by Susan Rice
In my last weeks at McKinsey, I continued to commute to a small town in rural Quebec where I worked for a manufacturing client. On Monday mornings, I would awaken early for the flight and drive, returning Thursday or Friday evening. At about 1:30 on a Monday morning in early January 1993, my phone rang, rousing me from sleep. Picking up, still groggy, I heard Sandy Berger identify himself. Without any niceties, he announced that I no longer had an offer to be his and Tony Lake’s special assistant. They had determined that they only needed one, not two assistants, and they were going to keep the guy who had worked with them on the campaign. Jolted, I was now properly awake. Sandy then said that I could still come to the NSC, if I wanted to be a director for Africa on the NSC staff.
Offered a real policy job that should have been quite appealing, I nonetheless took no time before giving him my reply. “No, thank you,” I said, “I’m not interested in working on Africa. I would prefer another portfolio.” No doubt put off by the arrogance of a twenty-eight-year-old neophyte, Sandy abruptly ended the conversation without clarity as to whether or not it would be our last.
It wasn’t that I was uninterested in Africa, but as an African American woman in a very white male field, if my first job in government were focused solely on Africa, I feared I could get pigeonholed and never be viewed as someone who could work on wider issues. In retrospect, I marvel at my own chutzpah but am glad I refused to be typecast. Even though I understood that Tony and Sandy had no such intention, I recognized that other people’s perceptions could become my reality. I was comforted by knowing that McKinsey would welcome me staying and Bob Rubin might still have me at the NEC.
About ten days later, after hearing only vaguely from Nancy Soderberg that they might be able to work something else out at the NSC, I got another call. This one, equally abrupt, was from some guy I had never heard of: Richard Clarke.
Clarke was the senior director for global issues and multilateral affairs at the NSC and a former assistant secretary of state. Clarke barreled ahead, “Lake and Berger told me to interview you for a role as a junior director in my office. I told them I don’t want any junior directors. Either you are good enough to be a director, or I don’t want you. So they told me to consider you for director for international organizations and peacekeeping. When are you coming down?”
“I’m very grateful for your interest,” I replied and let him know I could be back in Washington by early February. Quickly, I added, “Thank you, and I look forward to meeting you.”
“Thank Tony and Sandy, not me.” With that, he hung up.
Later, I learned that Dick Clarke is legendary for his unforgiving demeanor and his skills as a “bureaucratic Samurai,” or interagency knife-fighter.
The interview went well, and I was hired. As it turned out, I could not have asked for a better first boss in government. Dick’s office covered everything from counterterrorism to counter-narcotics, humanitarian relief to U.N. affairs, peacekeeping to refugees. My portfolio, the United Nations and peacekeeping, was a busy one, and it meant I would work closely with my mentor Madeleine Albright and her team, since she was to be ambassador to the U.N. Even though Dick didn’t want any baby directors, he also didn’t want any screwups. He had brought back his very good friend and longtime partner at the State Department, Rand Beers, to be his deputy. Among Randy’s responsibilities were to mentor me until I could safely fly solo.
Randy is a redheaded, ruggedly handsome former Marine, whose hearing was diminished while fighting in Vietnam. A devoted father and husband, avid runner, and gentle soul, Randy had served for decades at the State Department and the National Security Council. Like Dick, he was highly regarded in both Republican and Democratic administrations; but, unlike Dick, he always managed to play nicely with colleagues. Randy would go on to serve in various higher offices in subsequent years, including as acting secretary of homeland security under President Obama.
For about six months, Randy taught me the ropes—everything from how to write coherent, persuasive memos to the president and national security advisor, to how to run an effective interagency policy meeting. One of his most valuable pieces of advice, understood by too few foreign policy experts, was, “Follow the money.” By that, Randy meant learn the national security budget inside and out; he explained: “Where there is money, there is real potential policy impact. If you can grasp the budget and figure out where to vacuum up underutilized funds, you will run circles around your interagency colleagues.” This lesson served me well for the next twenty-five years.
