No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

by Condoleezza Rice

  We went back to where the President was staying, and I asked to see him. “Mr. President,” I said, “you just cut the legs out from under Hadley. He doesn’t think you trust or value him.”

  The President looked surprised. “I just needed you to negotiate that language—I didn’t want to do it,” he said.

  “I know,” I said, “but that’s not how Steve took it. And it might not be how others took it either.” I left. The President called Steve over and apologized. It was a bad moment with a very good ending. The two men would become incredibly close after that—it was different from the relationship the President and I had but equally close. And it would matter a lot when Steve took up the cause of redirecting our faltering effort in Iraq.

  The G8 statement was a good start but it was not a substitute for active diplomacy. Whenever there’s a conflagration, particularly in the Middle East, people expect the U.S. secretary of state to go and try to resolve it. The President, Steve, and I talked about whether I should go and when. Blair had said it best when he told the President, “Condi will have to go but she can’t go too soon. When the American secretary of state goes, something has to happen.” We all knew that nothing was going to happen for a while, so I returned to the United States to monitor events from Washington.

  I’ve been asked many times to describe my hardest challenges while in government service. There were many, but a disproportionate number seemed to cluster in 2006: Iraq in flames, Hamas in the Palestinian government, North Korea flexing its muscles in Asia, Iran marching toward a nuclear weapon, Afghanistan deteriorating. Some days it was hard to see a way out. I would read the biographies of the founding fathers, and it reminded me that impossible things had been achieved before. The United States of America should never have come into being, I thought, after a war against the greatest military power of the time and with Hamilton and Jefferson at each other’s throats. But it did. And who would have believed that the Soviet Union could collapse peacefully? You can do this!

  But even in a terrible year there is always something that stands out. And in 2006 it was the war in Lebanon, which was truly debilitating. As the conflict dragged on, I felt personally responsible for trying to stop it—and very much on the spot. Yet I knew that we had to have the right ceasefire terms so that Hezbollah was not handed a victory for its aggression.

  Each day brought new horrors as Hezbollah fired rockets at the Israeli population, and in response the IDF laid waste to Lebanon’s infrastructure. The government of Fouad Siniora was caught in the middle. His government was in no way responsible for Hezbollah’s raid. It had known nothing about it in advance. But it was paying the price. Never had a government looked so helpless—unable to stop either the splinter terrorists, who were theoretically a part of the government, or the IDF, which in retaliation was destroying the country.

  My efforts in the early stages were reduced to practically begging the Israelis to back off—just a little, at least, in recognition of the precarious position of the Siniora government. I gained the Israelis’ agreement to spare the power grid, thereby avoiding misery for the Lebanese who lived beyond the Hezbollah-controlled South. For the time being, Israel also did not use its ground forces to a significant extent. Meanwhile, the international community was moving from despair at the humanitarian toll to the predictable stage of blaming Israel. Pressure for a ceasefire was growing.

  The President called the National Security Council together on July 19. There was broad agreement that the Israeli offensive would continue no matter what we said. Furthermore, it was probably a good thing that Hezbollah sustain more damage to its infrastructure and forces so that the terrorist group wouldn’t be tempted to launch attacks again in the near future.

  But there was also a great deal of sympathy for Siniora and the Lebanese people. We agreed to press the Israelis on all fronts to refrain from attacks that punished our allies in Beirut. It was admittedly a fine line but one that we had to walk for a while.

  After the meeting, the President and I walked back to the Oval. “Are you ready to go?” he asked.

  “I think so,” I said. The night before, I’d seen a CNN report—one of many in the news—asking precisely when the U.S. secretary of state was going to show up. There had even been one of those snap polls asking people if I could bring peace. I don’t remember the numbers, but most people thought I could. This is getting pretty personal, I thought.

  “What will you do there?” the President asked as we continued down the hall.

