No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

by Condoleezza Rice

  Japan was concerned principally about resolving the abduction cases from the 1970s and 1980s. For Tokyo, positive movement toward Pyongyang was sometimes seen as evidence of insufficient concern about that humanitarian tragedy. Seoul wanted North Korea’s nuclear program halted but feared that any confrontational step might worsen tensions on the peninsula. Beijing worried that a nuclear North Korea would encourage Japan—or possibly South Korea—to go nuclear but worried more about the stability of the North Korean regime, fearing a crack-up that could produce floods of refugees into China. In other words, everyone wanted a denuclearized North Korea, but other priorities prevented concerted action to attain the goal.

  The Six-Party Talks, which also included Russia, had thus made almost no progress since their establishment in 2003. I believed that there was promise in them, particularly if we could develop a longer-term framework that pointed the way toward denuclearization and a resolution of the underlying tensions in the region. We started at State to develop an approach that would do precisely that. It would be hard to get agreement among the six parties. But the first task was to get agreement in Washington, where the divided opinion on North Korea had been pronounced from the very beginning of the administration.

  Before departing for Asia, I’d engaged the President and Steve Hadley in a “heart-to-heart” about the North Korean problem. The President needed to be comfortable with the idea that we might have to talk to the North Koreans to achieve what we wanted. It was surely a long shot, but maybe Kim Jong-il could be induced, step by step, to give up his nuclear ambitions in exchange for benefits, which would also be doled out step by step. For instance, Kim’s agreeing to let inspectors return might bring renewed fuel deliveries. If that succeeded, we might start down a political track: action for action. We wouldn’t give up very much until the North Koreans acted. My diplomats would need room to maneuver in negotiations, and Washington’s micromanagement, so evident in the first term, needed to end. The President could trust me to keep my own negotiators in line.

  To make the strategy work, we’d have to do three things. First, we’d have to unite the other five powers so that the North couldn’t get benefits from any if it didn’t live up to its obligations. North Korea was one of the most sanctioned countries in the world, but we needed help enforcing the constraints. We couldn’t have China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia each going its own way. That was an easy sell with the President.

  The second precondition for a workable strategy, it seemed to me, was making it clear to all the players that a change in regime policy, rather than the regime itself, would be sufficient to begin negotiations—for the time being. The North Korean leader was loathsome; could the President stomach an approach that might leave Kim in power if only the dictator changed direction?

  And third, we needed to pursue the development of defensive measures, specifically: blocking the sale of North Korean nuclear material, denying overflight rights for suspicious cargo, and bolstering the missile defense systems of our allies in East Asia. The diplomatic and defensive tracks worked together, as we reinvigorated the Six-Party Talks.

  The President thought long and hard about it, and then he delivered one of his strategic insights that always surprised me—even after years of experiencing it. “Well, maybe we’d have to put up with him for a while,” he said. “But that place can’t stand true sunshine.” He was referencing the discredited policy of cordial relations that South Korean President Kim Dae-jung had adopted toward the North. The President suggested that Kim Jong-il might try to reform, but he would do the same thing that most dictators do in such circumstances—bring about his own demise. Then he said something quite startling: “Maybe we could call his bluff and offer him a peace treaty if he gives up his weapons and opens up to the world.”

  That was a little further than I was willing to go, but I asked my counselor, Philip Zelikow, and Bob Zoellick to start thinking about the idea. Was the answer to the North Korean nuclear program a diplomatic big bang to end the conflict? It was a question worth asking. We saw too that if progress were to occur, the Six-Party Talks might evolve into something even more significant: the basis of a security mechanism for Northeast Asia.

  I called Henry Kissinger and asked to have dinner with him. We shared a background as academics, and he’d also been national security advisor and secretary of state. He’d opened China and was one of the greatest strategic thinkers ever to occupy the office. Like my friend George Shultz, Henry was always there to help me rise above the day’s preoccupations and explore the strategic changes that were unfolding. He immediately saw the big picture and the possibility for a grand design in Northeast Asia that might ultimately end the conflict and lead to the unification of the Koreas. All that, of course, was far into the future.