Randy also taught me how to deal with Dick Clarke when he was being difficult. His advice was to be firm and clear in response to any stray voltage Dick directed at me—in other words, “Don’t take crap.” Before long, Randy concluded I had earned my wings, and I was soon treated like the other more experienced directors and advanced to reporting directly to Dick.
Dick is a hard-ass—gruff, sarcastic, whip-smart, someone who pulls no punches—but also a generous, endearing, loyal man, who would become a lasting friend to me and my family. He is beloved by the legions of younger people he has mentored and trained. Though highly respected by his bosses in the Reagan, Bush 41, and Clinton administrations for his exceptional competence and candor, many of his peers at the White House and in the agencies disliked him, some intensely. Dick didn’t suffer fools. While chairing interagency meetings, he could shut people down with a dismissive retort designed to highlight their stupidity, and he would mow over obstacles to accomplish his aims. Following the terrorist attacks on 9/11, Dick ran afoul of the Bush 43 administration after he publicly criticized them for paying insufficient attention to the Al Qaeda threat.
At the start of my four and a half years on the NSC staff, Dick taught me how to “get shit done,” which became my mantra. From watching Dick I also learned the pitfalls of behaving with unnecessary aggressiveness, while mastering the nuts and bolts of making policy and moving the interagency bureaucracy.
Intimacy and collegiality were the hallmarks of what was then a relatively small NSC staff, consisting of some 150 policy experts. We all knew each other, and when we needed to hunt down a colleague—to talk through a problem or air a policy dispute—we just walked down the long, high-ceiled, marble corridors of the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House and rang their bell. Email was not yet the main mode of communication among NSC staffers; we spoke face-to-face. Moms and dads brought their kids to the office on weekends where they played with makeshift toys or paper clips as their parents toiled long and unpredictable hours. National Security Advisor Lake and his deputy Sandy Berger were accessible, and we would go directly to their office or occasionally they to ours when we needed to hash out a pressing matter.
The NSC sat at the nexus of the national security agencies, coordinating policy formulation and implementation, cajoling the State and Defense Departments to embrace or at least acquiesce to President Clinton’s agenda. In the early years, it was difficult having to follow the well-liked and highly experienced George H. W. Bush with a young president who had no federal government or military experience. The agencies tested and resisted us, as is normal in any new administration, but with time and after our share of missteps, the bureaucracy came along.
My U.N. portfolio meant that, along with my regional colleagues who had direct policy responsibility, I tracked the hot conflict issues of the day, including Bosnia, Haiti, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Somalia, and Rwanda. This was an era when peacekeeping was growing rapidly as a tool of conflict prevention and resolution and when, in the wake of the end of the Cold War, civil wars seemed to be proliferating. With Clarke, I also coordinated the interagency process on peacekeeping issues, multilateral sanctions policy, development, and human rights issues that involved the United Nations.
At the very outset of the Clinton administration, I was thrown into the deep end of the crisis pool. President Bush had decided in December 1992, as he was leaving office, to send 28,000 U.S. forces to Somalia
to help restore order and enable the delivery of food and relief supplies to victims of the war-induced famine then ravaging the country. This massive humanitarian intervention, known as Operation Restore Hope, was laudable in its initial aims but left the incoming Clinton administration with the complex challenge of managing a large military mission in a remote, poorly understood corner of the world. Just days before Clinton took office, the U.S. suffered its first combat death in Somalia. Thus began a cycle of increasingly deadly confrontations pitting U.S. and U.N. forces against the notorious warlord Mohammed Aidid’s clan militia.
America’s strategy, as inherited from the Bush administration, was to hand off responsibility for the U.S. military operation as soon as possible to the United Nations. After some delays, in May 1993 the U.N. finally established its largest peacekeeping force to date (28,000), taking over from the U.S.-led multinational force. There were roughly 4,000 American troops attached to the initial U.N. force, including 1,300 who remained outside of U.N. command and formed a helicopter-mobile Quick Reaction Force. The U.N. mandate was to provide security sufficient to enable the delivery of humanitarian relief; but in practice, given the running armed conflicts between warlords and their clans, the mission required trying to disarm and disable recalcitrant militia, most prominently Aidid’s. In other words: combat.
