How is the real State Department supposed to function under these conditions?

It isn't.