  In the meantime, I’d go to Seoul and Beijing armed with the knowledge that the President was willing to think big. That allowed me room to suggest a restart to the Six-Party Talks in which the United States would be prepared to be flexible.

  The South Koreans were, of course, thrilled to hear that we wanted to restart the talks. But our condition was absolute unity in our approach to Pyongyang. When the North got nasty (which it would undoubtedly do), or if it failed to live up to its obligations, Seoul would have to take a tough line. My interlocutors nodded agreement, but it wouldn’t be that easy.

  My meetings in Beijing were more difficult. Earlier in March, the Chinese had publicly questioned the reliability of our intelligence on the North Korean program and suggested that the United States take up the problem bilaterally with Pyongyang. My goal was to let the Chinese know that such an approach was a nonstarter; our participation in solving the problem required theirs too.

  As my motorcade sped down the wide boulevard toward the Great Hall of the People, I thought about how much the country had changed since my first visit there in 1988. At that time, on any given day one might have seen on the streets of Beijing a few horse carts, a few cars, and a lot of bicycles. Now cars were everywhere, and my agenda with the Chinese leadership would focus as much on issues associated with Beijing’s economic rise as the security problems before us.

  We arrived at the front door of the massive Stalinist structure. Ascending the steps, I was startled by the customary salute in which the Chinese guards yell and snap to attention. Even though I visited the Great Hall several times after that, I never quite got used to the guards’ bloodcurdling yell, which always made me jump involuntarily.

  I was then ushered into an enormous room where at least twenty members of the Chinese delegation stood in front of their seats, awaiting Hu Jintao’s arrival. Finally the Chinese president appeared, and we posed for photographs. In China the press people didn’t yell out questions; they do that only in democracies. President Hu and I sat down and literally had to use microphones to carry on our stilted dialogue across the cavernous hall.

  Hu delivered his welcoming remarks and then launched, as the Chinese always did, into a monologue about Taiwan. I’d already heard the script from the foreign minister, Premier Wen Jiabao, and State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan, who’d talked for forty-five minutes of our one-hour meeting.

  More than twenty years after Mao Zedong’s Communist regime consolidated its power, Washington finally recognized the People’s Republic of China and established diplomatic relations with it. But the “one-China policy” carried a contradiction within it since the United States continued to arm and support Taiwan, which by 2005 was a vibrant democracy. That was a source of constant tension with Beijing, which saw the United States’ position as interference in China’s domestic affairs. Therefore every meeting with the Chinese started with a lecture about the “one-China policy”; the “three joint communiqués” (signed individually in the 1970s and 1980s); and the evils of arms sales to Taiwan. At that particular time, the harangue also included attacks on the hated president of Taiwan, Chen Shui-bian, who was seen as a particularly aggressive secessionist.

  I listened pati
ently and then returned the favor with my own ritualistic statement of U.S. policy. Yes, we had a one-China policy based on the three communiqués. But we also had the Taiwan Relations Act, which required the United States to help Taiwan defend itself, and we would tolerate no unilateral changes to the status quo. The Chinese had just passed an “anti-secessionist” law, and we were worried that it would bait Chen into his own provocation. (The Taiwanese president didn’t act up immediately, but in time he would take dangerous steps that challenged Beijing, causing us to break with him—a step that greatly pleased China.)

  After the “exchange of views” on Taiwan, I turned to the problem of intellectual property and China’s miserable record of protection. Hu answered woodenly, explaining all that Beijing was doing to stop piracy. We then turned to a cursory review of the situation in North Korea. I couldn’t say anything remotely consequential in that setting, and neither could he.

