No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

by Condoleezza Rice

  I asked to see Hu with only a couple of advisors present. This time, the Chinese acceded to my request. He made very short work of the formal session, ended it, and we went into a back room, three on three. Sandy Randt, our ambassador, and Chris Hill accompanied me. I told Hu and Tang that China had to stop acting like the meeting planner and take real responsibility for making the Six-Party Talks work. The North’s aggressive act in testing a nuclear device had changed the circumstances. I couldn’t hold President Bush behind the current strategy if Beijing didn’t play its role more actively. But I said I thought the President might be willing to restart the talks based on a clear understanding with China of how we would proceed. This tactic of holding the President’s agreement in reserve was very important in getting things done. The President and I would often choreograph moments like this. “You deliver the message of what we want. But tell them you’ll have to convince me,” he would say. It was always good for the secretary of state to be the negotiator but to make clear that there was a hard-to-convince President who would ultimately make the decision. Hu asked if Chris could stay a day longer: China would work with us to develop a proposal to move the process forward.

  MY FINAL STOP in Northeast Asia was Russia. The Kremlin had been generally cooperative in the Six-Party Talks and particularly interested in the peace-and-security mechanism, which, I suspected, it saw as a way to bolster Moscow’s relatively weak influence in the region.

  I didn’t expect any difficulty concerning what to do about North Korea and I found none. There were, however, many other sticky issues to address, including a number of economic problems that were holding up negotiations on Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). And there were real storm clouds concerning Georgia, where the tensions were increasing between Putin and Saakashvili.

  I arrived in Moscow and went to my hotel to await the phone call that Putin was ready to see me. Usually the call came within a matter of minutes—sometimes I just went ahead to the Kremlin knowing that any delay would be a short one. This time, though, we were told that the President wanted me to meet him at Meiendorf Castle, a presidential retreat just outside Moscow in Barvikha. Fine, I thought, patiently watching tennis on a Russian sports channel and working a little bit on my language “ear.” After waiting around for two hours after the scheduled appointment, I was told that we should leave for the meeting.

  “What is this about?” I asked Bill Burns, our ambassador in Moscow. He surmised that Putin was testy and trying to send a message that he was not to be taken for granted. And I am to be taken for granted? I put my ego aside and my smile on.

  When we walked in the front door of the estate, I was stunned. There, around a huge rectangular table, sat the entire Russian National Security Council. I’d experienced this once before as national security advisor, when Putin had gleefully invited me to meet them at his dacha. “I’ll bet you’ve always wanted to see what this was like,” he said, vaguely referencing my academic background as a specialist on Russian security affairs. I didn’t know then whether it was meant to be a kind gesture or a manipulative one.

  This time I had no doubt. “We’re having a birthday party for Dmitri and Igor,” he said, referring to the future Russian president and national security advisor. “We thought you might like to join us.” Bill and I then sat through a bizarre encounter with the Russians, drinking special reserve Georgian wine—the likes of which they’d just embargoed in an effort to cripple the Georgian economy—and listening to their crude jokes about the “Gruzini,” a Russian term for Georgians.

  At one point the discussion turned to terrorism, Putin feigning concern for the inmates at Guantánamo. “You have to treat them humanely,” he said. I could barely keep down my dinner, thinking of what the KGB officer had undoubtedly done to people vastly more innocent than the residents of Guantánamo.

  Finally, I said, “Mr. President, this has been fun but we have a number of things to talk about. Could I talk to you alone?” In this more private discussion, he wanted to include Lavrov, which was fine, and I brought along Bill Burns. We repaired to a room adjacent to the increasingly raucous party.

  THE DISCUSSION STARTED OFF cordially enough. We quickly went through a list of Russian legislation on intellectual property and market access that needed to change, Putin explaining that it would be easier to change after the United States had signed the accession agreement admitting Russia into the WTO. “It will give us an argument with the Duma,” he said, empowering the puppet legislature with more authority than it had. Nonetheless, it did make sense that there were interest groups that needed to be appeased. I promised to take the idea back to the President and see if we could go ahead with the agreement before the Russian legislation to conform their laws to WTO standards passed.

  I then changed the topic to Georgia and simply said that I had a message from the President. “We are concerned about the rhetoric toward Tbilisi and the embargo,” I said calmly. “Any move against Georgia will deeply affect U.S.-Russian relations.” In an instant Putin stood up, peering over me. “If Saakashvili wants war, he’ll get it,” he said. “And any support for him will destroy our relationship too.” It was a physical posture clearly meant to intimidate. So I stood up too and, in my heels, rose to five feet eleven over the five-foot-eight or so Putin. I repeated the President’s message. For a distended moment we stood there face to face—well, almost.

  Lavrov decided to defuse the situation, and we soon returned to the agenda. I softened my posture and voice too, saying that we just didn’t want any misunderstandings between us about the importance of Georgia to the United States. I said that I would talk with Sergei about reenergizing the “friends of Georgia” to look for a solution. There the confrontation ended, and Bill and I left. “He can be scary,” I said to Bill, who kept his own counsel.