  “Well, I don’t know just yet,” I said. “David Welch has been working on terms for a ceasefire, and I’ll try to get both sides on board.” I would go first to the United Nations, where I’d called for consultations. My colleagues from around the world had readily agreed. Ministers didn’t like sitting on their hands, and at least we could look as though we were doing something in New York.

  Two days later I left for Lebanon and Israel to cobble together the terms of a durable, sustainable ceasefire. By that time, the international community was overwhelmingly in favor of an immediate ceasefire. I kept asking my colleagues to focus not on the timing but on the terms—our strategy had to be to try to lay a more secure foundation for Israeli and Lebanese security to avoid a Hamas-like repetition of the conflict. It was frustrating trying to get people to do the right thing. It was hard to negotiate an agreement that would actually matter—and very easy to call for an end to the war.

  I landed first in Lebanon to try and move the various factions toward agreement on terms for a ceasefire. Fouad just wanted to end the war as quickly as possible, but he said he couldn’t do it alone. Could I talk to Nabih Berri, the speaker of Parliament and leader of the Shia political party, Amal?

  No friend of the United States, Berri was nonetheless key to an agreement that would send the Lebanese army into the South and prevent Hezbollah from reestablishing its presence there. The meeting was unpleasant and tense. “Do you expect me to make a deal with the Israelis, who are killing my people?” he started out.

  “I’m very sorry for the losses of life,” I said, trying to keep my cool. At one moment he had me believing that he actually cared about his people, but the next I suspected that he was just playing the political advantage that he clearly had over me. I got nowhere with Berri, but at least he wasn’t inclined to oppose the movement of the Lebanese army into the south of the country. I realized at that moment this was the most important step we could take: reestablishing the national army throughout the country would be a victory for Lebanese sovereignty as it took up positions that Hezbollah and Syrian forces had once held. It wouldn’t change the political balance immediately, but it was one step toward strengthening the power of our allies in Beirut. Couple that with a more capable and empowered multinational force and it would be possible to conceive of a more sustainable security environment after a ceasefire.

  When I returned to meet with Siniora, he again raised the unresolved issue of the Shebaa Farms, a region disputed between Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. He quickly agreed to some other elements of the ceasefire, including the army redeployment and the need for a peacekeeping force. But he wanted it to be the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) with a new mandate. That was, I knew, a nonstarter for the Israelis, who rightly had no confidence in UNIFIL’s ability to keep the peace in the South when the Israel Defense Forces withdrew.

  I then went on to Jerusalem, meeting with Olmert, Livni, Barak, and others. It was clear that the Israelis were just beginning their operation. The end of the conflict was nowhere in sight. I finished my discussions in Jerusalem and Beirut having made little progress, particularly on the central element of an international peacekeeping force to replace the Israeli army once it withdrew. I told the parties that I would return after the international conference to be held in Rome. I had agreed to go to show support for the Lebanese and because I’d need Italian and French assistance on any new force presence.

  In fact, it had been a colossal mistake
to attend. The Europeans wanted to show activity—a bit like the meeting in New York—and that was the real purpose of the gathering. But knowing as I did that the United States might be isolated in refusing to call for an immediate ceasefire, I went anyway, trusting my skills and my colleagues’ assurances that we’d reach unanimity in what we said.

  I arrived in Rome intending to meet with Javier Solana and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Javier was quickly becoming one of my most valued colleagues. A former NATO secretary-general, the Spaniard was a strong supporter of ties with the United States and keenly aware of how much the European Union needed to work with us to succeed diplomatically. His position as the European Union’s high commissioner for foreign affairs was structurally weak—he could do little without agreement from the EU member states. Still, he was an exceptionally good and capable diplomat. One of Javier’s strengths was his calm demeanor; he was not given to wild swings of emotion, whether in the face of crisis or in everyday work.

