Condoleezza Rice
|
SourcesNeue Zürcher Zeitung 5.03.2001 |
Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1956, she grew up in a sheltered environment taking ballet, piano and French lessons three times a week. Her mother bought all her Girl Scout cookies so she wouldn´t have to go door-to-door, facing racial issues and segregation. However, when she was 9 she was confonted with racial hatred when a bomb exploded at a Baptist church in Westminster and a schoolmate was killed. Being both female and African-American she is frequently confronted with questions concerning her stance on discrimination and (in)famous for her rather placid views on the subject where she places emphasis on downplaying such issues, "I´ve always felt you should not see race and gender in everything."
A graduate student in foreign policy in the late 80s(her fellowship at Stanford´s Hoover Institution from 1985 to 1986) Ms. Rice went to Washington D.C. to work on nuclear strategic planning at the Joint Chiefs of Staff as part of a Council on Foreign Relations fellowship. In 1989 she was appointed director of Soviet and East European affairs with the National Security Council(NSC) as well as special assistant to the president(then Bush Sr.) for national security affairs. After two years at the NSC she returned to Stanford where she joined the political science faculty, becoming the school´s youngest, and first female and first black, provost. Rice draws parallels to the general trend businesses went through in the 80s with her relatively radical budgeteering programme to deal with the deficit Stanford was suffering under. Cutting down on staff and moving toward revenue-constrained budgeting(meaning that the university has to live within its means) caused controversy but in her opinion a ´healthier economy`.
Her curt decisiveness displayed at Standford is apparent in her position as chief foreign policy advisor. However, in this capacity her decisions do not merely affect an educational institution. Today, on the NSC front she cut staff by a third and reorganized it to emphasize strategy, including national missile defence(NMD) and international economics. Offices once dealing seperately with Europe, Russia and the Balkans have been consolidated. As well as this, divisions responsible for the handling of international environmental and health issues have been eliminated. Strengthening the armed forces and defence budgets while simultaneously keeping out of conflicts are blatant points on the Bush agenda. However, the patronising, often ignorant and world-policeman attitude are still prevailent, the aforementioned NMD an example of a dominating foreign policy.