No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

by Condoleezza Rice

TO BE HONEST, there just wasn’t much time for experiences like Bahia, even though I thought them important to my work as secretary. The core tasks of the administration’s last year were pretty clear and most involved the Middle East. Nothing, of course, was more critical than to stabilize Iraq before the end of the President’s tenure. And fortunately, there was finally something to work with. There was almost universal acknowledgment that we’d turned a corner, and the chorus of voices decrying our involvement in a “civil war” had largely fallen silent.

  The security situation in Iraq had definitely improved, but it was more than that. The government was beginning to function, unevenly but more effectively, and Prime Minister Maliki and the other leaders were showing maturity in their leadership of the country. As we approached the third neighbor’s meeting, scheduled for April 22, the Iraqis, as David Welch put it, were back. When we convened in Kuwait that morning, the atmosphere couldn’t have been more different than in Sharm el-Sheik about a year before. Then there had been a mournful recounting of the troubles of Iraq.

  Now country after country stood to congratulate the Iraqis on their progress and pledge cooperation with them. “This is so different,” I said to David and Ryan Crocker. “They almost seem deferential.”

  “Oh, they are,” my expert Arabists said. “The Arabs don’t like the Iraqis, but they do respect them. They’re hoping not to have to fear them again.” I suddenly got it. But the Iranian representative seemed to have pulled the wrong script from his briefcase. He was still talking about the collapse of Iraq and blaming the chaos on the United States. Most of the delegates just rolled their eyes.

  The night before the conference when I arrived in Kuwait City, Ryan Crocker rode with me to see Maliki. “You need to get him to be a little more gracious in his comments tomorrow,” Ryan told me.

  “Okay, but what is he planning to say?”

  “He’ll tell you,” the ambassador said, chuckling.

  Maliki and I talked about the upcoming meeting and what we wanted to achieve. He said he didn’t want much from the other countries and would simply report on Iraq’s progress. Then he told me how he’d open his remarks, and I understood Ryan’s concern. “I’m going to say thank you to all of you who stayed with us through tough times—especially those who helped us early. That will mean the United States and some of the Europeans,” he said. “Then I’m going to turn to my ‘brothers’ [meaning the Arabs] and say, ‘And to the rest of you, the hell with you,’ ” he declared with a twinkle in his eye.

  I laughed with him and replied, “Prime Minister, let’s work on that a little bit.” His speech was, of course, fine—but it did have a little edge, reminding the gathering that some had doubted the Iraqi people. It was a very good moment for him. I had come to like and respect Nouri al-Maliki.

  I wouldn’t have expected that scene several months before. In late 2007 Maliki had experienced a near revolt in the leadership circle. The prime minister was making no friends with his high-handed leadership style and inability to get anything done. He apparently held secret meetings to which he didn’t invite other stakeholders and sometimes called meetings of the leadership and then refused to show up. The Iraqis were making minimal progress on the checklist the U.S. Congress had demanded on everything from passing budgets to transferring funds to the provinces to passing an oil law and new de-Baathification standards.

  Bob Gates had taken a trip to Baghdad and returned to tell the President that Talabani, Hashimi, and First Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi were plotting to overthrow the prime minister—constitutionally, of course. Their idea was to force a vote of confidence in the Parliament, which they were sure Maliki would lose if the United States made clear that it had lost faith in the prime minister. Or, even better from their point of view, maybe we could just get Maliki to resign. Bob told the President that he was worried; perhaps he hadn’t shot the idea down as forcefully as he should have. “They might think this is what we want,” he said. “They know we’re not happy with him either.”

  I’d scheduled a trip to Baghdad the following week, on the heels of a trip to the Middle East to talk about the Annapolis Conference. “You need to make sure they understand we’re not for overthrowing Maliki,” the President told me. I said I would deliver the message.

  Arriving in Baghdad, I went first to see the prime minister. We met alone (along with my trusted interpreter Mustafa Sayid). I didn’t wait long to broach the subject. “Mr. Prime Minister, you have real trouble with the other leaders. But I am here to tell you that the United States does not want to see your government dismissed. We are not in favor of a change of prime minister,” I said. Maliki was visibly relieved. Then I continued a little beyond my guidance from Washington. “But you’re doing a terrible job. You’re failing. And we aren’t for that either,” I said sternly.

