IF YOU PUNISH FAILURE, YOU PUNISH YOUR BEST PEOPLE:

(Guardian, 3/17/2003)

Recrimination at the failure of US diplomacy has begun in Washington, one source close to the administration admitting yesterday: "This has been the worst American diplomatic debacle of our lifetime."

Administration sources suggest that this is the prelude to a postwar bloodletting in which the secretary of state, Colin Powell, will be the fall guy.

There is a bridge term -- "result merchant" -- for someone who, after play has ended, proposes an unlikely line of play that would have succeeded only because of a fortuituous lie of the cards, and who berates his partner for pursuing a superior line that happened to fail.

The result merchant's business counterpart is the executive who punishes failure and rewards success, without considering the reasons for failure or success. This practice, it has been found, destroys all incentive to innovate. Innovation is always risky, and it can fail for many reasons not the fault of the innovator. Punishing failure punishes all risk-taking, and soon enough eliminates it.

We have seen what an administration that fears action looks like: the Clinton administration. Problems are swept under the rug and infections allowed to fester until life-threatening. The Bush administration cannot afford to become risk-averse while the war on terror remains half won.

Moreover, politically Bush cannot allow infighting and recriminations. If the administration is convinced this was a failure, the public surely will be. Currently, the public views administration diplomacy as well handled:

By a ratio of more than 2-to-1, most Americans say the Bush administration has done a good job handling diplomatic efforts with other nations.

I agree with the American public: this diplomatic interlude has been quite successful. It has exposed countries (e.g. France) and institutions (e.g. the U.N.), and the truth is a great cleanser. It has done no harm except to muddle people's minds. Forthright action will soon enough clear those minds, reminding everyone of the fundamental issues.

Nothing is more despicable than a result merchant, except a back-stabber. George Bush should put the word out: There was no failure, and there will be no recriminations.

UPDATE (from OJ):
HOW FRENCH DIPLOMACY FAILED:
The Men Behind the French 'Non': Chirac and his aide, De Villepin, were expected to improve Franco-U.S. ties. Instead, they are fundamentally at odds with a centuries-old ally. (Sebastian Rotella, 3/17/03, LA Times)

With close supervision from Chirac, De Villepin played a lead role last fall in drafting the U.N. resolution mandating that Iraq disarm. Subsequently, however, analysts and diplomats say his high-voltage style angered Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, whom Europeans saw as the U.S. leader most sympathetic to their antiwar views.

De Villepin and Powell got along well and spoke frequently throughout the fall. But Powell, according to numerous accounts, felt ambushed by his French counterpart at a Jan. 20 meeting of the Security Council. The meeting, nominally about terrorism, took place on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Powell was in great demand at events around the U.S. and attended the U.N. session reluctantly at De Villepin's urging, according to Parmentier and others.

Powell grew tense as France and Germany turned the forum into a discussion of Iraq. He was furious when De Villepin used a news conference afterward to declare France's determination to oppose war plans, according to sources.

The French view disputes the idea that De Villepin somehow "lost" Powell at a vital moment. Parmentier said Powell had already indicated at a meeting with the French foreign minister that he had converted to the camp of the hawks.

Despite the gulf of misunderstanding and resentment that now separates Paris and Washington, Chirac and De Villepin's goal has been to reassert France's influence and strengthen its bonds to such countries as Russia and such regions as the Middle East. In the long run, they think the Bush administration is an unusually radical government that may be weakened by war in Iraq, especially if the aftermath is messy, according to Marchal.

"It may be a wrong assessment, but Chirac and Villepin are looking beyond this group of neoconservatives," Marchal said. "They think that the Americans, at the end of the day, will need France for anti-terrorism cooperation, trade and so on. To what extent could the U.S. government really carry off an economic boycott of France?

"They think maybe Bush will not do so well in terms of economic policy and a new administration could come in with more traditional thinking."

There's been a flurry of articles recently about Administration miscalculations and how their diplomatic efforts failed, but the very premise of such stories--that President Bush wanted either to avoid war or march under the UN/EU banner--is simply implausible. In fact, it is American policy--regime change--that is about to prevail, while the EU and UN are left in tatters. Meanwhile, no one will suffer more from the eclipse of these institutions than the French, whose aspirations to and delusions of global significance likewise have been reduced to rubble. How did this come to pass? As stories like the above suggest, it would appear that much of the blame can be placed at the doorstep of the Democrats and of the American media, whose portrayal of George W. Bush as a lightweight; an illegitimate victor in 2000, destined to lose in 2004; and a captive of a cabal of Jewish
neocons, who are balanced only by the "dovish" Colin Powell; looks like it informs world opinion. Ignored are the improbability of George W. Bush defeating Ann Richards, John McCain and Al Gore; the force and decisiveness with which he's pushed a radically conservative agenda and the ease with which he's accepted cosmetic compromise in order to achieve those conservative ends; the national security team with which he surrounded himself, which seems almost hand-picked to tackle Islamicism and to do so unilaterally; and the repeated occassions, including during the presidential debates, on which he said he would take advantage of nearly any provocation to "take out" Saddam. Thus have those, here and abroad, who sought to impose transnational restriants on the U.S. and avoid war instead made the coming conflict inevitable and inflicted undetermined damage on the internationalist bodies they so adore.

By some time this weekend the Iraqi regime will likely have been changed; the UN, Old Europe, and "world opinion" will have been shown to be utterly ineffectual; and Colin Powell will have made common cause with the hawks and ended up leading the charge to war. Every goal which George W. Bush might have set himself for the Iraq conflict a year ago will have been realized. The press is doing post-mortems on a patient who lived--time to carve up the one that died, French-led multilateralism.

Posted by Paul Jaminet at March 17, 2003 8:06 AM