Bush Foreign Policy and Harsh Reality

NEWS ANALYSIS

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 - Few administrations enjoy making midcourse corrections in their foreign policies, much less admitting to making them. But this week it has become unmistakable that President Bush's team has had to rethink its approaches on Iraq and North Korea after a succession of setbacks and pressures at home and abroad.

In Iraq, the deadly bombings of late summer spurred a longstanding effort by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, bubbling under the surface since July, to widen the roles of the United Nations and American allies in the increasingly troubled occupation of Iraq.

On North Korea, the administration, which initially had insisted that there would be no concessions to the government of Kim Jong IL until a complete dismantling of its nuclear program had been accomplished, now says a step-by-step process could yield interim benefits for the North. Again, State Department officials who had long advocated a more conciliatory approach appear to have strengthened their hand.

Even as they declare that both these changes are evolutionary, administration officials acknowledge that after a grueling war in Iraq, a pendulum has begun to swing in the direction of diplomacy. "When negotiations start to meet reality, positions have to evolve," a senior administration official said today.

The harsh reality of Iraq, where the American military proved easily able to win a war but cannot yet fashion peace, has all but overwhelmed other calculations, not only in the administration but in Congress. Lawmakers entering a campaign season returned from summer recess this week after hearing constituents' questions about the casualties and costs that have mounted since the war.

The doubts and questions in Congress have enhanced the stature of Mr. Powell. Even Pentagon skepticism about the international approach waned as the strain imposed on the American forces by the occupation of Iraq became increasingly evident to military commanders.

The secretary was said by other officials to have seized on a delicate and painful moment to convince Mr. Bush in recent weeks that American allies are essential to paying the military and economic cost of securing and rebuilding Iraq, not to mention bringing troops home next year.

While Mr. Powell's hand has been strengthened, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the hero of the successful invasion of Iraq in March and April, is now facing tough questions over why the United States seemed ill prepared for the postwar period.

In the background of Washington's sodden and sullen September is a budget deficit approaching $500 billion for the next year, even before the cost of Iraq operations is added in, and an anemic economic recovery accompanied by no sign of an easing of joblessness.

With Mr. Bush entering what could become a tough reelection fight, the White House can ill afford to look as if it is staggering overseas.

Help has to be sought in Iraq, but other nations will demand a say in how their resources are mobilized. Allies in Turkey, India and Pakistan were asked to send troops, but insisted on a United Nations mandate.

Now, Mr. Rumsfeld has even spoken of giving others a seat at the table. But from the indications of France, Germany and Arab nations - all of which opposed the war - they want that seat to come with a vote.

"The question is whether the world is ready to pick the United States up off the floor and dust them off," said a senior Western envoy involved in discussions on Iraq. "A lot of people aren't ready yet."

The United States is now circulating a resolution that would give the United Nations increasing authority over the future of Iraq, though not over the military command.

With about 140,000 American troops in Iraq and 21,000 non-American troops - about half of them British - the number of fresh foreign troops by next year is probably not going to exceed 15,000 or so, a senior American official said.

Given the unsettled situation in Iraq, that number may not be enough to help Mr. Bush even to start bringing troops home before the election next year.

France, Germany and other European nations where anti-American and anti-Bush sentiments run high are not likely to send troops.

But they may be able to help defray some of the economic costs, which administration officials say have, if anything, been a bigger factor than the military situation in forcing the turn to the United Nations.

The Pentagon estimates that the military occupation has been costing nearly $4 billion a month.

This week, international experts enlisted by the American-led occupation authorities estimated that the loss of oil revenues and cost of operating a civilian government in Iraq is projected at $20 billion for 2004.

That figure was given to diplomats from potential donor nations in Brussels this week, and by all accounts they were stunned.

"Think of it this way," said an official familiar with the Brussels session. "You'd be putting more than a third of the world's development assistance in 2004 into a country with the second largest oil reserves in the world. Imagine what that does to the rest of the poor countries in the world. All of Africa doesn't get that much money."

This official said the United States would have to "dramatically trim" its requests and put up a huge sum to goad other nations into donating.

But a senior administration official said: "We expect billions of dollars out of the rest of the world. Billions."

American officials recognize that in order to secure anything like those amounts, L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator in Iraq, might either have to step aside or at least have to share his task of running Iraq with a successor to Sergio Vieira de Mello, the special envoy who was killed in the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19.

While the Iraq situation has unfolded, the administration has also made a big adjustment on North Korea.

China and to a lesser extent South Korea - and to an even lesser extent Japan - advocate a policy of some actions if North Korea seems headed toward the goal of giving up its nuclear arms and programs.

"Everybody is realistic enough to know that you can't have a negotiation where one side does everything before the other side does anything," a senior official said. "I've never seen a negotiation like that. Even with the Japanese surrender after World War II, we said immediately that the emperor could stay."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company