Outside looking in, again

One likely explanation of Tony Blair's willingness to indulge George Bush in his various schemes was the belief in London that, via the State Department, they could head off the White House's worst excesses. Consistent with this is the fixation of London first with Colin Powell and now Condi Rice, notwithstanding what the historical record has revealed about Colin Powell's very low weight in the Iraq deliberations.

Having latched on to Condi, they're hopefully schooled enough in the Yes Minister tradition to understand the importance of the people around Condi, by which standard there is bad news today --

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's most senior adviser on Iraq is leaving the State Department to return to his teaching job. Philip D. Zelikow is the best-known member of Rice's academic brain trust at the State Department, and the author of sometimes contrarian appraisals of the Iraq conflict and reconstruction effort. He holds the title counselor, a sort of adviser without portfolio.

In a resignation letter dated Monday, Zelikow said he will return to teaching at the University of Virginia in January. He cited a "long-standing debt to my family" and "truly riveting obligation to college bursars," for his children's tuition.

Zelikow was among the first people Rice hired after she took over as secretary of state in 2005. She also brought in other fellow academics to join a team of Republican political strategists to be her top advisers. His first assignment was a scouting trip to Iraq.

When Zelikow returned, according to the Bob Woodward book "State of Denial," he wrote a secret memo characterizing Iraq as "a failed state" two years after the U.S.-led invasion. In September 2005, he wrote a memo estimating a 70 percent chance of success in achieving a stable, democratic Iraq, and what he called a "significant risk" of "catastrophic failure," the book said.

Besides being on of the few reality-based officials with any influence at the top, Zelikow was also the key person at the top pushing the Blair line that resolution of any problem in the Middle East was going to require progress on Israel-Palestine, a position with no constituency inside the White House. Rice is having trouble filling the senior positions at the State Department, indicating that people in Washington recognize what Blair does not -- the very limited influence that the department has over disastrous policies.

UPDATE 28 NOVEMBER: Lest there be any doubt, US National Security Adviser Steven Hadley shot down the Blair-Zelikow view for good --

Q Underlying a lot of the calls for more direct talks with Iran and Syria is the belief that if there were progress, particularly involving Israel, either with the Palestinians, or between Israel and Syria, that if there was progress on those two tracks you might have greater stability in Iraq or across the Mideast. Do you think that that position, that idea, that progress in Israel-Palestine, Israel-Syria is linked to stability in Iraq and the Mideast? Do you share that belief?

MR. HADLEY: We have -- it's in our interest and it's in the interest of the region to both help Iraqis stabilize the situation in Iraq, help Iraq become a democratic state that can, as the President says, can govern itself, defend itself and sustain itself, and is an ally in the war on terror. It is also, separately and apart, a good thing for the region and for U.S. policy for the Israelis and the Palestinians to get to the point where they can talk about how to stand down their conflict and move in the direction of a more permanent peace. Those are useful and important policy objectives.

Notice the rejection of any sequencing or linkage between the two issues.

FINAL UPDATE: One State Department analyst, Kendall Myers, thinks that Blair never had much influence.