No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

by Condoleezza Rice

  Bob and I kept pushing our own bureaucracies and had traveled to Moscow in October 2007. This time the atmosphere was somewhat chillier. Putin kept us waiting in the anteroom for more than thirty minutes after we had been announced and followed to his office by the press. In the meeting, he complained that the negotiations weren’t moving and that the papers that we kept sending showed none of the creativity that Bob and I had expressed orally. Despite a more cordial discussion at a second meeting in March 2008 where we negotiated language in the Sochi declaration, we still could not make substantial progress on the issue. Success in getting a detailed plan that was acceptable to both sides eluded us. My own surmise is that the general staff didn’t really want a deal. It hated the idea of missile defense, despite all of our efforts to remove any elements that could have been thought to be remotely threatening. I also suspect that the geographic location of the sites was more important than anything else; Poland and the Czech Republic had been members of the Warsaw Pact. The Russians couldn’t swallow the “encroachment” eastward. By the time of Sochi in April our efforts had run out of steam.

  The Sochi declaration wasn’t exactly the landmark Basic Principles of U.S.-Soviet Relations that Henry Kissinger and his Soviet counterpart, Andrei Gromyko, had signed at the height of the Cold War. That document had had the feel of two superpowers dividing up the responsibility for running the world. But at least there was a framework document that defied the conventional wisdom that our relationship had been all about conflict. Kissinger himself later remarked that he would have “loved to have had a document of that kind.”

  Sochi also gave President Bush a chance to spend a little time with Dmitri Medvedev. I’d met him several times, and though I doubted he’d be powerful enough to challenge his political sponsor, he was interesting in his own right. Medvedev came from a different generation: he was a university student when the Soviet Union collapsed, and, unlike the former KGB official whom he would soon replace, Medvedev had never actually been a member of the Communist Party. I remembered one particularly enlightening encounter with him, a meeting that revealed the generational shift that was taking place.

  I had met earlier in the day at the U.S. ambassador’s residence with a group of young Russian entrepreneurs—bankers, lawyers, and businesspeople. When I launched into my points about the absence of independent television stations in Russia, I expected a sympathetic response. “Your television looks like it did when I was a graduate student here in 1979,” I said, suddenly realizing that that must have seemed like ancient history to them.

  “Yes, I know,” one of the young men responded. “Here is what our news looks like: The first story is about the great man [Putin]. The second is about agricultural production being up. The third is about whatever innocent people the United States killed today. The fourth is about the chosen successor to the great man.” That about sums it up, I thought. But then he asked, “But who watches television? We’re all on the Internet.”

  Shortly thereafter, I went to see Medvedev and delivered the same points about the media. “I know,” he said, taking little time to defend the system. “But who watches television? We’re all on the Internet.” I was struck by the fact that he’d used the same argument that the young entrepreneurs had made, an almost identical dismissal of the importance of television. Maybe things were changing in Russia.

  We sat with Medvedev at the small, festive dinner that Putin had arranged at the official presidential residence in Sochi. The president-in-waiting didn’t seem particularly confident, and he was determined to avoid substantive issues. So the evening turned out to be mostly a social occasion with traditional Russian dancing, which the President unwisely tried to join. I couldn’t believe my eyes when George W. Bush attempted to do one of those Cossack splits, almost failing to get up despite his legendary fitness. Well, the Russians appreciated the effort. And the evening seemed a bit like a last lap for U.S.-Russian relations in our term.

  In engaging Medvedev, I did have a sense that we were encountering not just a leader from a different generation, but one who, left to his own devices, might alter Russia’s path. Since becoming president, Medvedev has championed Russia as a leader in the knowledge-based economy. He has argued that his country should not be content to be principally an exporter of oil, natural gas, coal, and metals—a profile more befitting a developing country. (Approximately 80 percent of Russia’s export revenues come from these natural resources.) The Russian president rightly makes the point that his country has brilliant mathematicians and software engineers. But this obscures the fact that many of Russia’s most talented entrepreneurs have chosen to emigrate or at least to work as green-card holders in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv. The unreliability of contracts, insufficient intellectual property protections, and the inconsistent application of the rule of law all hinder the emergence of a knowledge-based economy.

  Medvedev’s vision for Russia clashes not only with its current economic profile but also the power structure that supports it. Vladimir Putin is a defender of a statist economy. Personal fortunes and a fair amount of political violence have been characteristic of that course—one that has been fueled by high oil prices and sustained by Putin’s authoritarian grip.

  Russia will always be a major exporter of oil and natural gas. But will it be more able to capitalize on the industriousness and innovation of its people to ascend to higher levels of the global economy? It is a question that has implications not just for the country’s domestic development but for its interaction with the world as well.

  52

  WAR BREAKS OUT IN GEORGIA

  SOCHI WAS THE high point of our last year with Putin’s Russia. By the summer of 2008 tensions were growing over Kosovo, and the ever-simmering Russian hatred of Georgia was reaching a boiling point.

