Sydney (Oz) news: Condy needs more time in her trainers, less in the boots

[Bluebear]

"Disappointing diplomacy"



NOBODY doubts her star power. She speaks Russian and talks football, wears dominatrix boots and plays Dvorak, weaves her segregated Alabama childhood into speeches about geopolitics. But the strange thing about Condoleezza Rice is that, when it comes to the stuff that a professor-politician should be good at, she can be oddly flat-footed.

This was true when she emerged as George Bush's fitness buddy and foreign policy tutor seven years ago. It is still true....

"Some worry that this view of the world ignores the role of values, particularly human rights and the promotion of democracy," she said. But the priority for US foreign policy was to deal with powerful governments, whose "fits of anger or acts of beneficence affect hundreds of millions of people".

Even six years ago, this was an outdated position. The Clinton administration was preoccupied with powers such as Russia and China, but it was also tracking Islamic terrorists. The importance of other non-state actors, from rebels to environmentalists to bond traders, had become a cliche of globalisation commentary; AIDS had been recognised as a security threat. The era of great-power politics was widely thought to have ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Rice seemed like a Sovietologist who hadn't quite caught up....

http://smh.com.au/news/opinion/condie-needs-more-time-in-her-trainers-less-in-the-boots/2006/01/26/1138066919817.html

[Bluebear]

1. .

[AZCat]

2. I disagree with the closing paragraph.

<snip>
Watch the way Rice handles aggressive journalists, and there's no doubting her intellect. But her forays into grand theory are disappointing. The call for "transformational diplomacy" merely slides past today's big question. It doesn't offer an answer.
</snip> (emphasis mine)

Maybe I am predisposed against Dr. Rice, but I have not been impressed with her intellect. Granted I haven't watched that much of her (no tv limits exposure) but she strikes me as arrogant, not brilliant. It is easier to lash out in response to questions, claiming that the answers are apparent (or beneath you), than it is to give a reasoned answer.