White House insider relies on aid of ‘allies’

Condoleezza Rice, President Bush’s national security adviser, was ushered to the residence of British Ambassador David Manning on Saturday night for what turned out to be her surprise 50th birthday party.

Mr. Bush was there, as was his father, former President George Bush. Other dignitaries included Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Brent Scowcroft and Samuel R. Berger, Miss Rice’s predecessors at the White House.

The party’s venue was no coincidence. Miss Rice and Mr. Manning became very close when he was her counterpart in Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office before coming to Washington 14 months ago.

But, more importantly, Mr. Blair’s Britain is exactly the kind of ally Miss Rice, whom Mr. Bush nominated yesterday as the next secretary of state, values most.

It was in London last year, two months after Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was toppled by the U.S.-led invasion and emotions against it in Europe still ran high, that she said: “There is little lasting consequence that the United States can accomplish in the world without the sustained cooperation of allies and friends.”

But then she spelled out her definition of a true friend: a country that does not “put a check” on American power but stands firmly with the United States in its effort to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction and other modern ills.

“Why would anyone who shares the values of freedom seek to put a check on those values?” Miss Rice asked, adding that Europe and democracies worldwide should follow Washington’s lead instead of trying to balance it with competing policies.

“Power in the service of freedom is to be welcomed, and powers that share a commitment to freedom can and must make common cause against freedom’s enemies,” she said in the June 2003 speech.

Miss Rice, who is one of Mr. Bush’s confidants, dismissed a vision of “multipolarity” advanced by French President Jacques Chirac and others, calling it “a theory of rivalry, of competing interests,” which “only the enemies of freedom would cheer.”

“We have tried this before,” she said. “It led to the Great War, which cascaded into the Good War, which gave way to the Cold War. Today, this theory of rivalry threatens to divert us from meeting the great tasks before us.”

France, Germany and Russia led the opposition to the Iraq war in the United Nations Security Council, which prevented the United States and Britain from winning a final resolution authorizing the invasion.

As foreign leaders yesterday looked for signs of how the new top U.S. diplomat would deal with them, many recalled a famous phrase that was attributed to Miss Rice last year: “Punish France, ignore Germany and forgive Russia.”

Yesterday, Miss Rice said she planned to pursue Mr. Bush’s “hopeful and ambitious agenda.”

Although they realize that her strong views are not likely to change, foreign officials expressed hope that her close relationship with Mr. Bush, who owes much of his knowledge of foreign affairs to her, will help their voices be better heard in the White House.

Similarly, officials at the State Department looked for the silver lining in the appointment of someone considered more of a hard-liner than Mr. Powell.

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