  I don’t know what I expected, but certainly not what he said. “I’ve been waiting to have this talk for weeks. I’m so happy you came. Thank you.” As Sayid translated, I couldn’t believe my ears. Did he hear me tell him that he’s doing a terrible job? I wondered. I asked Sayid to repeat what I’d said. “Yes, yes. I am so glad to talk about this,” he repeated, smiling broadly. I was floored but decided to go with it.

  “Let’s work on a program to get you out of this mess.” I then suggested a series of steps including regular meetings with the other leaders.

  “Okay, that’s a good idea,” he replied. I asked him to repeat the steps three times. He dutifully did.

  “Now, Prime Minister, I have one more request,” I said, pushing my luck a bit. “I have a meeting with President Talabani and the others; come and go with me.”

  That was a bridge too far. “No, I’ll meet with them later,” he countered.

  “No, we have to go now,” I said. So we did. I got into my car, and he followed me to Talabani’s house, where the surprised president of Iraq welcomed his “brother” the prime minister with a big bear hug. I went through the details of what we’d agreed to do, and Maliki left. Talabani could tell right away that there would be no U.S.-sanctioned constitutional coup. Over lunch the others complained about Maliki, but the plotting was over.

  The choice to back Maliki had been a wise one, a fact that became clear in March 2008 when the prime minister took a chance to demonstrate his leadership. Iraqi security forces had finally begun to take on the Shia extremists beholden to Muqtada al-Sadr in the south of the country, particularly in Basra, Iraq’s third-largest city. Dave Petraeus had worked out a careful plan with the Defense Ministry, one that put the Iraqis in the lead but relied on significant U.S. support. Everything was going well and proceeding deliberately.

  Then the Iraqis suddenly accelerated the timetable without Dave’s knowledge. Providing just a few days’ notice, the Iraqi army rushed south on March 24, accompanied by Maliki himself, who personally oversaw the operation from the field.

  There was a National Security Council meeting that day with, as usual, Dave Petraeus and Ryan Crocker attending by videoconference. The two of them were ashen. “He’s gone and done it now. This could fail. Then what will we do?” The general and the ambassador took turns excoriating Maliki for his incompetence and recklessness. Then each of us took turns doing the same. No one had anything good to say about him. We were all trying to figure out how to stop him.

  The President hadn’t said anything. Then he did. “I think he’s showing leadership,” he said. “Maybe it’s not the way I would have done it. But he’s the prime minister of his country. Maybe he knows what he’s doing.” George W. Bush was right. His politician’s instinct told him that Maliki needed to demonstrate courage and control and that he was doing precisely that.

  The Basra adventure was a resounding success. The Iraqi army rode triumphantly into the city, taking back the key port of Umm Qasr as the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army abandoned its posts. For better or worse, Iraqis were going to do things their way—not ours.

  UNFORTUNATELY, EVEN as Iraq and the Palestinian situ
ation were improving, Lebanon was worsening. The pro-Western March 14 government of Fouad Siniora had survived crisis after crisis. In the early part of the year, the March 14 ministers had actually slept in their offices, refusing to bend to the Hezbollah-inspired mobs in the streets or the assassins who were trying to systematically eliminate their majority in the Parliament by quite literally eliminating (killing, in other words) the parliamentarians. It was a crazy place.

  Tensions had been high since Siniora’s government had made clear that it would support the UN commission of inquiry into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Though the investigation’s preliminary findings pointed to the involvement of Syrian and Lebanese intelligence, by late 2007 the inquiry had a new lead. A break in the case involving the alleged hit team’s cell phone records would lead to a new and even more controversial conclusion: it would directly implicate Hezbollah. And it would raise already simmering sectarian tensions to a boil, leading to skirmishes between extremist and democratic forces, with neither side able to gain the upper hand.