  Successes on the Proliferation Front

  WITHIN TWO WEEKS North Korea had agreed to resume the Six-Party Talks, but we did not rush to arrange a first session. I needed time to strengthen the resolve of the other parties and test Beijing’s commitment.

  That chance came in Hanoi three weeks later, on November 18. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit was my favorite multilateral event. The organization united the vibrant economies of the Pacific Rim, starting in Chile at South America’s tip and circling up, around, and all the way back down to New Zealand. It was always reassuring that the global economy could depend on these engines of growth and that the United States stood as the glue between the two continents. The talk of growth, trade, and private enterprise stood in stark contrast, for instance, to the Summit of the Americas, where the likes of Hugo Chávez and Néstor Kirchner spewed anti-capitalist, anti-American venom.

  This particular summit carried even deeper messages about the power of markets given its location in Vietnam. I remember my first encounter with the Vietnamese, a meeting of the Southeast Asian states on the margins of our first UN General Assembly in 2001. “The most important thing for Vietnam is to join the World Trade Organization,” the prime minister had said. Ho Chi Minh must be spinning in his grave, I thought. Then, seeing Vietnam for the first time during the APEC meeting, I was sure that the immediate victor in the long and painful war that I knew as a child was indeed turning in his still carefully preserved mausoleum.

  I don’t know what I expected but Vietnam was the greatest surprise of my entire time in government. The incredibly young population—there seemed to be no older people—was ambitious, entrepreneurial, and very pro-American. President Bush couldn’t go anywhere without a gaggle of young women defying the Secret Service and getting close enough to take a picture with their high-tech cameras. One of the best meals that we had anywhere in the world was in Ho Chi Minh City, where a young restaurateur had taken over a deep bunker, made it into a wine cellar, and brought in a great chef from Italy. The stock exchange that we visited was still small but thriving, with serious-looking traders fresh from business school. Only the names
—Hue, Haiphong Harbor—reminded me of what had transpired there. Hearing them stirred unexpected emotions in me. Colin Powell once said that the United States needed to see Vietnam as a country, not a war. It wasn’t hard to make that transformation when standing on the streets of the vibrant young nation.

  The political situation had not kept pace with the economic boom, however. Vietnam’s Communist Party, the VCP, was hanging on through the usual means: repression of opposition and punishment of those who crossed the line into political dissent. There had been a little—very little—progress on religious freedom, even for nonregistered churches. But there was a lot of work to do to push the VCP toward political change. Still, the Vietnamese version of repression was less visible than that of many other authoritarian states, and the people did seem to enjoy a modicum of personal freedom.

  Even the leaders of Vietnam seemed to sense the irony of the Communist Party’s devotion to free markets. The foreign minister called me aside after the meeting with the prime minister. He had a favor to ask: “Would the President just go over and meet with the general secretary of the Communist Party? He can make a lot of trouble if he feels ignored.” I wondered why the request hadn’t been made earlier but raised it with the President and Steve. We decided there wasn’t much downside, forgetting about the “setting” for the meeting. I would shortly see why advance people are so important. We walked into the room where President Bush and the Vietnamese president were seated under a giant statue of Ho Chi Minh and the general secretary seated to their side. “The great leader foresaw the cooperation between the United States and Vietnam,” intoned the general secretary. When exactly did he foresee that? I wondered. The meeting was mercifully short. There were still some “contradictions,” as Karl Marx would have put it, to be sorted out in Vietnam.

  The morning of the APEC summit two days later gave me the chance to lay the groundwork for the resumption of the Six-Party Talks on our terms. I asked the Vietnamese to host a breakfast for the Chinese, Russians, South Koreans, Japanese, and me. I asked that Australia, Indonesia, and the Philippines (as the head of ASEAN) be included. The idea was to talk about security in the region. Everyone showed up, and it couldn’t have gone better. The Chinese heard every foreign minister, including Russia’s, deliver a strong message in support of the Six-Party Talks but with the proviso that it had to achieve something. “North Korea has endangered the whole international system,” minister after minister said. The Chinese were stunned at the ferocity of the condemnation of Pyongyang. They had received the message, and as we ended the year I was confident that we would find a way back to the talks—and a chance to do something about one of the two big proliferators.

  I felt good too about our prospects concerning the other one. On the heels of the change in U.S. policy in May, we’d finally united the P5+1 to seek and pass a resolution in the UN Security Council in July. The Chapter VII resolution for the first time demanded that Iran suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, and it gave Iran by the end of August to comply or face possible economic and diplomatic sanctions.

  As is almost always the case in international politics, however, the deadline came and went. Still, we were making progress in pushing toward another resolution. In fact, in the fall we’d make yet another push to get the Iranians to the negotiating table—and we almost succeeded.

