ABSTRACT
By the time Colin Powell, 49, and Dick Cheney, 45, met in Germany in autumn 1986, both had already learned the lessons that would shape not just their decades-long relationship but American foreign policy itself. Powell was a three-star general commanding the United States Army’s V Corps in Germany after serving as senior aide to the secretary of defense. Like Trump, Powell grew up in New York; but the Powells, a family of Jamaican immigrants, lived in the South Bronx. Powell, who paid for college through the US Army’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, went on to serve two tours in Vietnam, the first before the United States had taken an active role in combat and again five years later during the worst part of the war. Along the way, Powell often used the word ‘no’ in policy debates. He distrusted foreign-policy experts, who he believed produced ‘more data than judgement.
