Profile Robert Gates - the former CIA director and foreign policy realist who is the US's new defence secretary: The son of a car parts dealer and a former Eagle scout, Donald Rumsfeld's replacement faces a battle to put Bush's Iraq policy back on track, writes Denis Staunton in Washington
Donald Rumsfeld's departure as defence secretary was so widely celebrated and so long overdue that almost any successor was likely to be welcomed as an improvement. But President George Bush's choice of former CIA director Robert Gates has generated unusual excitement in Washington, where it is seen as heralding a dramatic change of policy towards Iraq.
"I think the Gates appointment is the best appointment that President Bush has made in the course of his six years in office . . . This appointment may be marking the beginning of a major corrective in American policy towards the Middle East," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser under president Jimmy Carter.
Gates is a member of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan committee chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton that has been working for six months on a new approach to the war. The return of Baker and Gates, both members of the foreign policy team of Bush's father in the early 1990s, has prompted some commentators to declare that the grown-ups are reclaiming the junior Bush presidency.
"Poppy Bush and James Baker gave Sonny the presidency to play with and he broke it. So now they're taking it back," Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times.
An intelligence analyst and Soviet expert who was the first CIA officer to rise through the ranks to become the agency's director, Gates's consensus-building style, which relies greatly on delegation, contrasts sharply with Rumsfeld's combative, hands-on approach at the Pentagon.
Where Rumsfeld bullied military commanders into implementing his plan for more flexible, streamlined forces, Gates, who has little defence expertise, is more likely to listen to the generals and to ensure that any changes win broad support within the department of defence.
Gates faces important decisions about whether to increase manpower in the army and the marines, possibly at the expense of the air force, the navy and costly weapons programmes. He will also have to confront the urgent task of improving morale within the forces and building confidence among commanders who have felt frozen out and ignored by Rumsfeld.
The most important question about Gates's appointment, however, is what it means for US policy in Iraq as the Democratic victory in this week's mid-term elections heightens pressure on the administration to change course. The Iraq Study Group's conclusions will not be published until next month, but officials who have been questioned by the committee say that Gates's frustration with the conduct of the war has been apparent. As a foreign policy realist, he has little patience with the ambitious, neo-conservative plan to use the invasion of Iraq to spread democracy throughout the Middle East. Speaking to students in California last year, Gates said that the US should promote democracy - but not at all costs.
"I think how you deliver that message to different countries depends on different circumstances, and you also have to take into account our own national security interests . . . How each country pursues it, we have to decide in a realistic manner," he said.
The son of a wholesale car parts dealer, Robert Michael Gates was born in Wichita, Kansas on September 25th, 1943. As an Eagle Scout, the highest rank in the Boy Scouts of America, he became a keen hiker, an enthusiasm he retains to this day.
After taking a degree in European History at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where he joined the Young Republicans, he moved to Indiana University to take a master's degree in history, which he followed with a PhD in Soviet and Russian History at Georgetown.
In Indiana, Gates was recruited by the CIA, but, soon after joining the agency, he was drafted into the air force from 1967 to 1969. Like many CIA officers at the time, he opposed the Vietnam War and even marched in protest against US activities in Cambodia.
From 1974 to 1979, he worked on the National Security Council staff under presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter before returning to the CIA, where he rose to become deputy director in 1986.
In 1987, Ronald Reagan nominated Gates to succeed William Casey as CIA director, but his nomination was withdrawn because of his closeness to Casey during the Iran-Contra scandal. In the early 1980s US officials had engaged in a secret deal to sell arms to Iran in return for the release of American hostages. The funds earned through the arms sales were then channelled to right-wing Contra guerrillas who were trying to overthrow Nicaragua's left-wing government.
WHEN HE WAS questioned by an independent counsel investigating the scandal, Gates, who is reputed to have a photographic memory, was unable to recall key details but denied any knowledge of the illegal deals.
When George HW Bush became president in 1989, he appointed Gates deputy national security director under Brent Scowcroft, a foreign policy realist who has criticised the recent Iraq war. When Bush Sr nominated Gates as CIA director in 1991, his confirmation followed stormy hearings during which Democrats said he had tailored intelligence to exaggerate the Soviet military threat during the 1980s.
Voting against Gates's nomination, Democratic senator Tom Daschle warned that his appointment could lead to the further politicisation of intelligence.
"Again, I ask my colleagues, if Robert Gates cooked the books to advocate the ideological position of the administration while serving as deputy director for intelligence and deputy director of central intelligence, is it possible that US intelligence under his guidance will continue to politicise intelligence? My answer is, 'We cannot afford to take that chance'," Daschle said.
A Cold War hawk, Gates was sceptical about Mikhail Gorbachev, sharing with Dick Cheney, who was then defence secretary, the view that the Soviet leader was simply a new face for the old communist policies.
As CIA director during the first Gulf War, he supported the decision not to topple Saddam Hussein after his withdrawal from Kuwait, on the grounds that the US could not successfully occupy Iraq.
Since his retirement from public office in 1993, when he went to Texas A&M University, first as head of the George HW Bush presidential library and later as university president, Gates's interventions in the foreign policy debate have been rare.
TWO YEARS AGO, however, he joined Brzezinski in calling for direct and sustained talks between the US and Iran, a policy the current Bush administration has resisted.
"A political dialogue with Iran should not be deferred until such a time as the deep differences over Iranian nuclear ambitions and its invidious involvement with regional conflicts have been resolved. Rather, the process of selective political engagement itself represents a potentially effective path for addressing those differences," Gates and Brzezinski said in a report for the Council on Foreign Relations.
The two men suggested that greater engagement in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was key to pursuing US interests in the Middle East.
"Iranian incitement of virulent anti-Israeli sentiment and activities thrives when there is no progress towards peace . . . A serious effort on the part of Washington aimed at achieving Arab-Israeli peace is central to eventually stemming the tide of extremism in the region," he said.
In an opinion piece in the New York Times in 2004, Gates said the fight against terrorism must involve positive measures as well as military action and intelligence-gathering.
"To defeat terrorism, our global military, law enforcement and intelligence capacities must be complemented with positive initiatives and programmes aimed at the young people in developing nations who will guide their countries in the future. No policy has proved more successful in making friends for the United States, during the cold war and since, than educating students from abroad at our colleges and universities," he wrote.
Gates has said little about what he thinks the US should do in Iraq, remarking when asked about what would happen there that, in the intelligence world, everything is divided into the categories of secrets and mysteries.
"Iraq is very much the latter," he said.
In his talk to California students last year, Gates said he hoped the US would be able to leave Iraq in a year or two and he hinted that it may be time to abandon hope of installing a western-style democracy in Baghdad. "I think," he said, "an Iraqi government secure enough to invite us to leave we can count as a victory."
The Gates File
Who is he?
Former CIA director and foreign policy realist
Why is he in the news?
Nominated to succeed Donald Rumsfeld as US defence secretary
Most appealing characteristic:
He's not Donald Rumsfeld
Least appealing characteristic:
Accused of manipulating intelligence for political purposes
Most likely to say:
Nothing
Least likely to say:
"Let me tell you a secret . . ."