NO HIGHER HONOR
By William Urban
A couple weeks ago I mentioned Condoleezza Rice’s account of her years as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State for George W. Bush, 2000-2008. Her remarks on the people and problems she dealt with are especially illuminating in view of the current troubles of John Kerry, who took office just as American foreign policy was falling apart.
It was close to that bad in Rice’s last year. There was an uprising in Iraq — the Shiites had been beaten back earlier, but they were still murdering Sunnis in Baghdad; the Sunnis had effectively taken the western half of the country and had begun murdering Shiites in Baghdad. The Iranians were processing uranium for an atomic bomb. The Palestinians were attacking Israelis at every opportunity and the Israelis were striking back. North Korea had just exploded an atomic bomb and had tested a long-range missile. Vladimir Putin was beginning to test American resolve. And our European allies had concluded that the world would be safer if Americans just went home (except not quite yet, as they’d explain every time a step was taken in that direction).
The surge that turned Iraq from a defeat to a victory was no easy decision. Congress, then controlled by Democrats, wanted an immediate pull-out. Harry Reid pronounced the war lost. Our allies concurred. And so did some high-ranking military officials, and many in the diplomatic corps..
Bush sent in the troops anyway and approved a new policy designed by General Petraeus. The basic thought was to have boots on the ground, first to defeat the insurgents, then to protect civilians. There was a new emphasis on working with Iraqis, most importantly with the Sunni tribal sheiks who were fed up with al Qaida arrogance and abuse. The level of violence fell steadily until by the time Bush left office the most important task remaining was to sign a status of forces agreement that would define the working arrangement and protect American servicemen from arbitrary arrest and punishment.
Well, the Obama administration didn’t get that done, but much of the fault lay with the Iraqis. Rice was very frustrated with their leaders, and with the Saudis and Iranians who encouraged the civil unrest. Not only were these men difficult to deal with, but some would not talk to a woman, not even one who was America’s Secretary of State. She used some blunt words to bring some of them around.
Others she won over with stories of growing up in the South, and how she understood what Arab women and children were going through.
The North Koreans, in contrast, could not even be talked to. She used the term “hermit kingdom” to describe the nation whose leaders were totally ignorant of the outside world. But here, at least, there some allies agreed as to what had to be done. (Not, alas, the Russians and Chinese.) The Clinton policy of shipping grain in return for promises to think about eliminating nuclear weapons and inter-continental missiles was over. George W. Bush installed an anti-missile system in Alaska and aboard some naval vessels. American liberals howled, the North Koreans pouted, and Europeans thought this was another sign of American cowboy politics.
Shortly afterward, when the Iranians developed a missile that could reach Western Europe, Bush put a similar system in Poland and the Czech Republic that might be able to shoot down a handful of missiles. Vladimir Putin proclaimed this a threat to his 1000+ intercontinental missiles, but Bush pointed out that this was hardly the case. Not long afterward, Barack Obama withdrew the anti-missile system as a gesture of friendship toward Russia and Iran; he did not dismantle the Alaskan site, which may explain why the North Korean leader recently called Obama “a wicked black monkey.”
Rice had some success in developing a system of sanctions on the Iranians. But here too the Russians and Chinese refused to cooperate. As a result, it was left to Barack Obama to push through a more effective program — one that he abandoned just as it showed signs of effectiveness, in return for Iranian promises to slow down the enrichment of nuclear materials.
She had moments that she enjoyed. Working with Tony Blair was always a joy. Angela Merkel was friendly, too — quite a contrast to her two-faced predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, who after losing the election quickly took a job with the Russian oil and gas conglomerate that today can cut off European energy instantly.
Her golf game improved, thanks to coaching by Tiger Woods, then at the height of his popularity, but she had almost no time to practice. She occasionally played the piano at formal events, which always astounded heads of states. The king of Saudi Arabia presented her with an ornate hijab, a beautiful outfit, but she had to bite her lip not to say that she associated it with the exclusion of Muslim women from the male worlds of business and politics. She did not wear it because she was the American Secretary of State and she thought it appropriate to dress in the American fashion. (She did love to wear red gowns and dance late into the night — that is, 1 AM. She had to get up the next day and work. Her job was twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.)
I suppose in a few years we’ll have a memoir by the Black woman who is Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor. Since her last name is Rice, too, we’ll have to refer to them as Condi and Susan. Condi’s the one who didn’t say that a video was responsible for Benghazi; Susan’s the one who is not fluent in Russian.
The basic problems have not changed except to become more complex and more violent. Rice worried that she had too little time to deal with problems that needed her attention — South America, for example — and Africa (where George Bush was wildly popular for his campaigns against disease.) Barack Obama tried to deal with this problem by assigning prominent diplomats to the most critical areas, giving them so much authority that they were widely called czars. That is why Hillary Clinton failed to achieve much as Secretary of State. She didn’t have a chance.
As for Rice, when she was a girl in segregated Birmingham, she had never imagined ever holding such an office. This was reflected in the title of her book, No Higher Honor.
Review Atlas (May 22, 2014), 4.
