Every Day Is Extra

by John Kerry

  Late that night, I was home reading my briefing book when, at about 9:30, the State Department Operations Center called: “The president would like to speak with you on a secure line.” As I made my way upstairs to the small area where my secure phone was installed, I braced myself for the conversation we were about to have. I assumed that Tomahawk missiles were about to be launched.

  Instead, the president told me he had been thinking more and had talked about it at length during a walk around the White House grounds with McDonough. He absolutely believed a response was warranted but wanted Congress to authorize the use of force so that they’d be in it for the duration. It was clear he had made up his mind. He wanted to gather the National Security Council in the morning. I told the president we would do all we could to win the authorization.

  I hung up the phone. My mind flashed back to the previous days of phone calls consulting Congress. I hadn’t been opposed to putting anything to a vote. But no one had indicated that was the track we might be traveling, and I had assumed the president saw the advantage in striking fast and preventing opposition from building up. To this day, I don’t know every nuance of the president’s thinking, but I do know so many of us missed where the president’s decision was headed.

  Perhaps since I was new to the job I wasn’t yet familiar with the president’s approach. Susan Rice was also new as national security advisor, and she had argued forcefully for action now. Perhaps I hadn’t yet mastered how to read Barack Obama. Perhaps we didn’t realize how strong his reluctance was to take the plunge deeper on Syria without Congress. Perhaps he had seen that, with an opposition party which on many days even equivocated on whether he was born in America, acting without Congress could invite all kinds of trouble, maybe even calls for impeachment.

  None of the “perhapses” really mattered. The president had made the decision to bomb, but he wanted Congress with him in the effort. My job was to do all I could to help ensure he got their support.

  • • •

  THERE WAS lOGIC in going to Congress for authorization, legally and practically. Similar interventions in Panama, Haiti, Kosovo, Bosnia and Libya had all been undertaken without congressional authorization. But you’re always strongest speaking as one country. After David Cameron lost the vote in Parliament, it was harder to justify bypassing Capitol Hill. Dempsey argued the air strikes would be as effective in three days or three weeks. I did not agree with that, but so much time had already passed that any element of surprise was already gone. And I assumed we would receive congressional consent.

  In hindsight, Susan Rice was the only one of us who correctly predicted the mood of Congress. Seeking formal authorization was a dead end: she warned that the Republicans wouldn’t authorize anything for Obama. My respect for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senate prerogatives in particular made me think otherwise; surely, I thought, with Israel supporting military action, and given the brutality of Assad’s attacks and the narrow scope we were discussing, Congress would vote to hold Assad accountable. I did caution the president that the Republican Congress could always decide to screw him just for the sake of politics, and if they did it would have lasting consequences for his presidency. Republicans could make the president look like a lame duck. But I concluded that Congress would have to do exactly what most of its members had been saying they wanted to do in Syria for two years now. Hagel and Biden agreed. We Senate veterans were wrong. Susan was the only one who pegged it.

  Denis McDonough had an expression that was especially relevant to our discussion: he called it “wearing the jacket.” It was about shared responsibility at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. It was important for the Hill to wear the jacket with us. For many on the Hill who had been urging the United States to do more on Syria, this should have been their chance to prove they were as effective at rounding up votes as they were at talking on the Sunday shows.

  Together with General Dempsey and Secretary Hagel, I spent a full week on the Hill in testimony in front of four different committees, answering more than twenty hours of questions. It felt like two hundred. In retrospect it was a no-win argument: we had to convince half the Congress we wouldn’t do too much in Syria and convince the other half we wouldn’t do too little.

  Some in Congress clearly didn’t want to vote on anything that could be portrayed as “siding” with Barack Obama. Senator Marco Rubio had been a hawk in the Senate, a neoconservative who had ripped President Obama for “dithering as innocent Syrians die at the hands of a merciless regime.” Now he said it was “too late.” Too late for what? I wondered. Too late to make it clear a dictator couldn’t gas children with impunity? The only thing that had changed was that now Marco was gearing up to run for president in 2016 and he was worried about the politics of a conservative electorate who hated the president.

  On the Democratic side, many in Congress had been elected because President Bush’s Iraq War had been such a disaster. Some worried about giving any president a “blank check” ever again, anywhere. The fact that we were talking about a limited, targeted operation without boots on the ground didn’t make a difference. They may have heard the word “Syria,” but all they saw was Iraq. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s foreign policy hangover was still infecting our decision-making. It was the American equivalent of the backlash Cameron had faced in Great Britain.

  For others, there was a general numbness to what had occurred in Syria. Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican, wondered whether there was really a difference between Assad’s attacks on his own people with bombs as opposed to an atrocity committed with poison gas. I was stunned to hear how quickly and easily a serious senator had forgotten that chemical weapons had been banned by the civilized world for a reason.

