Colin Powell

American secretary of state (2000–5)

• Born: April 5, 1937
• Place of Birth: New York, New York
• Died: October 18, 2021
• Place of Death: Bethesda, Maryland

A war veteran and the first Black secretary of state, Powell achieved the highest-ranking position in the US armed forces and successfully organized and supervised US military operations in the Gulf War of 1991 and served as secretary of state in the early stages of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. He was forced to resign as secretary of state following intense criticism by previously supportive conservatives over bureaucratic infighting concerning the future course of the Iraq War.

Early Life

Colin Powell was born in New York City to Luther Powell and Maud McKoy, immigrants from Jamaica who came to the United States in the 1920s. Both worked in Manhattan’s garment district. Their first child, a daughter, was born in 1931. Five and a half years later Powell was born. The Powells moved from Manhattan to the Bronx in 1940 and settled in Hunt’s Point, an ethnically mixed working-class section of the city. Powell’s boyhood friendships reflected that ethnic mixture, which may have contributed to his attitudes toward race.

Powell attended neighborhood public schools. The New York City school system was then among the strongest in the country, and although Powell did not stand out scholastically, he benefited from the high quality of his teachers. In high school he took the college preparatory program and as a senior applied for admission to New York University and to the City College of New York (CCNY). Admitted to both, he elected to attend CCNY, at that time the only free public university in the United States.

City College was a remarkable school. It attracted first- and second-generation students from every immigrant group arriving in New York. Its alumni flocked to graduate and professional schools in greater numbers than from any other undergraduate institution. Powell began as an engineering student but switched to geology when, as he put it, he could not “visualize a plane intersecting a cone in space.” The highlight of Powell’s university career was his service in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. There Powell found himself in his element. He enjoyed every aspect of his military training and became a member of the Pershing Rifles, an elite military fraternity. He graduated in June of 1958, his degree in geology less important to him than his commission as a second lieutenant in the US Army.

Life’s Work

A few days after graduation, Powell traveled to Fort Benning, Georgia, for five more months of military training, including attendance at the Infantry Officer Basic Course. He volunteered for and successfully completed Ranger School and Airborne (parachute) training. His first full duty assignment was in Germany as a platoon leader in the Second Armored Rifle Battalion of the Forty-Eighth Infantry. As all of Powell’s later fitness reports confirmed, he was an able and adaptable officer from the beginning of his military career. His record was typical of officers on the fast track, that is, officers who earn early promotion because they have been identified as more talented than their contemporaries.

On his return from Germany, Powell was assigned to the Fifth Infantry Division at Fort Devens, Massachusetts. While there, he met Alma Johnson, a young woman who worked as an audiologist with the Boston Guild for the Hard of Hearing. Johnson and Powell began dating and were married shortly before he received orders for Vietnam.

Powell served two tours of duty in the Vietnam War. During the first, 1962–63, he worked as adviser to a South Vietnamese army battalion in the A Shau Valley, one of the most dangerous and active areas of the war. His unit saw a great deal of action, and Powell was wounded by a Viet Cong booby trap. During his second Vietnam tour (1968–69), Powell already was a major, senior enough in rank to be a battalion executive officer in the Americal Division. However, when the division’s commander, Major General Charles Gettys, learned that Powell had been the second-ranking graduate of the Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he assigned Powell to be the staff G3 operations officer for the entire division. Powell was successful in this position, but his tour ended when he suffered a broken ankle in a helicopter crash. His two tours in Vietnam persuaded him that war must have clear political and military objectives and a definable end. This belief was to shape his later service in positions far more senior than divisional G3.

After Vietnam, Powell served in a variety of military and political positions. His crucial introduction to the civilian side of senior leadership occurred when he was awarded a White House Fellowship in 1972. These fellowships are awarded on a competitive basis to a select group of young professionals. Powell’s assignment as a White House Fellow was to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under Caspar Weinberger, later to be secretary of defense. Weinberger’s deputy, Frank Carlucci, would also later become secretary of defense. Powell learned about budgeting, the importance of press relations, and, more generally, how to handle himself in the senior political world. The White House Fellowship marked Powell, both in the Army and in the government, as a rising young officer. The contacts he made at OMB were also to serve him well in later years.

After his fellowship year, Powell received assignments of increasing responsibility. He commanded a brigade of the 101st Airborne Division in 1976–77. He was military assistant to the deputy secretary of defense from 1979 to 1981 and the secretary of defense from 1983 to 1986. Later in 1986 he was given overall command of V Corps in Europe. From 1987 to 1989 he was President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser, working on the most delicate and secret issues of national security policy. Among these were nuclear disarmament and the issue of the American position on the dissolution of the Soviet Union. During his service as national security adviser, Powell continued to impress those with whom he was working, among them Vice President George H. W. Bush.

