Colin Powell has held many of the top foreign and defense policy positions in the United States. Among these, the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Adviser and Secretary of State. Powell has had a career marked by great successes but also notorious disappointments. His way of acting has been marked by an instinctive pragmatism that has led some authors to associate him with realistic positions in foreign policy and by the prudence and moderation typical of a large part of the US military establishment.
His popularity has been marked in certain ideological sectors by his defense of an intervention in Iraq that was backed by a United Nations Security Council Resolution, his support for the election of Obama, as well as by his opposition to President Trump, given his Tying to a Republican Party that no longer existed.
After having served in the Reagan Administration as National Security Advisor, he stood out in his position as Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Bush Senior Administration, coinciding with Dick Cheney, who held the post of Secretary of Defense. Within the framework of this Administration, the strategic approach attributed to it was clearly implemented and that would try to avoid a disaster like the one that Vietnam had supposed for US foreign policy: the Powell doctrine.
This strategy, summarized in the statement “Go in big and end it quickly” it was based broadly on the need to use as many troops as possible to meet US objectives and then have an exit strategy. The valuation of the vital interests at stake and the support of public opinion would also be determining elements.
This strategic approach was clearly implemented during the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the United States carried out an intervention supported by a great alliance of countries and supported by the United Nations to expel him. The success achieved made it possible to consider the “Vietnam syndrome” that the United States had dragged on since its defeat in 1975 and turned it into a successful model of action that, however, would not avoid criticism of the Administration for having allowed the Iraqi president to remain. in power for twelve more years.
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In 1995, Colin Powell published his well-known memoirs, My American Journey, and even talk of him as a possible presidential candidate. Also from this time are some of their differences with members of the liberal interventionist sector during the Bill Clinton Administration, specifically Madeleine Albright, in relation to the use of the US armed forces.
When President George W. Bush –Bush Jr.– won the election against Vice President Al Gore, Powell was again proposed to occupy a prominent position in the Administration: that of Secretary of State. As former President Bush himself stated, his mind was repeating what happened during the Truman Administration with General Marshall in the same position.
While the original intention of President Bush was to focus on domestic politics and develop a foreign policy similar to that of his father and, in any case, focused on great powers such as Russia and China; September 11 and the War on Terror changed everything. The neoconservative rise left a Colin Powell, seconded by his friend Richard Armitage, in a defensive position.
His significant differences in the decision-making process with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a supporter of a smaller and more efficient US Army, driven by technological advance, are known from this stage. As a result of these confrontations between the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, Vice President Dick Cheney played a more prominent role in the decision-making process than he would have had if the two leaders had formed a common front.
Although it cannot be argued that this leader was necessarily against the Iraq War, he defended the need to obtain the support of the United Nations Security Council for it. This would lead to some of the most criticized moments of his career, as happened with his performance in defense of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In the end, obtaining resolution would not necessarily have changed things on the battlefield.
If the Gulf War followed the parameters of its strategic approaches, the 2003 Iraq War, with another President Bush and with decision-makers similar to those who made up his father’s Administration, became its antithesis. Another of the phrases attributed to him during this period, “You break it. You own it”, He affected precisely the consequences that this conflict would have for US foreign policy. In the Spanish case, he is remembered at this stage for his mediation in the Perejil crisis.
In 2005, Powell leaves the Administration. President Bush explains it in terms of being out of step with the rest of the Administration. It would have been interesting to learn more first-hand details about his performance in the Bush Administration through the publication of a memoir focused on this historical period, as did Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice or President Bush himself in front of the Powell’s relative discretion.
With Colin Powell leaves another of the great leaders who marked US foreign policy at the end of the Cold War and the post-Cold War, joining the recently deceased Brent Scowcroft and Donald Rumsfeld. His capacity for strategic planning, however, was not always accompanied by his skill in the decision-making process or by his ability to assume the important transformations that the United States was experiencing in its domestic and international politics.
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