  As we tried to persuade Democrats that the operation would be targeted in scope, conservatives lamented we weren’t doing more. My friends John McCain and Lindsey Graham didn’t bring any votes with them for a much greater intervention, but they did a hell of a good job criticizing our approach. I was personally disappointed. John and Lindsey wanted to see Assad gone. So did I. The three of us had talked privately almost weekly about my efforts to ratchet up pressure on Assad. They knew I was in an uphill battle internally. But they refused to accept that punishing air strikes putting Assad on his heels were the most this president and this Congress could possibly achieve right now. Rather than meeting us halfway, John and Lindsey were more comfortable picking apart our strategy. It was an interesting experience fighting friends and opponents at the same time.

  At each hearing, progressive protesters from Code Pink held up posters while chanting, “Don’t bomb Syria,” and “Blood on your hands.” When the chairman tried to gavel them to silence, I defended their right to protest, remembering my own years as an activist. But I wondered: Where were the posters of children whose lives were snuffed out by a weapon banned ever since we had witnessed its horror in World War I? Had they no sense of moral outrage against a dictator who had killed hundreds of families while sleeping in their beds? Did the scars of the Iraq War run so deep that no one could differentiate between force that was justified and a war of choice that should never have been fought at all? The person with real blood on his hands was a butcher in Damascus who must have been quite comforted by the sight of dysfunction in Congress.

  The first test vote on a resolution to authorize the use of force came in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which I had chaired less than a year before. It passed, but only by a vote of 10–7. Even my former colleague from Massachusetts Ed Markey, my friend who had taken over my seat when I became secretary, did not vote to support the president’s action. He voted “present,” explaining he was still haunted by his vote to authorize the war in Iraq. He confided in me that had his friend whom he trusted not been secretary of state, he would have voted no.

  Joe Biden and I compared notes and numbers: We both concluded that we could lose the final vote in Congress. That outcome would be a devastating s
etback for the international prohibition against chemical weapons, for American credibility and for the president’s broader agenda.

  • • •

  AS THE DOMESTIC debate continued, I was working the phones around the clock to all my counterparts who had a stake in Syria. Sergei Lavrov and I spoke regularly, and our calls tested my patience. I would try to convince him our intelligence was unimpeachable. Assad was clearly culpable. He would try to convince me military action would have severe repercussions and there was no way we could know what had actually happened in Ghouta.

  The day after the Foreign Relations Committee vote, he again questioned our intelligence findings. “There’s no doubt,” I told him. “Believe me, Chuck Hagel and I remember Iraq.”

  He responded that even if we were correct, military action would be too risky.

  “I don’t believe that, Sergei,” I said. “There are always things we can do. For example, if Assad agreed to have the full stock of chemical weapons shipped out—”

  “It’s too risky,” Lavrov interrupted. He contended that the extremists might get their hands on them as they were being transported. In Moscow in May, Lavrov had sounded optimistic about a joint effort to remove chemical weapons. Now he wanted no part of it.

  “You don’t think we could work with the UN to plan for safe passage?” I asked.

  He told me he didn’t know and then continued to lecture me about American military meddling without the support of the international community or the U.S. Congress.

  I rolled my eyes at Sergei’s sudden claims to understand the Obama administration’s domestic political constraints.

  That evening a call request from Lavrov came through.

  President Obama had been in St. Petersburg with President Putin for the G20. Putin broached the possibility of having the international community step in to secure the chemical weapons stockpile in Syria and transport it out of the country to be destroyed. Susan Rice had called me to report the conversation.

  I told Lavrov I’d speak with President Obama. Sergei already knew I thought the idea was worth exploring. He was sending me a message: there was potential for progress.

  • • •

  PRESIDENT OBAMA WASN’T optimistic, but he did think Lavrov and I should continue to discuss it, particularly since it seemed increasingly unlikely we would succeed in Congress. The Syrians hadn’t even publicly admitted that they had chemical weapons; it seemed like a long shot that we could convince them not only to acknowledge their weapons but to abandon them.

  Almost three weeks had passed since Assad’s night of terror.

  I was in London holding a press conference with Foreign Secretary William Hague when Margaret Brennan from CBS News asked the key question: “Is there anything, at this point, that Assad’s government could do or offer that would stop an attack?”

  “Sure,” I replied, my conversations with Lavrov fresh in my mind. “He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting.”

  I voiced skepticism, putting the bait out and pulling it back a bit to cover us. “But he isn’t about to do it,” I added, “and it can’t be done, obviously.”

  Flying back to Washington from London, we had barely hit cruising altitude when I received word Lavrov wanted to talk with me urgently. He and Putin had conferred. They were prepared to make a statement taking me up on my offer to press Assad to get the chemical weapons out of Syria. I made it clear we weren’t interested in gauzy declarations, only in outcomes that were both verifiable and achievable. I immediately related the conversation to Susan Rice.

