Mr. Bush’s team

A valid concern voters had about candidate George W. Bush was his lack of expertise in foreign policy. It is a shortcoming common among governors who run for president and one the Texas governor readily acknowledged and promised to overcome by surrounding himself with experts.

With his first two high-profile appointments, President-elect Bush has made a good start at keeping that promise. Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice will provide a solid nucleus to what, along with former Defense Secretary-Vice President Dick Cheney, should be a formidable foreign policy team.

Neither appointment comes as a surprise; both did, after all, serve in the administration of Mr. Bush’s father. Gen. Powell was always considered the leading contender for State and Ms. Rice coordinated the Bush campaign’s foreign policy advisory team. Both have inspiring personal stories to tell: He rose from poverty in one of New York City’s toughest neighborhoods to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs and one of the most admired Americans today; she is the daughter of two Alabama schoolteachers who got her early education in segregated schools and who went on to become Stanford University’s youngest, first female and first African-American provost.

The next president and his two appointees share the realpolitik view that America’s power and prestige must be used sparingly and only to advance a definable national interest. During the campaign, candidate Bush repeatedly said the United States must not get involved in ”nation-building” overseas; Gen. Powell is famous for his initial opposition to committing American troops to the Gulf War coalition; in her Republican convention address, Ms. Rice said U.S. forces “are not the world’s 911.”

It certainly is not isolationism, but, beyond that, it lacks definition – “nation building” remains a phrase with a pejorative implication but no real meaning, it takes no great boldness to say that the United States should not be the world’s policeman. Still, in the Cold War aftermath, when the circumstances that could call for intervention are increasingly individualized, the causes misunderstood and the repercussion unpredictable, it is wise to start from a position of guardedness. As the United States still races to catch up with the global political transformation of the last decade, nothing conveys strength like the reluctance to use it.

Given their teacher-pupil relationship, it is understandable that Ms. Rice and Mr. Bush would be in general philosophical agreement, but there are stark differences. He, for example, believes China’s aggressive nature will be tamed by free trade. She has harshly criticized the Clinton administration for coddling China with precisely the same approach. Whether the subject is Russia or Iraq, she consistently talks tougher.

All three take a dim view of humanitarian intervention as a rule, yet all concede that there are exceptions to the rule (in fact, the only recent U.S. intervention panned by any of the three was Haiti). It is here that Gen. Powell may surprise. Since retiring from the military, he has become an ardent advocate for education and for reaching out to impoverished communities. At a time when trouble comes not from a competing superpower but from terrorists operating out of uneducated, impoverished Third World countries, it is an ethic that could serve the Bush administration, and the entire post-Cold War world, well.