  Just before he arrived, I got word that the IDF had mistakenly attacked a UN bunker, killing several personnel. Javier warned me that he’d spoken with Kofi, who was very upset and couldn’t see how the Israelis had made such a mistake. The contradictory stories coming out of Tel Aviv didn’t help. The Israelis said that the bunker was a Hezbollah command post. Unfortunately, it was filled with UN personnel. Furthermore, the IDF had just hours later suffered tough losses in a fight for a key town—they were in a foul mood and the fog of war made it hard to get the facts right. Had Hezbollah used the UN workers as human shields? Had the Israelis been careless in their targeting?

  I asked Kofi to join us. He’d already made a statement that came close to accusing the Israelis of an intentional attack on UN personnel. I promised to call Olmert immediately and get the Israelis to order an investigation of what had happened. The Israelis apologized but the atmosphere was souring quickly against our friends, even as the calls for an immediate ceasefire were getting louder. That night I called Steve and told him, “Tomorrow will be rough, but I think I can keep the temperature down.”

  The next morning I met with the Italian foreign minister Massimo D’Alema. Massimo, a former Communist, was nonetheless someone with whom I worked well. He made it clear at the breakfast meeting that he had no intention of isolating the United States. We agreed that the conference statement would reference the need for a ceasefire and the terms but with no reference to the timing. The word “immediate” was to be avoided at all costs.

  The session proceeded as expected with each participant expressing solidarity with the Lebanese people and—depending on the speaker—some combination of anger at Hezbollah and anguish about Israel’s response. I delivered a U.S. position that focused on what we needed to achieve to prevent Hezbollah from profiting from its aggression and a strong push to strengthen Lebanon’s sovereignty over its own territory by deploying the national army in the South for the first time in thirty years. There would need to be a more capable international peacekeeping force than the hapless UNIFIL, which had been in the country for decades but, alas, with a mandate so weak that it had been a spectator whenever trouble arose.

  Fouad Siniora took the opportunity of the conference, not surprisingly, to excoriate Israel and push for an immediate ceasefire. But he cleverly presented a seven-point program that dovetailed nicely with what we wanted to do. The centerpiece was strengthening the Lebanese national army and making it—not militias (read: Hezbollah)—the protector of the state. The plan, which also called for international aid to rebuild the shattered country, struck exactly the right balance between blaming Israel and weakening Hezbollah. It was a very impressive outing.

  The meeting was about to close with unanimous support for the Italian-drafted statement when all of a sudden the French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, raised his hand. “The statement has to say immediate ceasefire,” he blurted out. “That is what the Lebanese people expect.” I was furious. The Russians, the Arabs, even the Lebanese had raised no objection to the statement, knowing that ultimately I was the one who was going to have to deliver the Israelis. Now Douste-Blazy, a medical doctor whom Chirac had appointed not for his expertise but for the management of his internal coalition, had thrown this stink bomb into the room. Does he know what he’s doing, or is he just clueless? I wondered.

  Whatever his intentions, Douste-Blazy managed to blow up the conference. After several attempts to find common language—most notably by the Brits—I called a halt to the proceedings and said that I couldn’t accept the word “immediate.” The statement was passed without the time constraint. But it took about five seconds for word to leak out of the room that the United States had been isolated in support of Israel. I caught up with Karen Hughes on my way to the press conference. “Well,” she said, “it seems we’re the only ones who want the war to continue.”

  Several hundred journalists were crowded into a room intended for, at most, one hundred people. As I stepped on stage with Kofi Annan, Massimo, and Fouad, I took a moment to wipe my forehead. It was unbearably hot and I didn’t want to be seen sweating through the press conference. I wish I had worn a lighter-weight suit, I thought. I then proceeded to explain that the United States would work as quickly as possible for a ceasefire, but the key was to get terms that would prevent a return to the previous status quo. I looked at Fouad, whom I admired so much. This dignified man was in so much pain and begging the world to stop the war. I had to stand next to him and say that the time had not yet come to do so. The next morning, the New York Times carried a front-page picture of the press conference. I was wiping my forehead, but it looked as though I was experiencing a case of the vapors. There was nothing to be done about the image; sometimes a picture isn’t worth a thousand words, I told the press on my plane as I headed off to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

  I’d missed the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meeting the year before and didn’t have an option to skip it again. I felt ridiculous heading to Southeast Asia while trying to negotiate an end to war in the Middle East. But I decided to just accept the contradiction and make quick work of the stop nearly five thousand miles from where I should have been.