Bush became president in January 1989. Powell refused several jobs in the new administration, including director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Preferring to remain in the Army, he was promoted to general and put in charge of the Army Forces Command. Ten months later, when Admiral William Crowe retired as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell was the obvious choice for the position. Although he was the most junior of the fifteen existing four-star generals, he had a unique combination of civilian and military service, a record of success in every job he had undertaken, and excellent personal and professional relations with other senior members of the defense and foreign policy establishment. After brief consideration, President Bush nominated him for the position. Powell was quickly confirmed by the US Senate.

Powell’s new job did not involve the direct command of troops. Troops are controlled by what are called unified and specified commanders. The Joint Chiefs chair is the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the principal military adviser to the president and secretary of defense. The chair is given immense power and influence. Powell determined to use this influence to prevent unwise military entanglements—the lesson of Vietnam—and to promote his conception of the size and organization of the US military establishment in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Powell had hardly settled in to his new office when a crisis emerged in Panama. The United States had been awaiting an opportunity to depose or help depose the Panamanian president, General Manuel Noriega, who was engaged in the business of illegal drugs. On Powell’s second day in office, reports were circulating of an imminent anti-Noriega coup. Should the United States enter the fray? Powell and his senior colleagues decided that the reports were too fragmentary and the probability of success too remote. In the end the reports were proved right, for the coup collapsed after only a few hours.

Two months later, after the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) shot and killed a US service member, beat up another, and brutalized the latter’s wife, the United States acted. American forces invaded Panama, routed the PDF, and captured Noriega within a few days. This operation was conducted consistently with Powell’s insistence that there be attainable military objectives and a way out of the commitment after the objectives were achieved.

Powell’s greatest achievement as chair of the Joint Chiefs was the successful organization and implementation of the Persian Gulf War of 1991. On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait and threatened the security of neighboring Saudi Arabia, a US ally. For a variety of reasons, President Bush determined that the United States could not tolerate these extensions of Iraqi power. Operation Desert Shield began almost immediately. Desert Shield forces were sent to Saudi Arabia to protect the Saudis from an Iraqi attack. Within a few months the American commitment of forces to Desert Shield amounted to nearly 250,000 troops. Simultaneous economic and diplomatic pressures were applied to Iraq to persuade Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait. When it became clear that these pressures were not succeeding, Bush ordered preparations for the start of Operation Desert Storm, the forcible expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait. Overall responsibility for these operations was with Powell. The build-up continued, eventually reaching 500,000-plus detachments sent by many of America’s allies and by many Arab countries.

Powell was instrumental in insisting to his superiors that the military and political objectives be clearly defined. Moreover, he worked closely with General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the operation’s field commander, to ensure that the strategy of attack did not involve costly frontal assaults on fortified positions. In January 1991, air attacks began against Iraq and Iraqi forces. A ground assault was launched in February. Four days of fighting were sufficient to clear Kuwait of the invaders and destroy most of Iraq’s heavy armored divisions. Bush, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, and Powell halted the war immediately thereafter to prevent further slaughter of Iraqi forces.

Powell’s term as chair lasted into the Clinton administration, and when it expired he retired from the Army. In 1995 and 1996 there was intense speculation as to whether Powell would accept a vice presidential nomination on the Republican Party ticket, but he declined the offer. Alma Powell was very much opposed to any run for elective office for her husband, and Powell himself stated that he had little taste for electoral politics. He spent the next few years writing, lecturing, and promoting youth programs through an organization called America’s Promise. His autobiography My American Journey, which was published in 1995, was very successful. More than a million copies were sold, and the royalties made Powell wealthy.

In 1999, Powell again was pressed to seek elective office. Many members of the liberal wing of the Republican Party were hoping that he would get the party’s nomination for the presidency in 2000. After much consideration, and after additional discussion with Alma, Powell again declined to run. The 2000 election did bring George W. Bush to the presidency after a bitter and divisive struggle over contested electoral votes in Florida. Bush, essentially inexperienced in foreign affairs, needed a person of stature to become secretary of state. He turned to Powell, who accepted Bush’s offer. Powell’s new job was announced in December of 2000.

As secretary of state, Powell found that the Defense Department (DOD), under Donald Rumsfeld, and the president’s more immediate foreign policy staff, under National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, did not agree with his approach to foreign and defense policy. Powell’s underlying policy in the wake of the Soviet collapse was to expand alliances and trade, especially with Russia and China. He believed that economic growth and security would foster peaceful solutions to international disputes and rivalries. The White House and the DOD, however, favored more aggressive extensions of American power. Powell prevailed in the first nine months of his tenure, because in the absence of war the DOD had a relatively small role in the making of foreign policy.

American foreign policy changed, however, with the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The United States immediately began its invasion of Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda and to find Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda’s leader at the time. Also, many in the Bush administration wanted to depose Hussein, the Iraqi dictator, who was said to be preparing weapons of mass destruction for use in the already unstable Middle East or for delivery to terrorists to use against the United States. Although Powell warned Bush privately against this new foreign policy, he publicly supported it. Some of his biographers believe that his penchant for obeying orders accounts for the apparent contradiction. Whatever the reason, his great prestige in the United States and around the world would, in the end, help Bush develop support for the invasions of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 and of Iraq in March 2003.