  In May the usually careful Siniora made a mistake. He fired a security official with ties to Hezbollah and tried to assert state control over the group’s telecommunications network. Hezbollah reacted in rage, sending its militia out into the streets and pursuing government supporters. The group’s gunmen took over parts of Beirut and some surrounding towns and villages, including Druze enclaves under the protection of March 14 supporter Walid Jumblatt.

  Hezbollah had demonstrated what it could do by force. Meanwhile, the Lebanese army stood by, fearful that its entry could spark a civil war. The Qatari ruler eventually worked out a power-sharing arrangement that ended the eighteen-month stalemate over who would become the country’s next president. The head of the national army, Michel Suleiman, was elected as a compromise candidate, and the Parliament finally reconvened. There was no doubt that Hezbollah and its allies, whose walkout had started the standoff, had won something of a victory. The March 14 forces felt despondent and defeated.

  The government had clearly sustained a blow, but Hezbollah had paid a price too. In cafés and on street corners throughout Beirut there was dismay at Hezbollah’s turning its arms on Lebanese. Hezbollah was supposed to be a resistance army against Israel, but it had showed itself to be just another violent faction, willing to kill Lebanese and throw the country into turmoil. For the time being, though, the extremists had regained their footing, exerting a power that was based on fear.

  I decided to go to Lebanon in June after the Qatari deal to show support for the March 14 politicians. It was the least I could do. I told Steve Hadley that I felt we’d been unable to do enough to help our friends in Lebanon—or to punish our enemies. But that was Lebanon: a country in a perpetual state of instability and deadlock.

  I had a trip planned to Jerusalem and decided to stop in Beirut on the way home. We didn’t announce the visit but almost everyone assumed I’d go to Lebanon while in the region. My security detail didn’t want me to fly the “blue and white” into the airport, which was known to be “owned” by Hezbollah, particularly since there had been some threats on extremist websites. “We can fly to Cyprus and chopper onto the embassy grounds and then drive to the meetings,” Marty Kraus, the head of my security detail, said. But I had a different vision. “No. We’re landing the blue and white at the airport. I am going to get off the plane and be received by the foreign minister in front of the cameras and then we’ll drive to the meetings. The secretary of state isn’t going into Lebanon under cover as if we think it’s a war zone.” It was the only time I overruled Marty. It was so crucial in this circumstance that the United States be seen as having a presence. Everything we’d achieved since Syrian forces left was on the line. We were going to signal support for the sovereign government—and show no fear. And, as I told Marty, Hezbollah wasn’t suicidal. Did it really want to kill the U.S. secretary of state and bring the force of the United States down on itself?

  It was my last trip to Lebanon. There had been so many ups and downs. But at least there was a legitimate democratic government—even if the extremists had to be tolerated within it. And though it would take a year to do so, the Lebanese people would punish Hezbollah for the use of the militia against their countrymen. In the 2009 elections, the “Party of God” lost badly. Hassan Nasrallah was reduced to complaining that the electoral districts had been poorly drawn. That was at least a step forward, even if one could be sure that there would be steps backward as well. A completely free and democratic Lebanon was still a long way off. But thanks to the withdrawal of Syrian troops and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the southern border, it was closer than when we began.

  51

  COMPLETING THE TASK OF BUILDING A EUROPE WHOLE, FREE, AND AT PEACE

  THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE old Middle East were beginning to crumble. I felt every day the urgency of securing a new democratic basis in the region for the post-9/11 era. But the job of building on our gains in post–Cold War Europe proved equally demanding. The spring of 2008 would present several crucial challenges: the situation in Kosovo; the future of Georgia and Ukraine in NATO; and, perhaps most delicate of all, the relationship of Russia to the new Europe. This final challenge would become increasingly difficult as we moved toward the last six months of the administration.

