The decision having been made, difficulties get into line. If IBM sets out to create a computer of a particular kind not recommended by all its scientists or directors, the decision reconfigures everything and everybody else. The scientists and suppliers and stockholders readjust their priorities, and the project goes forward. Diplomatic work is clearly necessary, but diplomatic servility, of the kind practiced by Clinton from time to time with the U.N., is wrong, and Bush is not likely to get bogged down by it. Nobody knows the European scene better than Donald Rumsfeld, and General Powell also knows how to take command.
All systems are go.