  The denouement on Kosovo had been approaching since our discussions with Russia and NATO regarding the Conventional Forces Treaty the year before. The Balkans, which had been dubbed the “powder keg of Europe” for the early twentieth-century wars that had begun there, was relatively quiet for the bulk of our term. Some countries—Albania, Croatia, Macedonia, and Slovenia—were doing rather well, economically and politically. Bosnia and Herzegovina was and still is a mess, with three presidents and three separate security forces. The Dayton Accords had signified the end of the tragic Bosnian war, but they had also established two governments and one autonomous district: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is populated mostly by Bosniaks and Croats, and Republika Srpska, populated by Serbs. A third self-governing district belonging to both the Federation and Srpska, the Brčko Municipality, is mostly Muslim. I tried, in 2005–2006, to coax those substates toward constitutional reform to strengthen the integration of the state. By constitutional requirement the presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina must be occupied by three individuals: one rotating chair of the presidency and two other members. The head of state must consist of one Croat, one Serb, and one Bosniak. When, in 2005, the three presidents showed up at the State Department, I knew that it was a fool’s errand to try for greater integration. I had to make sure that each one spoke in turn, and I needed to address all three, by name, every time I spoke. This is going nowhere, I thought. And it didn’t. The constitutional referendum to consolidate the government failed in 2006, but Bosnia and Herzegovina was no worse off than it had been before we tried.

  Conversely, the problem of Kosovo threatened to break into another open conflict. During the 1990s NATO air campaign to remove the murderous Slobodan Milošević from power, the Albanian Kosovars, who constituted more than 90 percent of the population of the region, were subjected to ethnic cleansing. Milošević’s Serbian troops evacuated entire towns—forcing the women and children to march to Kosovo’s borders while slaughtering the men and dumping their bodies in mass graves. In total, Milošević’s troops forced 1.3 million Albanian Kosovars from their homes. When he was finally stopped by NATO and deposed, the United Nations established the Interim Administra
tion Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) to control the region and manage conflicts. Several diplomatic efforts failed to adequately resolve Kosovo’s status situation. So in 2007 the highly respected Finnish former president Martti Ahtisaari, acting on behalf of the United Nations, tried once again to find a solution to the problem. When he could not, he presented the Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status Settlement (also known as the Ahtisaari Plan), a report that effectively recommended eventual independence for the Kosovars.

  We were firmly in support of the Ahtisaari proposal, and I asked Ambassador Frank Wisner, a seasoned retired diplomat, to act as special envoy to help us implement the plan. The French, British, Germans, and most of the other Europeans were united behind the effort. The Russians, though, were adamantly opposed, taking the side of their allies the Serbs. The Europeans and we were unable to come to agreement with Russia and decided that we had no choice but to back independence for Kosovo. That resulted in a messy process. It wasn’t possible to go to the Security Council for a vote establishing an independent Kosovo; the Russians would surely be joined by the Chinese in a veto, since Beijing was worried about the secessionist precedent for Taiwan and Tibet.

  The only choice was to manage the problem in a way that prevented violence, convincing as many countries as possible to recognize Kosovo. Our task was to hold the allies together in the face of Moscow’s resistance and to deliver a decision before the Kosovars became impatient and took to the streets. And I felt strongly that we needed to find a way to placate the Serbs, for whom I had some sympathy. The Serbians had elected a Western-oriented president, Boris Tadić, who wanted badly to integrate into Europe and NATO.

  Dan Fried was the point person for the diplomacy, working closely with Wisner, Judy Ansley on Steve’s staff, and with the Pentagon. The United States had troops in the region, and there was great concern that any violence might embroil them—and the much more substantial European contingents—in a civil war. The other major concern was that Belgrade might try, little by little, to annex the upper third of Kosovo, where the radical Serbs lived. I was pretty sure that Moscow didn’t want that, but the Russians weren’t very helpful in restraining their ally’s incendiary talk.

  As the summer of 2007 wore on and the Kosovars became more agitated, I pressed the Europeans to act. Our idea was that we would recognize the new state in concert and bring as many others along as possible. The NATO allies, particularly the French and the Germans, kept stalling, hoping for a miraculous change of heart in Moscow. Every meeting ended with a promise to get on with it but more and more time passed. When, in mid-June, the French insisted on another month’s delay, the President was furious. At an NSC meeting the next week, I found myself defending the allies’ desire for more time, despite my own reservations. The President called Putin, who told him what Lavrov had told me: “We can accept anything that the Serbs accept.”

  That, of course, wasn’t helpful. At the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, Nicolas Sarkozy proposed another 120 days of negotiations at the conclusion of which, if an agreement had not been reached, the Security Council would endorse the Ahtisaari Plan. After the Heiligendamm Summit, on June 9, the President called for Kosovo’s independence at a press conference in Rome. He repeated his support for independence and the Ahtisaari Plan in Albania the following day. “One more month,” the President told me. “And then we recognize them if we have to do it alone. I’ve promised them, and we have to carry through.” The President would eventually agree, however, to the Sarkozy proposal extending negotiations another 120 days only with the understanding that it would be the final delay.