  In advance of the UN General Assembly that September, and after talking to the NSC Principals, I went to the President with a plan to take another step with our allies in the P5+1. I wanted to use the meetings in September either to get the Iranians to the table or, failing that, to get a tougher resolution. I personally developed a calendar of events and moves that we would make from the summer until the meetings in New York: steps we took unilaterally were in one color; actions by our allies in another; UN Security Council moves in a third. I took the proposed schedule to a breakfast meeting with the President and Steve. It was so complicated and had so many colors and lines that Steve said what the President was thinking: “I can’t make heads or tails of this.” Okay, so maybe I’d gotten a little elaborate with my calendar.

  The point was actually pretty simple. We’d turn up the heat on the Iranians by placing financial restrictions on a few more entities, hopefully in concert with the Europeans, then give them a face-saving way to change course. It would require a little Kabuki theater, though.

  Tehran contended that it could not suspend without “negotiations” first. That was obviously unacceptable to us, since suspension was a precondition for our involvement in the talks. We decided to have Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, negotiate a suspension with the Iranians, Europeans, Russians, and Chinese at the table. I would then join the talks immediately after the suspension was agreed. All this was to happen within a matter of a day or so at the UNGA in New York. Javier communicated the idea to his Iranian counterpart, Ali Larijani. Everything was set.

  Two days before I left for New York, my consular affairs officer came in to say that the Iranians had suddenly requested extra visas and there wasn’t time to process them. This is a ruse, I thought. I told her to keep our consulate in Bern open throughout the night and get it done. When the Iranians were presented with all the visas they’d requested, Larijani suddenly needed another one for a second translator. “Get it done,” I told Consular Affairs.

  Now out of excuses about visas, Larijani refused to come to New York anyway. We still don’t know what happened. Some reporting suggested that he didn’t want to negotiate while his radical new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was in New York for the first time. The Russians said that there had been a last-minute refusal by Ayatollah Khamenei to go along with the gambit. Whatever the case, the Iranians managed to unite the P5+1 even further. It took several months of haggling, but the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1737 two days before Christmas. It was the toughest yet.

  Resolution 1737 condemned Iran for failing to stop its enrichment activities and imposed sanctions that would remain in effect until the regime fully complied. The resolution targeted Iran’s ability to import the materials it needed to advance its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and it froze the assets of individuals and companies with ties to the programs. Importantly, it created a Security Council committee to manage the list of entities subject to financial restrictions, and it granted the committee flexibility to add to the list over time, thus enabling the sanctions to become progressively tougher without additional resolutions. It also laid down another deadline, sixty days this time, by which Iran would have to verifiably halt its nuclear program or be subject to “further appropriate measures” by the Security Council.

  Both proliferators were under pressure by the end of 2006. I felt that our willingness to energize the diplomatic track and show flexibility was paying off. I was under no illusion that the unity of the international community would last indefinitely or that the Iranians and North Koreans were ready to make a deal. But we were in much better shape than we’d been in January. Even conservative lawmakers and commentators were prepared to give us a little space to make the new approaches work.

  Shortly after my announcement that the United States would join the negotiations with Iran if it verifiably halted its nuclear activities, I held one of my periodic off-the-record sessions with the “Fox Tong,” a group of Fox News personalities. I often asked journalists to come for a session of this kind so that I could explain what we were doing without creating untimely news stories. David Ignatius, Tom Friedman, David Brooks, and others would join in from time to time because it also gave them a context for the policies that were emerging. The Fox group usually included William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Jim Angle, Mort Kondracke, Brit Hume, Fred Barnes, and Juan Williams. To my surprise there wasn’t much criticism of the shift—skepticism, certainly, but no accusations of having gone soft. The sessions allowed me to gauge the politics surrounding our decisions—but these were also quality thinkers who made me sharper in assessing and defe
nding the policy. This was particularly true of my interactions with Krauthammer, who is simply one of the best minds in D.C. At the session concerning Iran the consensus view could be summed up as “Hope it works.” It was well understood that we didn’t have the bandwidth for unilateral confrontation with Iran and North Korea, given the situation in Iraq. The strategy had, at the very least, provided multilateral management tools to address the proliferation threat. In a year that was memorable for its troubles, that was a welcome achievement.

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  PLAYING THE LAST CARD

  IT WAS ALMOST UNBEARABLE to watch the pressures on the President to change course in Iraq in the fall of 2006. One morning I stopped by the Oval on the way to a National Security Council meeting just to talk. I related my conversations on Capitol Hill and noted the growing hostility even from Republicans about our effort. We discussed the impending release of the Iraq Study Group report. The bipartisan study group, cochaired by former Secretary of State Jim Baker and former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton, had been the brainchild of Representative Frank Wolf of Virginia, who sought to find “common ground” concerning the Iraq war. When Frank came to see me about the proposal in early 2006, I thought that it was a good idea and told him that I would speak with the President. Though concerned that he might be perceived as outsourcing foreign policy, the President clearly understood that he needed the help of the august group of commissioners to stabilize support for continuing the war in Iraq—and to give us a bipartisan “landing zone” for a new policy. It was a bitter pill to swallow that many commentators subsequently depicted the commission as a gathering of wise men from the administration of George H. W. Bush, who would teach his prodigal son a thing or two about realism and competence in foreign policy.