THE GREAT RIFT

Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and the Broken Friendship That Defined an Era

By James Mann

They served separately at an ebb tide of postwar American power in the early 1970s, witnesses to defeat abroad and malaise at home. They served again as partners when American power peaked anew two decades later. “We could finish each other’s sentences,” one fondly recalled. Entrusted with shepherding American power a third time, in the early 2000s, Dick Cheney and Colin Powell oversaw its erosion instead, leaving as their legacy a more divided, indebted and globally unpopular country than the one they’d inherited. Cheney’s certainty ensured America’s unraveling, especially when enabled by Powell’s reluctance.

Their friendship eroded as well, which is the subject of James Mann’s “The Great Rift,” his latest exploration of the personalities that shaped American national security policy over the past half-century. Cheney rose from reckless youth to White House power broker, first among equals (alongside Donald Rumsfeld) in Gerald Ford’s administration. He later served, to the suspicion of some, as the true authority within George W. Bush’s. Always more conservative than he let on (and he let on very little), Cheney executed others’ visions with a cold confidence exceeded only by his bureaucratic acumen.

Powell’s career coupled similar bureaucratic prowess with personal warmth. Witness to the Army’s defeat in Vietnam, he scaled its ranks guided by a string of increasingly powerful mentors. Along the way, he helped articulate the lesson drawn by the Pentagon from the Southeast Asia debacle — namely, that the United States should never again send its youth to war without three things: a clear objective, overwhelming force and political backing at home. Powell was less its author than its most eloquent advocate, but this “Powell Doctrine” guided American military thinking by the 1980s.

Their relationship blossomed during the first gulf war, under George H. W. Bush, when Cheney ran the Pentagon and Powell led the Joint Chiefs of Staff, together orchestrating a textbook implementation of the doctrine’s required trinity. Cheney was certain America would win. Reluctant to deploy without sufficient material and political support from their civilian masters, Powell made sure it would.