  While it was a welcome possibility, I worried we were losing the moment I’d hoped for most of all: the chance to turn air strikes into leverage for diplomacy in Syria. By failing to authorize the use of force, Congress was effectively taking the power out of our hands and undermining the authority of the commander in chief.

  The president instructed me to put the chemical weapons removal initiative to the test. The following evening, he gave a prime-time address aimed at galvanizing public support for action against Assad. He amended his remarks, stating that the U.S.-Russian initiative “has the potential to remove the threat of chemical weapons without the use of force.” He continued: “I have, therefore, asked the leaders of Congress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force while we pursue the diplomatic path.”

  • • •

  TWO DAYS lATER, I was en route to Geneva, along with a team of diplomats and lawyers with chemical weapons, nonproliferation and regional expertise. We’re blessed to have career Foreign Service officers and civil servants on duty around the clock to marshal technical expertise for any issue, no matter how complex. They are a national treasure. From the moment the war broke out, our team had been examining the chemical weapons problem. They had already gamed out possible avenues to removing the weapons. We were ready to deal with anything the Russians might throw at us.

  Amazingly, however, the Russian delegation didn’t even make a pitch. They had come to Geneva without any specific language as a starting point. I think the Russians were surprised by the granularity we brought to the task. Our team was well prepared.

  Lavrov and I spent hours in a conference room at the InterContinental hotel discussing the scope of the Syrian stockpile, technical options for destroying the weapons, best ways to monitor and verify that destruction, and how to protect the personnel trusted to conduct this work. Meanwhile, American specialists took over a block of rooms and, in concert with their Russian counterparts, began hammering away at the details. Russia—a country still publicly pretending to believe Assad hadn’t used chemical weapons at all—came much closer to our position than we had ever anticipated.

  Still, divisions emerged, chiefly on how the agreement would be enforced. Both sides agreed that the text we hashed out together would have to be codified by the UN Security Council. But Russia did not agree that the resolution that the Security Council ultimately passed should be legally binding. We didn’t trust the Syrian regime and believed they’d try to hide some weapons or chemical agents. So we pushed for as much access and transparency as possible. Assad would try to cheat, and we wanted to be sure Syria could be punished for violating the deal.

  I would spend hundreds of hours negotiating with Lavrov in four years as secretary. He’s clever, calculating and idiosyncratic. He’s also famous for little stunts and mind games to seek some small advantage at the bargaining table. After many hours of arguing whether the resolution would be legally binding, a member of my team slipped me a note: the Russian delegation had placed their bags out in the hotel hallway, ostensibly to be loaded for departure. It was a ham-handed tactic to imply they were about to walk away. We were in the home stretch; I knew they weren’t about to get up and leave.

  “Sergei, the press is reporting that you’re leaving. Are you leaving? Are we wasting our time right now?”

  Sergei admitted they weren’t leaving Geneva, lit another cigarette and got back to work without the contrived pressure.

  By the next morning, less than a week after my press conference in London, Lavrov and I were able to announce a detailed U.S.-Russia framework for eliminating Syria’s declared chemical weapons. When we presented the text to the full Security Council on September 27, it passed unanimously, 15–0. Some wondered if it could be a turning point in the international response to the Syria crisis. It was not a turning point; at best it was the high point amid the many tragic low points that would follow.

  • • •

  SYRIA WAS ALWAYS going to be difficult. The risks were obvious: left to its own devices, the civil war could be an incubator of regional violence, a testing ground for jihadis, a proxy terrain for Iran and Russia, a safe harbor for enemies of our ally Israel, a playing field for Kurd aspirations and a dumping ground for various Sunni countries to keep extremists at a distance. All these dangers combined to mak
e it a place with unavoidable strategic consequences for us and our allies.

  Given the secular complexity of the country, time was never on our side: Syria would only get worse so long as either side and their proxies believed they could win on the battlefield. Because the United States almost always ends up owning the aftermath of the world’s conflicts, we had an interest in the war ending sooner. When I had appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January 2013 for my confirmation hearing, I talked about the dangerous dynamic.

  “Right now, President Assad does not think he is losing,” I explained, “and the opposition thinks it is winning.” I told the committee what I believed throughout my time as secretary: “We need to change Bashar Assad’s calculation.” I explained that we needed to make Assad “see the die is cast, the handwriting is on the wall,” so he would “save lives and hold the state together in a transition.” Assad wasn’t concerned the United States would actually engage. At the same time, most experts believed Assad was weak. He was suffering major defections from both high-level military and political players. I thought the moment was ripe to ramp up the pressure. But both in the administration and on the Hill, while there was deep concern for what was happening, there was deeper concern for what might happen if we did more. Syria was difficult in every way, made more so by our failure to make choices that gave us greater leverage.