As secretary of state, Powell’s major role in the Iraqi invasion was to promote the development of an international coalition, first to support American military action in the invasion and subsequently to assist in the rebuilding of Iraq after the defeat of its forces. Powell’s warnings to Bush had been correct, however. As the Iraqi operation bogged down, its supporters in the White House and the DOD became increasingly hostile to Powell. The public saw intense bureaucratic infighting, and Powell was asked to resign by the president’s chief of staff, Andrew Card, in November 2004, effective at the end of Bush’s first term.

After his second retirement, Powell continued to lecture, write, and promote moderate Republican policy. He remained influential in the foreign policy sphere, most notably in successfully opposing Senate confirmation of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. Despite being a Republican, he endorsed Barack Obama for president in 2008 and 2012.

By the time that the 2016 presidential race had been narrowed down to Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, however, Powell had not voiced an endorsement for either presidential hopeful. At the same time, as both Trump and Clinton's campaigns became increasingly marked by scandal, Powell was involuntarily forced into the fray during the debate surrounding Clinton's use of a private email address and server during her tenure as secretary of state between 2009 and 2013. As part of her defense of the action, Clinton had argued that she had taken advice from Powell that had led her to this decision. While Powell did admit that he had participated in an email exchange with Clinton in which he discussed with her his use of a personal email account with AOL, he also pointed out that Clinton had already been using a private email server for a year before he had given her this explanation. In September 2016, the release of Powell's emails by both the State Department and hackers revealed that he had in fact talked with Clinton about his use of a personal computer, but he continued to defend his actions, highlighting that he had not used a private server; the release of the e-mails also disclosed some of his feelings about the presidential candidates, including his support of Clinton and dislike of Trump. Powell continued his support of Democratic candidates in his later years, endorsing Joe Biden in 2020, for whom he delivered a message of support at the Democratic National Convention that year. Powell died on October 18, 2021, from complications of COVID-19. He was eighty-four years old.

Significance

Powell’s career was marked by four major achievements and one significant failure. First, he achieved the highest military rank of any African American before him. To have an African American at the very top of the military chain of command was considered a good thing for the armed services, considering that the ranks of the US armed forces are disproportionately Black. Second, he was the first African American to be secretary of state. Powell’s success could be read, as many have argued, as a sign that racism was on the decline, at least in the military and at the federal level of government. Third, Powell’s tenure also led to a restoration of public confidence and pride in the US armed forces and to increased confidence among military members themselves. The defeat and bitterness of Vietnam were lessened in the celebration of the Persian Gulf War victory. For this, some of the credit belongs to Powell. His policy on force reductions was appropriate, given the collapse of the Soviet Union, and was a step toward a more realistic and affordable military policy for the United States. Finally, Powell’s insistence that military objectives be defined and attainable made national foreign policy more realistic.

Powell’s great failure, however, was his inability to persuade the neoconservatives of the Bush administration to alter their approach to the war in Iraq. According to some critics, his early public support for the Iraq War, which after several years had proved unpopular to the majority of Americans, and his later ambivalence about the invasion and occupation, left a stain on his legacy as secretary of state.

Bibliography

Beinart, Peter. “Why Colin Powell Endorsed President Obama.” Daily Beast, 29 Oct. 2012, www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/29/why-colin-powell-endorsed-president-obama.html. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

“Biographies of the Secretaries of State: Colin L. Powell.” Office of the Historian. US Dept. of State, n.d., history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/powell-colin-luther. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

DeYoung, Karen. Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell. Knopf, 2006.

Millett, Allan R., Pater Maslowski, and William B. Feis. For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States from 1607 to 2012. Simon, 2012.

Powell, Colin L. “A Conversation with Colin Powell: What Startups Need to Know.” Interview by Dan Schawbel. Forbes, May 2012, www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2012/05/17/colin-powell-exclusive-advice-for-entrepreneurs/&refURL=https://www.google.com/&referrer=https://www.google.com/. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Powell, Colin L. It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership. HarperCollins, 2012.

Powell, Colin L., with Joseph E. Persico. My American Journey. Random, 1995.

Roth, David. Sacred Honor: A Biography of Colin Powell. HarperCollins, 1993.

Schmitt, Eric. "Colin Powell, Who Shaped US National Security, Dies at 84." The New York Times, 18 Oct. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/10/18/us/politics/colin-powell-dead.html. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Schwarzkopf, H. Norman. It Doesn’t Take a Hero. Bantam, 1993.

Steins, Richard. Colin Powell: A Biography. Greenwood, 2003.

Walsh, Deirdre. "Hillary Clinton's Emails with Colin Powell Released." CNN, 8 Sept. 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/politics/hillary-clinton-colin-powell-emails/. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Woodward, Bob. The Commanders. Simon, 1991.

Woodward, Bob. The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006–2008. Simon, 2012.