  My mind wandered as Hu delivered his talking points. These set-piece “discussions” with the Chinese leadership in a space that felt the length of a football field wouldn’t work. I asked our ambassador, Sandy Randt, to see if he could condition the Chinese to smaller meetings with more give-and-take. On average, 70 percent of U.S. ambassadors are career diplomats, but the President reserves the right to appoint certain ambassadors from outside the ranks of the Foreign Service. Sandy, who’d been the President’s fraternity brother in college, was one of those noncareer political ambassadors who defied the stereotype: he spoke fluent Mandarin, having lived eighteen years in Hong Kong, and, according to none other than Hu Jintao, knew “more Chinese people than he did.” The estimable Ambassador Randt undertook to talk to the Chinese, and fortunately, on my next visit, Hu’s staff suggested a small meeting after the formal one. Well, small by Chinese standards: there were six on each side.

  I finished my trip in Beijing thinking that I’d failed to deliver the message that I’d intended. But the Chinese, it turned out, had heard me loud and clear. They let Sandy know that they were anxious to resume the Six-Party Talks and would “explore” the North’s willingness to do so as well.

  TWENTY-FOUR HOURS later, I headed for the President’s ranch and a meeting of the grandly titled but modestly ambitious Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. The Mexicans and Canadians dutifully showed up with huge delegations, including commerce and homeland security ministers. Don’t get me wrong: an effort to “implement improvements in aviation and maritime security” and “improve productivity through regulatory cooperation … while maintaining high standards for health and safety” was certainly worthwhile. It just seemed as if there wasn’t really an agenda for the secretary of state to pursue. It was another one of those “home owner’s meetings.”

  Yet the trip to Crawford was an opportunity to spend time with the President in a relaxed setting and to catch my breath. I’d been on the road six of the eight weeks that I’d been secretary of state. When we returned to Washington, I intended to stay home for a while to complete congressional hearings on the budget; work on plans to coordinate the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza; and spend some time helping the Iraqis form a government. But then the news came that Pope John Paul II had died. I’d be back on a plane the next week, accompanying President and Mrs. Bush, President Clinton, and President George H. W. Bush to the Vatican for the funeral.

  We arrived in Rome two nights before the funeral and were immediately escorted to St. Peter’s Basilica to view the late Holy Father in repose. The car ride was a bit uncomfortable because, for security reasons, all five of us had to ride in the presidential limousine, which comfortably seats four. On long rides I was wedged for the entire trip between President Clinton, who talks a lot, and President George H. W. Bush, who talks very little.

  In the darkened space of the basilica, I tried to concentrate on my prayers rather than the eeriness of the scene as we knelt a few yards from where the Holy Father lay. Frankly, it was spooky, and I didn’t sleep very well that night with the images of the funeral bier fresh in my mind.

  The events on the morning of the funeral were, however, glorious. I was seated five rows from the front with the former presidents and several foreign ministers. The President and First Lady were in the second row, the first having been reserved for royalty, including the king of Lesotho in a huge leopard hat.

  As the three-hour High Mass drew to a close, I got up to move toward the front. The Vatican had told us to leave first, given the length of our motorcade. I was assigned the difficult task of getting the two ex-presidents out of the crowd and staged for departure. Just as I reached Laura and the President, the pallbearers came down to carry the pope’s coffin back into the basilica. The bells of St. Peter’s began to peal, the choir blending with them in an ethereal and mournful anthem, and in the square were hundreds of thousands of people, many of them waving the flags of Poland and Solidarity. It was quite a send-off for this man, who had symbolized the moral force that had brought communism to its knees.

  Then the pallbearers lifted the coffin and turned it toward the crowd. The day had been cold and windy and gray. At that very moment, the sun burst through the clouds as if to acknowledge John Paul’s ascendance to his father’s throne. “Did you see that?” Laura Bush asked me. I nodded but I was struck dumb and couldn’t speak. As we reentered the basilica and passed the Pietà, I thanked God for the gift of eternal life.

  Flying back on Air Force One, we talked about that moment and what it had meant. I asked people who’d watched on television if the press had mentioned it and learned that no one had. Months later in Argentina, the foreign minister would recall the same sequence of events. Perhaps only believers saw this powerful affirmation of the truth of the resurrection. I was grateful to have been there.

