Word: scowcrofts
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Before dawn on Inauguration Day, Brent Scowcroft, the outgoing National Security Adviser, strode up the stairs to Blair House to deliver his final briefing to the President-elect. It focused, naturally, on Iraq. At the Pentagon, General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a similar presentation to incoming Secretary of Defense Les Aspin. The sessions amounted to a formal hand-off; what to do about Iraq is up to Clinton and the national-security team he is assembling...
These days, it is Brent Scowcroft, the outgoing National Security Adviser, who is frequently at the other end of the secure phone in Berger's shabby transition office, keeping the Clinton camp informed of what Bush is planning in Somalia, Yugoslavia and elsewhere. Berger gives Bush's foreign policy team credit "for working together about as well as it's been done," a virtue whose importance is reinforced by the memory of how Carter's presidency was undermined by the unceasing attacks on Vance by Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Berger's instinct, like Clinton...
...cannot conduct foreign policy between now and Jan. 20. The world needs to have no ambiguity about who's President until then." Clinton and his team are regularly informed, but not consulted, by the White House on major decisions: a secure phone allows National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft to keep in contact with Clinton aides Sandy Berger and Nancy Soderberg. There are no complaints on either side about the one-way dialogue. "There's no reason why he should be in on day-to-day decisions," says another Clinton adviser. "So long as he can understand what the implications...
Leaders of Clinton's foreign policy team feel no lack of confidence or preparation. Every morning Clinton receives the same CIA briefing Bush does. Although the two Presidents have talked only once directly about Somalia, Scowcroft's calls to Berger are frequent. There is no give and take in these calls, no mutual formulation of policy, no horse trading. "It's a process of information exchange rather than consultation," says a Clinton official. Meanwhile, Little Rock has small groups at work in each of the national security departments, preparing memos and outlining issues. "They're talking to people and weighing...
Free trade between Europe and America has been bruited about before. It was raised by National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, unfortunately without result. But with the fading of visions of a federal Europe, it acquires a new urgency. Today, two potentially antagonistic trade blocs are going up on both sides of the Atlantic. The U.S. is afraid that a Fortress Europe will shut its trade doors. Europe looks warily at the budding North American Free Trade Agreement, which would create a trading zone demographically larger than...