  But the ARF presented me with another problem. A silly tradition had grown up whereby the foreign ministers from the non-ASEAN countries performed musical skits. Colin had done a version of the Village People’s “YMCA.” Madeleine and the Japanese foreign minister had performed a song from Evita. You get the picture.

  I wanted no part of it, finding the whole thing undignified and not very funny—particularly in the age of YouTube. That was even more the case in the midst of a devastating war in the Middle East. But I couldn’t refuse to perform and decided to do something serious instead. “I can actually play the piano,” I told my chief of staff, Brian Gunderson, “so tell them I’ll play Brahms.” I thought it would be nice to play a piece with a well-known Malaysian musician, and so, in addition to soloing the Brahms “Intermezzo,” I teamed with the first violinist for the Malaysian National Symphony Orchestra and performed a movement of the Brahms Violin Sonata No. 3 in D Minor. I knew the pieces well and had run through them upon arrival. There was one awful moment when the violinist got lost about halfway through the piece, but we managed to end together. Both offerings were well received. “I didn’t know you could play like that,” Sergei Lavrov said. “It was really beautiful. You’re really good.”

  Did you think I was lying about being able to play? I thought. Stop being uncharitable and just say thank you. “Thanks, Sergei. I’m glad you enjoyed it,” I said. By the way, the Russian skit was hilarious, something about ASEAN taking over the world and peppered with references to the “rice” harvest from the United States. A couple of years later, the ARF ministers decided to kill the idea. Hence Hillary Clinton has been spared that particular frivolity.

  WHEN I RETURNED to the Middle East, I landed in Jerusalem, where we had made little progress on terms for deployment of an international peacekeeping force. We were running ou
t of time because the Israelis were nearing a decision on whether to widen the war with a major ground offensive deeper into Lebanon.

  I went immediately to dinner at Prime Minister Olmert’s house and reviewed the state of the negotiations. My major concern was to prevent a widening of the war while we tried to achieve terms for a ceasefire. Additionally, I wanted to impress upon the Israelis the need to relieve the escalating humanitarian crisis by allowing relief workers time to work without fear of IDF air strikes. Olmert promised to talk to his defense minister, Amir Peretz, and get back to me.

  I went to the hotel to try to get some rest before the next morning, when I was to meet with the chief of staff of the IDF and Defense Minister Peretz. After a brief meeting with our delegations in which I focused on the humanitarian issue, Peretz and I met one-on-one. I told him that time was running out and I couldn’t hold the ground against an immediate ceasefire for much longer. As I was warning against any escalation of the war, his BlackBerry went off. He took a look at it and then returned to the conversation. As we wrapped up, I told him that I was leaving immediately for Lebanon and would return to Jerusalem within a day or so. I’d decided that personally shuttling back and forth was necessary to find a resolution of the war.

  Then, suddenly, David Welch interrupted the meeting and showed me his BlackBerry. He had received an e-mail from our ambassador in Lebanon informing us that an Israeli air strike had caused major civilian casualties. An apartment building in Qana had collapsed in the strike, killing more than twenty Lebanese civilians. I immediately realized that Peretz had known about the incident but hadn’t told me. I confronted him and he finally admitted that, yes, something had gone awry. He said they were investigating but were not yet sure of the details.

  David, Sean, Brian, and Karen were waiting for me when I came out of the meeting. We rushed up to my suite and flipped on the television. The pictures were awful as bloodied bodies were pulled from the wreckage. The Arab world was now inflamed, with denunciations of Israel coming in from across the region.