  A week later the College of Cardinals would select Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. In 2004 I’d accompanied President Bush to the sixtieth-anniversary commemoration of the Normandy landing in France, and my luncheon partner had been none other than Cardinal Ratzinger. The conversation had been mostly about our shared love of Mozart. He, too, played the piano. We exchanged a few words about the future of religion but nothing profound enough to recall. Oh, how I wished I’d listened more closely.

  24

  THE COLOR REVOLUTIONS MULTIPLY

  THE EVENTS THAT had been unfolding in the Middle East, most dramatically in Lebanon, mirrored the revolutionary events that had already occurred on Russia’s periphery. Eduard Shevardnadze, the Georgian president, was revered in the West for his seminal role in the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union. I’d gotten to know him during my many trips to Moscow accompanying Jim Baker at the end of the Cold War, the return trips to Washington, and in the relaxed environment of the secretary’s mountain home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

  A dignified man with a shock of white hair, Shevardnadze had a delightful sense of humor and was always kind to me, expressing some wonderment at my fascination with Russia. As foreign minister, he’d helped Mikhail Gorbachev reorient Soviet foreign policy toward cooperation with the West. And in the Soviet Union’s last days, when it appeared that hard-liners were trying to turn the clock back, Shevardnadze had resigned while warning ominously of growing reactionary resistance to Gorbachev and his reforms. When Gorbachev fell from power and the Soviet Union collapsed, Shevardnadze returned to his home in the now-independent Georgia and became its first president.

  But more than a decade later, Shevardnadze was an aging and somewhat pathetic figure surrounded by corrupt family members and associates who were dragging Georgia into a downward spiral of stagnation and decline. The situation had gotten so dire that President George W. Bush asked Jim Baker to visit his old friend and suggest that it was time to go. Shevardnadze didn’t heed that advice and was unceremoniously removed from power when hundreds of thousands of frustrated Georgians took to the streets to demand an end to authoritarianism and corruption. This so-called Rose Revolution in 2003 was the first in a series of revolts to swe
ep through former Soviet states that came to be known as the color revolutions.

  At first the Rose Revolution didn’t particularly trouble the Russians, who harbored resentment toward Shevardnadze for his role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. But when the Georgians elected as their president Mikheil Saakashvili, an American-educated firebrand who could not hide his disdain for Moscow, the relationship between Russia and Georgia moved from latent tension to open hostility.

  Territorial issues had long been a problem between the two countries. Saakashvili made it clear that he would defend the integrity of Georgia against the Moscow-supported secessionists in the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Russians, on the other hand, believed the Georgians were tolerating—if not facilitating—Chechen terrorism in the Pankisi Gorge, high in the mountains between the two countries.

  The latter claim led us to undertake a major effort in the first term to train some of the Georgian military forces in counterterrorism, thereby reassuring the Russians that their neighbors were an asset, not a liability, in the war on terrorism. Chechen terrorism was a constant source of conflict with Sergei Ivanov, Russia’s defense minister and my principal interlocutor when I was national security advisor. He would call frequently to denigrate the Georgian effort. In one conversation, he screamed, “If the Georgians don’t clean this up, the Russian army will!” I sometimes found it useful to bluntly rebuff these bluffs. “Sergei, no Russian general is leading his troops into the Pankisi Gorge,” I said. “And both you and I know it, so stop threatening to do what you aren’t going to do.” The Russians wanted no part in the rats’ nest of Chechen and al Qaeda fighters in that godforsaken place. Eventually Ivanov and even Putin had to admit that the Georgians were having some success against the terrorists.

  But Moscow’s animosity toward Saakashvili was about something more deeply rooted than mere security or political concerns. Many Russians have an irrational hatred for the Georgians as a people. The average man on the street will tell you without too much prompting that the dark-skinned inhabitants of the Caucasus are thieves and thugs. Once when staying in a somewhat seedy Moscow hotel, the Ukraina, I returned from dinner to be told by an agitated “hall lady” (in the old Soviet Union these senior citizens stayed up all night to “watch” the comings and goings of hotel guests) that some Georgian men had been asking after me. Her unvarnished anti-Georgian screed was delivered without her apparently noticing that I, too, was dark-skinned.