One Saturday morning in early June 1993, I received an urgent call at home from the White House Situation Room. Wearing weekend casual clothes, I dashed to my office at the Old Executive Office Building—a ten-minute drive from our house in the Adams Morgan neighborhood—to deal with my first major policy crisis: twenty-four Pakistani U.N. peacekeepers had been killed by Aidid’s forces in several attacks across the Somali capital, Mogadishu. It was the second worst loss of peacekeepers’ lives in U.N. history, a major blow to the nascent U.N. force and to the perceived ability of the U.S. to provide sufficient backup to U.N. forces under attack. In Dick Clarke’s office, we scrambled to issue press statements, ensure the right people in the agencies called the Pakistanis, and coordinate the dispatch of instructions to the U.S. Mission to the U.N.
The U.N. Security Council was set to meet in emergency session, and Ambassador Albright and her team needed swift guidance on the pending Security Council resolution condemning the attack and threatening justice against the perpetrators. The final resolution, which was unanimously adopted, called for the arrest and punishment of the perpetrators. It was widely perceived as a declaration of war against Aidid.
Despite being unfamiliar with Somalia, my bosses remained convinced of the righteousness of America’s humanitarian mission. Instinctively, they refused to get punked by some two-bit warlord; so they decided the U.S. should double down on the mission to eliminate the threat from Aidid. This seemed like the obvious policy choice, and I had no misgivings when President Clinton first ordered Marines and Army Rangers to hunt down Aidid and his henchmen, and to raid his home, weapons depots, and radio station. The population of Mogadishu, which had initially supported the U.S. mission, however, largely turned against us and the U.N. Aidid’s supporters chanted “Down with America!,” and Aidid vowed to remain on a “collision course” with the U.N. and U.S.
While the mission’s objective remained humanitarian, the U.N. and the Clinton administration concluded we needed to use whatever force necessary to restore order. Over the summer and early fall of 1993, the U.N. suffered further casualties, and U.S. losses mounted as well. Our European allies opposed the intensified U.N. combat role, and Congress passed nonbinding resolutions aimed at curtailing the U.S. military mission, calling for it to be authorized by Congress if it were to be extended beyond its November 15 mandate.
On Sunday, October 3, 1993, I received another unexpected call from the Situation Room: two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters had been shot down by Aidid militia. Several U.S. servicemen were dead, captured, or missing. Reaching the office, I was disgusted and horrified to see on television the bodies of U.S. soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. As we watched the on-screen desecration of our own Special Forces, I knew, as I had learned from Dick Clarke, that when crisis hits, there is no time for emotion. We needed to steel ourselves, focus, remain unflustered, execute, and deliver.
By the time that nightmare was over, eighteen American servicemen had been killed and seventy-three wounded. Suddenly, everything changed for the new administration, as it confronted its first major national security crisis and accompanying political trauma.
Even with both houses of Congress under Democratic control, in the wake of these shocking losses, President Clinton faced extraordinary congressional pressure to immediately withdraw U.S. forces from Somalia. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Secretary of Defense Les Aspin tried valiantly to argue with Congress for time and space to finish the mission with dignity. I vividly recall the stunned realization in the White House that their efforts had backfired spectacularly. It must have been one of the most brutal spankings of cabinet officials before members of a Congress led by their own party. Congressional Democrats and Republicans then turned their ire on President Clinton and the rest of his senior national security team. On the verge of mandating the near immediate return of U.S. forces, Congress was set to force a sudden and humiliating retreat that would have set back security in Somalia, eroded the credibility of America’s military commitments globally, and undermined the authority of the commander-in-chief.
