Dubya Talks The Talk

Diplomacy is an art form, a subtle construct of gestures and words, body language and rhetoric carefully arranged for a single purpose: to persuade another country to behave the way you want. Tone is the hardest thing to get right. How do you convey your views so they're firm and forceful without putting the other side's back up?

George W. Bush is in the process of finding out. As a youthful candidate who wanted to be taken seriously despite his inexperience in foreign affairs, he struck a tough-guy pose, compensating for shallow knowledge by adopting the combative tone of a cold warrior. Guided by advisers steeped in anticommunism, Candidate Bush sought to contrast his hard-eyed "realism" with a Clinton-Gore idealism that he called bereft of core principles and dominated by a misguided desire to insert Washington into global peacemaking. The easiest way to mark the distinction was to talk up Russia and China as nations with nukes that threatened American interests; Bush would treat them not as the friends or strategic partners of Clinton's dreams but as competitors and potential aggressors.

Last week President Bush found himself addressing both those countries for real, and the words and gestures he used seemed designed to show that the candidate hadn't been kidding. In response to the February arrest of alleged spy Robert Hanssen, Bush ordered nearly 50 Russians out of the U.S., setting off a round of tit-for-tat expulsions not seen since the mid-'80s. In talks with China's Vice Premier, Qian Qichen, he bluntly said Washington would sell whatever arms it chose to Taiwan, whether Beijing liked it or not. Bush and his advisers seemed downright eager to prove there's a new sheriff in town, ready to take a more hawkish, assertive posture on foreign policy. What's far less clear is whether the tough talk is simply a way to distance himself from Clinton, the posturing of an unsettled Administration that has yet to conform its rhetoric to its policies--or the harbinger of sharp confrontations to come.

It's hard to tell. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer used "realism" a dozen times last week to explain, defend and justify the Administration's rhetoric: "The message the President is sending is that his foreign policy is going to be based on reality." Oh? That word is a handy portmanteau for just about any policy the Administration might adopt, but it doesn't clarify a thing. So let's take a little tour d'horizon, as the diplomats say, through the issues that are raising red flags.

Some hard-line turns are evident. National Missile Defense, the 21st century Star Wars, is coming, and Bush's message to all critics is, Deal with it. Europe, Russia and China are starting to grasp that this will be a long diplomatic, political and military wrangle. North Korea, which Clinton drew into negotiations as a "state of concern," has been downgraded again to "rogue state" by Bush. Three weeks ago, he embarrassed the President of South Korea, who has been trying to foster a warming trend, by saying the U.S. was in no rush to do more business with North Korea because he wasn't sure Pyongyang could be trusted. The Administration has taken a decidedly hands-off stance toward peacemaking, including in the Middle East. And though right-wingers are howling that he is easing up on Iraq sanctions, Bush was quick to drop bombs near Baghdad.

RUSSIA. Last week the spy spat generated some real heat. When the Administration announced the mass expulsion and Moscow responded in kind, it recalled all the old Soviet-era standoffs. Moscow hyperventilated that the expulsions were a "throwback to the cold war" resulting from "cowboy-style" tactics. But the Bush team says the move showed their man's quiet muscle. The message to Moscow: Dubya is going to tell it like it is, with no pussyfooting around when Russia misbehaves.

The Administration calls the Hanssen case a convenient excuse to clean out a growing nest of Russian spies in the U.S. As the number of agents crept back to cold war levels--up 40% since 1995, to 160--the FBI complained of the burden on its counterintelligence teams and its budget. The CIA said tossing out Moscow's agents would only mean the loss of U.S. assets in Russia. Clinton tried to soft-talk Moscow into cutting back but failed; the incoming Bush team was eager to act.

Most analysts don't think the expulsions will cause long-term damage to U.S.-Russian relations. They're a routine part of the spy game and quickly fade away. But it's one more in a list of "unfriendly" disagreements between Washington and Moscow these days. There have been frequent rhetorical clashes over Moscow's decision to renew arms sales to Tehran, Washington's insistence it will go ahead with missile-defense systems, Russian President Vladimir Putin's efforts to drum up global resistance to the shield. The Russians were incensed by an interview in which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld branded them an "active proliferator." Deputy Paul Wolfowitz chimed in, calling the Russian leaders "people willing to sell anything to anyone for money," who get billions in U.S. aid, then "turn around and do smaller quantities of obnoxious stuff that threatens our people."