US: By appointing Condoleezza Rice as his Secretary of State, President Bush has signalled that he is not considering a change in his hardline foreign policy, but is rather consolidating his control, writes Conor O'Clery
Dr Rice is known as a devoted loyalist and confidante of the President, with whom she prays and works out most days. Her views are closely identified with the President, who leans towards the hawks in the cabinet, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Even if Dr Rice were to adopt Colin Powell's brand of realism - and she sometimes took his side in policy disputes - it is unlikely that she would have the stature to stand up to Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld, whom she more often let have their way by simply not intervening in foreign policy clashes.
The direction the wind is blowing in post-election Washington was indicated by the manner of Mr Powell's departure. The Secretary of State said he was willing to continue in office for a few months on two conditions, that there was greater US engagement with Iran and that he could take a harder line with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, according to an administration official quoted in the Washington Post. The President did not ask him to stay on.
Policy towards the Middle East is likely to remain largely unchanged, with the onus on the Palestinians to initiate progress, and the focus on Iran and North Korea is likely to be less on diplomacy and more on sanctions.
Many Washington insiders believe that Dr Rice's mission is to bring a truculent State Department into line. Senior diplomats dismayed by America's slump in prestige throughout the world regard Mr Powell as a hero and shared his deep misgivings about Iraq.
Dr Rice's arrival is likely to mean a purge of high-ranking officials hostile to the Bush doctrine and the elevation of hardliners, like John Bolton, the most senior neo-conservative in the department.
Mr Bolton, Under-Secretary for Arms Control, proposed the abolition of the UN in the early 1990s and surrounded himself in the State Department with a group of loyalists running their own intelligence operation to get evidence against Saddam Hussein.
Along with Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, he was a signatory of the famous 1998 letter from the Project for a New American Century, the political arm of the neo-conservative movement, calling on president Clinton to remove Hussein.
Mr Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, also signed that letter but he has been a loyal colleague and friend and he, too, is resigning. On a scale of zero to 100, with 100 being the most conservative, Mr Powell once ranked himself at 60-65, Dr Rice and Mr Rumsfeld at between 80 and 90, and Mr Bolton at 98.
The appointment of Dr Rice's deputy, Stephen Hadley, to her job as National Security Adviser also consolidates the influence of the conservative power-brokers. A methodical, lawyerly official, Mr Hadley is close to Mr Cheney, with whom he once worked in Defence.
The nomination of Dr Rice was welcomed by the Project for a New American Century, whose director, Gary Schmitt, said, "Condi knows what the President wants to accomplish and agrees with it," and it also showed "that the President is bound and determined to be aggressive in the second administration carrying out his policies". There would be "teeth-gnashing" by foreign officials at Mr Powell's departure, former Clinton-era national security adviser Sandy Berger told the Washington Post.
"Colin was the side-door they could get into when they could not get through the front door." At least now when Dr Rice meets foreign leaders, "everyone will know she represents the President", said former presidential adviser David Gergen, whereas before, the rest of the world saw Mr Powell as someone who would represent their views to the White House.
Dr Rice has not only got a tough management task at the State Department - she will have to prove herself as the country's top diplomat at a time when there are deep and bitter divisions among traditional allies.
The first black woman to become US Secretary of State, Dr Rice comes with impressive professional and personal credentials. She speaks fluent Russian, is competent in French and Spanish, and plays classical piano. Born in 1954 to a minister and a teacher, she was named after the Italian musical term for "with sweetness". She took piano lessons from the age of three and studied Spanish and French at elementary school. She witnessed violence in segregated Birmingham where a bomb in the local Baptist school killed four black schoolgirls, one of them her friend.
The family moved to Colorado and she graduated from the University of Denver as a music major and then instead took up international relations. She wrote her master's dissertation on the Czech army, at the University of Notre Dame, where her mentor was Prof Josef Korbel, a Czech emigré and father of the first woman secretary of state, Madeleine Albright.
She received her doctorate from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981, and began teaching at Stanford University. In 1989, the first president Bush's national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, helped convince Dr Rice to leave Stanford and work for him in Washington. Mr Scowcroft had been impressed when this "little slip of a girl" challenged his foreign policy ideas at a dinner in Stanford.
She became one of George H.W. Bush's most trusted advisers and an advocate of building coalitions to buttress American foreign actions. From 1989 through March 1991, the period of German reunification and the final days of the Soviet Union, she was director and then senior director of Soviet and East European affairs in the National Security Council.
Five years later she returned to Stanford as provost - at 38 the youngest person, the first woman and first black American to hold the post. In 1998, as George W. Bush contemplated a presidential run, she was invited to a foreign policy seminar held for him in Texas.
Mr Bush asked her to join his campaign to explain foreign policy "in a way that I can understand".
She showed then that she shared his instinct for unilateralism in US foreign actions. During the campaign she criticised the Clinton administration for making the legitimate exercise of power dependent on other nations and institutions like the United Nations. She and Mr Bush became close friends, sharing deep religious convictions and an enthusiasm for fitness and sport.
As national security adviser in the first term she saw the President first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening. She regularly accompanied Mr Bush on his retreats to Camp David and to the ranch in Crawford, Texas, where she is regarded as family.
Her first few months in office were tranquil until the attacks of September 11th, 2001. Afterwards she was criticised by counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke for not taking the threat of terrorism seriously, despite his apocalyptic warnings. She didn't hold a meeting of cabinet officials to address the issue of al-Qaeda until a few days before the planes crashed into the twin towers.
Testifying under oath to the 9/11 Commission, she loyally defended the administration's record on its handling of intelligence before the attacks, and maintained there was no "silver bullet" that could have prevented them. When the Bush team began to drum up evidence of the threat from Iraq, Dr Rice joined in, warning that "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud".
In December 2002 she asserted that aluminium tubes acquired by Iraq were only suited for nuclear weapons programmes, despite evidence to the contrary given to her staff by nuclear experts - and this issue is bound to come up at her Senate confirmation hearings.
After the row with "Old Europe" over Iraq, she commented that US policy would be to forgive Russia, isolate Germany and punish France. Her tenure as national security adviser hit a rocky patch when deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage reportedly told her that the NSC had become dysfunctional because of policy disagreements between Mr Powell and Mr Rumsfeld. Later Mr Bush gave her new responsibility for co-ordinating policy on post-war Iraq.
Dr Rice, who is single, lives in the Watergate Centre in Washington. She works out with weights every day, is an expert ice skater, and is said to have a "thunderous" tennis serve.
Three years ago, wearing a stunning off-the-shoulder black dress, she accompanied cellist Yo-Yo Ma before 2,000 people at a concert in Washington's Constitution Hall. Her weakness is for shoes - she once splashed out on eight pairs of Ferragamos in one shopping spree.