  President Bush was a fierce believer in NATO and had, from the beginning of his administration, worked to strengthen and expand the Alliance. We’d expended enormous energy on modernizing NATO’S capabilities, bringing them more into line with the needs of the post–Cold War era. Initially there had been some resistance to the idea that missile defense was an important part of that new concept. At the first summit in 2001, only the Czech leader of the revolution that had brought communism down in 1989, President Václav Havel, had unreservedly backed the President’s call for an all-out push in that area. The President never forgot Havel’s support, which he took, rightly, to be an example of the differing sensibilities of the newer members of NATO from Central and Eastern Europe. By the time of the Bucharest summit in April 2008, though, missile defense was hardly controversial any longer and the Alliance had agreed to pursue joint efforts to defend its territory—all the while hoping that cooperative arrangements could be worked out with the resistant Russia.

  NATO’s writ had expanded dramatically too, with the Alliance having taken on major training activities with the Iraqi security forces and, more consequentially, a central role in the battle for Afghanistan. The latter mission was both a blessing and a curse. For someone like me, who as a young scholar had debated the appropriateness of “out-of-area” (meaning out-of-Europe) engagement for NATO, its involvement in Afghanistan was a stunning development. Still, the war exposed both the disparate capabilities of the members and radically different views of the use of military power. The discussions at every meeting walked a fine line between grateful acceptance of contributions and frustration at the number of caveats that some members placed on their forces. The divide between “fighters” and “peacekeepers” grew every day, until some armies were seemingly relegated to never leaving their barracks.

  Not surprisingly, countries whose soldiers were doing the heavy lifting and exposed to grave danger resented the constraints on other militaries, particularly the Germans. I took a somewhat more charitable view. How could we expect Berlin to suddenly embrace a war mission? We’d been working for sixty years for a German army that wouldn’t fight in foreign wars. I was personally grateful for whatever the allies could do, though I knew that the disparity in contributions would remain a source of tension.

  Another innovation within the Alliance was the decision to open our meetings and consultations to non-European democratic allies, specifically Japan, Australia, South Korea, and New Zealand. Though some of our friends thought this might dilute NATO, making it a “global policeman,” I thought the development welcome, since those countries’ forces were also deployed in Afghanistan. And though we couldn’t anno
unce it during the President’s term, we knew that President Nicolas Sarkozy had made the decision to reintegrate France into the NATO military command structure that it had left in 1966. All of this activity made it hard to recall the early post–Cold War days, when there were some who had pronounced the Alliance dead.

  In fact, NATO had become a vital instrument in the stabilization of post-Communist Europe. Together with the European Union, it gave aspirant states from the former Eastern Bloc a lodestar as they sought to reform and to end old rivalries between them. This was a replay of NATO’s original mission at the end of World War II. Though many remembered the Alliance principally as a barrier to Russian expansion, there had been a second purpose: NATO’s founders saw it as a democratic umbrella under which old rivals could resolve their differences. Thus the early hope had been that Germany could be rebuilt and rearmed within an alliance with France, its bitter enemy. War between the two great European rivals would then become unthinkable. At the time it was a bold and risky notion—but it worked. Now, in the twenty-first century, the Central and East Europeans and eventually the states of the Balkans would follow the same course.

  The fulfillment of this vision required the continuous expansion of the Alliance, however. President Clinton had begun that process, adding the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary in 1999. President Bush continued it, adding in 2004 Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Slovakia, and, most consequentially, the Baltic states that had been forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union. Moscow had swallowed hard and accepted the accession of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. The next tranche would clearly be countries recovering from the Balkan wars: Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia.

  The last would be delayed due to a somewhat bizarre dispute with Greece over the name of the country. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, Athens had lodged its objection to the use of “Macedonia” as the official name of the newly independent republic. For reasons I still do not fully understand, the Greeks claimed that its modern-day usage for a former state of Yugoslavia would somehow diminish the cultural heritage that Greeks ascribe to an empire that existed more than two millennia ago. Perhaps they felt that the population in its modern-day incarnation would somehow not live up to the legacy of the ancient homeland of Alexander the Great. As a result, the new country was called the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. But the leaders of the country wanted to enter NATO under their preferred name—who wants to be called the “former republic” of something? The Greeks objected. Tireless efforts, including through Matthew Nimetz, a special envoy for the issue, could not resolve the dispute.