Has Bloomberg Found His Condoleezza?

By GRACE RAUH, Staff Reporter of the Sun
November 27, 2007

A report that a foreign policy adviser in the Clinton administration who is a critic of the war in Iraq, Nancy Soderberg, is briefing Mayor Bloomberg about the war offers some indication of the foreign policy approach Mr. Bloomberg might take if he were to run for president.

Ms. Soderberg is considered a centrist who supports using international institutions to further American interests abroad. In television appearances, she has spoken out about the war in Iraq, saying it has been botched from the beginning.

Her lessons with Mr. Bloomberg hark back to President Bush's first campaign for president, when Secretary of State Rice famously tutored Mr. Bush in foreign policy. Despite starting an international corporation, Bloomberg LP, Mr. Bloomberg has little experience with the diplomatic set at the State Department or defense officials at the Pentagon.

He is making an effort to beef up his foreign policy credentials in other ways as well, by traveling to the island of Bali in Indonesia for a United Nations meeting on climate change next month and mulling a stop in China during his trip, further fueling speculation that he will run for president as a third party candidate.

The director of the American strategy program at the New America Foundation, Steven Clemons, said he would not be surprised if Ms. Soderberg is teaching Mr. Bloomberg.

"I'm sure that Bloomberg some way or another likes the brand of focus on progressive ends, while being open to the means and methods that someone like a Dick Holbrooke represents," he said, referring to a former American ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, who is an adviser to Senator Clinton. He said Ms. Soderberg would be open to "ideas on the right."

When asked yesterday about the foreign policy meetings, which were first reported in the Huffington Post last week, Mr. Bloomberg said he is "not running for president."

"Who I meet with in my private time is up to me. Nobody should be surprised that I'm interested in international affairs," he said, adding that he is "interested in a lot of things."

He added: "When I want to study them, I do it in my private life."

Ms. Soderberg, a visiting scholar at the University of North Florida, did not return calls for comment.

Conservatives were critical of Ms. Soderberg after she appeared on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart in 2005 and she and the host joked about President Bush's efforts to bring democracy to the Middle East.

"There's always hope that this might not work," she said.

Earlier this year, she said American troops should stay in Iraq "and give the Iraqis a chance to get it right."

"We have made one mistake after another since this invasion. Whatever you think of the war itself, once we were there, we just botched it time and again," she said during a television interview on WJXT in Florida in January. "Our exit strategy, however, is not a military defeat of the insurgency, because that insurgency will exist as long as we are there. They're related. Our exit strategy is to arm and train the security forces of Iraq so we can give them that job and come home."

During Mr. Bloomberg's 2005 mayoral campaign, he initially refused to answer questions about the war, saying it was "not a local issue." A week before winning re-election, he said during a televised debate that a "massive intelligence failure" led the country to war and that pulling out American troops before peace could be maintained would be an "outrage."

In March, Mr. Bloomberg said a bill backed by Democrats in Congress to set a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq was irresponsible legislation.

After leaving the White House at the end of President Clinton's first term in 1997, Ms. Soderberg was appointed an ambassador to the United Nations.

In 2001, she joined the International Crisis Group in New York, and she crossed paths with Mr. Bloomberg when he appointed her in 2002 to run the city's sister cities program, which she did as a volunteer, according to a copy of her resume posted on her Web site. She began teaching at the University of North Florida in 2006.

She lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., with her husband, Richard Bistrong. She has donated $2,500 to Senator Clinton's campaign and $500 to Senator Obama, according to a fund raising database on OpenSecrets.org.

Ms. Soderberg is fluent in French and earned a master's degree with a focus on development economics from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, her resume states. She earned a bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt University in 1980.

She was a foreign policy adviser for Mr. Clinton's 1992 campaign and previously was a foreign policy adviser to Senator Kennedy.

She wrote "The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might," which was published in 2005 with a foreword by President Clinton. It contrasts the Clinton administration's foreign policy approach with that of President Bush.

In a review of the book, a member of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, Bret Stephens, described it as a "sustained lament that Mr. Bush's 'hegemonic' attitudes have undone the brilliant work of his predecessor."

He wrote that it contained factual errors and took her to task for writing: "The hegemons' experiment has failed in Iraq."

The Washington Post wrote that Ms. Soderberg's "policy recommendations — 'tough engagement'; working 'in concert with the international community, rather than clashing with it'; and using 'force as a last, not first resort' — are sensible."

A professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service who is a former American ambassador to the United Nations, Donald McHenry, said Ms. Soderberg is "a very level-headed centrist" and "sound person."

"I don't see any reason why any person wanting to be surrounded by a very competent person in foreign policy would not want her," he said.

A professor of public administration at Columbia University, Steven Cohen, cautioned against reading too much into the reported meetings between Mr. Bloomberg and Ms. Soderberg.

"I would never assume that because he is consulting with someone he is necessarily going to follow" that person, he said. "That's not the Bloomberg style."

Has Bloomberg Found His Condoleezza?

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