To avert such legislation, President Clinton pledged that all U.S. military would leave Somalia within six months. He also announced interim plans to reinforce the U.S. military presence in Somalia and offshore by inserting a total of twenty thousand troops to protect U.S. personnel. Congress then voted to bind the president to his stated timeline by setting March 31, 1994, as the cut-off date for funding military operations in Somalia—an extraordinary, rare rebuke of executive authority. I have never forgotten this harsh reality: Congress can effectively constrain the commander-in-chief when its will is sufficient.
On March 26, 1994, the last U.S. forces left the shores of Somalia in amphibious vehicles. It was a low-key, even ignominious departure that, thankfully, occurred without incident. Back at an anticlimactic ceremony on the White House Lawn, President Clinton thanked our military for their service and sacrifice, closing the book on one of the most ill-fated military missions in recent U.S. history.
This first major crisis I faced in government was searing, and Somalia would shape my own perspective as well as U.S. policy for decades to come.
While the U.S. and U.N. operations definitely helped ameliorate the dire humanitarian situation in Somalia, saving an estimated one million lives, by almost all other measures U.S. involvement there was a failure. Thirty U.S. servicemen were killed in action and 175 were wounded as the mission crept well beyond its original humanitarian parameters.
From my vantage point, the U.S. had underestimated the complexity and dangers of humanitarian intervention and overestimated the capacity of the U.N. to conduct complex peace enforcement missions. The U.N. suffered from an unachievable mandate, insufficient forces, lack of coordination, and ineffective command and control. Individual peacekeeping units, including the Americans’, took orders from their national capitals rather than from the U.N. commander on the ground or headquarters in New York. To exacerbate matters, the U.S. under-resourced its own contingent within the U.N. force and got sucked into “nation building.”
As many of my more senior colleagues would later admit, the Clinton administration failed to prioritize a political solution over an elusive military outcome—before it was too late. In targeting Aidid, the U.S. and U.N. personalized the mission and turned large segments of the Somali population against us. Neither the U.S. nor the U.N. developed the capacity nor had the humility to try to comprehend the extraordinary political complexities of Somalia’s clan structure and fiercely independent culture. We also failed to engage Somalia’s neighbors early enough to learn from their far greater knowledge of the country.<
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Without relevant doctrine or experience, the U.S. found itself enmeshed in what was effectively a sectarian civil war, bogged down in urban counterinsurgency operations against a smaller but more agile enemy—a challenge we would face again years later in Iraq. U.S. policy ran far afield of public and congressional sentiment, leaving the president with little support when things went badly wrong. I also observed that the NSC Principals, the cabinet-level committee that sets U.S. national security policy, were insufficiently involved in decision making, leaving too much to their deputies; moreover, for too long, there was no senior point person clearly accountable for driving policy formulation and implementation. Somalia provided me an early, real-world case study of what not to do.
At the peak of my youthful outrage after Black Hawk Down, as the events came to be known, I confessed to some good friends at a dinner party, “If I had my way, we would turn Mogadishu into a parking lot.” At the time, the notion that we could send U.S. forces to a faraway land to save innocent lives only to have our own lives taken was infuriating and bewildering. Only with greater experience and maturity would I come to understand that, despite my occasional inclination to flatten our opponents (especially two-bit warlords), escalation and the use of overwhelming force against locals, particularly when it entails high civilian casualties, will almost always boomerang and undermine the mission—whether humanitarian, counterinsurgency, or counterterrorism.
The Somalia crisis also taught me to be skeptical of Congress’s capacity to play any constructive role in addressing real-time national security crises. While bipartisan sanity prevailed to prevent a vote to force Clinton to withdraw U.S. forces immediately, politicization instincts ran deep, especially among Republicans like Senators John McCain and Phil Gramm, who seemingly wished to undermine President Clinton by arguing (uncharacteristically) that the U.S. ought to cut and run as soon as we accounted for our POWs and MIAs. Likewise, I discovered the serious political and operational limitations of the U.N., especially to succeed in real combat missions, even with strong U.S. backing.