  On February 18, 2008, we officially recognized Kosovo, as did many other European states. By the end of the year, fifty-three states would recognize Kosovo: most of the European countries, the United States, Canada, Australia, and several countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Tadić survived, helped by a decision that the United States made to secure a place for Belgrade within NATO’s Partnership for Peace. The Serbs had been blocked from joining because they hadn’t yet hunted down and handed over the Balkan war criminals Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić. I felt strongly that we couldn’t wait for that to happen. Serbia needed some evidence that there would be a place for it in Europe and NATO if the wound of Kosovo were ever to heal.

  Today Kosovo is independent (though Moscow does not recognize it) and Serbia is moving closer to Europe, despite continued bitterness. On the day we recognized Kosovo, Brian Gunderson asked if I felt comfortable creating yet another weak state that might be unsustainable. “What choice did we have?” I asked. And added, “But in time Kosovo will be alright. It was the right thing to do.”

  THE KOSOVO PROBLEM paled in comparison to the brush fires igniting in Georgia. Over the previous year tensions had been growing in the already unstable regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, much of it fueled by Moscow. In the spring of 2008, every week seemed to bring some new provocation to South Ossetia, from increases in the number of Russian troops (ostensibly to engage in railroad construction) to plans to issue Russian passports to the citizens living in what was Georgian territory. Lavrov had sent me a long memo detailing Russia’s grievances with Saakashvili and the Georgians—some of it legitimate, some of it concocted. It was, nonetheless, a warning sign. It was only a matter of time until a spark ignited open conflict in the area.

  During a visit to Germany on June 23 for a conference on Palestinian state building, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and I developed a diplomatic plan to respond to the deteriorating situation in three phases: the first phase would include assurances that force would not be used by any party (one of Moscow’s demands of the Georgians); the second phase would involve the return of refugees and practical cooperation on the development of institutions; the third phase would be the final settlement of Abkhazia’s political status. Frank left for Tbilisi, Abkhazia, and Moscow shortly after. He told our diplomats a few days later to say that he was making progress.

  I went to Tbilisi a few weeks later, on July 10, on the heels of a trip to the Czech Republic to sign the missile defense agreement that the Russians had tried to prevent. The press tried to link the two: was this a trip intended to poke a stick in Moscow’s eye? It was not, though I am sure the Kremlin read it that way.

  Saakashvili met me on the terrace of Kopala Restaurant, which featured breathtaking views of the city. The Georgian president, who is big and demonstrative, pointed out the beautiful restoration work that was under way on monasteries, churches, and other historic buildings. He was very proud of his leadership of the country and rightly so: Georgia’s corruption levels (according to the Corruption Perception Index) had declined dramatically beginning with Saakashvili’s police reform initiatives in which thousands of corrupt officers had been fired and the department completely rebranded. The country was also trying to shield itself from Russia’s pressure, by attempting to use gas from Azerbaijan instead of Russia. And despite Moscow’s embargo of Georgian goods, the economy continued to grow even though large segments of the population still lived in dire poverty.

  It was, nonetheless, hard to get Saakashvili to see that all of his gains were at risk because of the worsening situation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He’s proud and can be impulsive, and we all worried that he might allow Moscow to provoke him to use force. In fact, he himself successfully provoked conflict in another breakaway part of the country, Adjara, and benefited when it had been reintegrated into Georgia through domestic and international pressure. The precedent, we feared, might make him think that he could get away with a repeat performance in the territories located closer to Putin’s beloved Sochi.

  “Mr. President,” I said, trying to shift his attention away from the rooftop tour of the city, “you need to sign a no-use-of-force pledge.”

  “How can I do that when Putin is doing the things he’s doing?” he answered, suggesting that he’d sign only if the Russian gave him something in return.

  “I’ll talk to the
Russians, but you don’t have a choice,” I told him. “You can’t use force, and so the threat to do so doesn’t do you any good. Sign the pledge now while you have international support.”

  We went back and forth for more than an hour, Saakashvili stubbornly refusing to yield. Finally, I thought I’d better get tougher. “Mr. President, whatever you do, don’t let the Russians provoke you. You remember when President Bush said that Moscow would try to get you to do something stupid. And don’t engage Russian military forces. No one will come to your aid, and you will lose,” I said sternly.

  He got the point, looking as if he’d just lost his last friend. I tried to soften what I’d said by repeating our pledge to defend Georgia’s territorial integrity—with words. He asked if I’d say so publicly. I did, avoiding any language that might be misinterpreted as committing us to Georgia’s defense with arms.

  THE END OF JULY had been brutal with travel to Europe, the Middle East, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Samoa—all in the space of two weeks. If I can just get to August 8! I’ll play golf and visit with friends at the Greenbrier, I promised myself. And then in two weeks, I’ll be off to Beijing for the close of the Olympics. Just get to August 8!

  There had been some violence in and around South Ossetia during the first days of August. Yet diplomatic activities were continuing, and there had been a relatively good report from a meeting between the European envoy and his Russian counterpart. I was a little unnerved when Dan Fried and Kurt Volker, his principle deputy, dropped by on the evening of the sixth to say that Matthew Bryza, a deputy assistant secretary for the region, was on the ground in Georgia and reported that the fighting was increasing. I was quite alarmed when I learned that Russia had evacuated more than eight hundred people from the area.