by Susan Rice
President Obama ultimately decided to align America with the peaceful protesters in Egypt’s Tahrir Square seeking to exercise their universal human rights. He urged Mubarak to step down, first privately, and when that failed, Obama reiterated his plea publicly.
The Arab Spring brought similar policy dilemmas from Bahrain to Yemen to Syria; in each instance, the administration’s approach varied depending on the specific circumstances. America’s traditional Sunni Arab partners, led by Saudi Arabia, were outraged that the U.S. would (in their view) betray a partner like Mubarak and were deeply unsettled by the unrest sweeping the region. But even as our Arab partners lamented Mubarak’s departure in Egypt, they were eager to see Assad removed in Syria and Qaddafi gone in Libya.
Less than a week after Mubarak’s resignation in mid-February 2011, Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, who had brutally enforced one-man rule for over forty years, suddenly faced his own uprising. Across the country, Libyans, led by opposition elements in Benghazi, demanded Qaddafi’s ouster. As their protests intensified, Qaddafi responded with escalating violence, unleashing his military against civilians and rebels alike. The Libyan army fired directly on unarmed protesters, killing five to seven hundred in February 2011 alone, according to estimates by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. The regime also arbitrarily arrested masses of opponents, committed torture and rape, forced disappearances, and indiscriminately bombed populated areas as the rebellion intensified. Given Qaddafi’s history of slaughtering thousands of his own people, we believed that he might stop at nothing to quell his opposition.
It was not just U.S., European, and Arab officials who comprehended the potential gravity of the situation. Qaddafi’s own diplomats in New York saw the writing on the wall and, after years of loyal service to a pariah regime, they split with Qaddafi and joined the opposition. I had come to know Ambassador Abdurrahman Shalgham, the Libyan permanent representative and former foreign minister, and his deputy Ibrahim Dabbashi, because Libya had served as a nonpermanent member of the Security Council during my first year in New York. In private, they were tough but thoughtful individuals, who throughout this crisis demonstrated more of a conscience than they had let on previously—even bravely lobbying the Security Council to take forceful action against their own government.
As international outrage mounted, the Security Council moved to impose sanctions on the Libyan regime, including an arms embargo and asset freeze; in a rare move, the Council also referred Qaddafi and his henchmen to the International Criminal Court to be tried for war crimes. The U.S. froze over $30 billion in Libyan government assets, closed our embassy in Tripoli—bringing our diplomats out of harm’s way—and moved warships from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean to show force and increase our optionality. Yet, despite these actions, Qaddafi intensified the killing.
By early March, the British and French had begun to lobby for the international imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya to protect civilians from Qaddafi’s forces. In Washington, we agonized over how to respond. There was reluctance to get into a third war, after Afghanistan and Iraq, in yet another Muslim-majority country. Doing nothing, however, pierced the conscience of many of us. The no-fly zone seemed a half-assed response, like being a little bit pregnant. We would own the problem but not have the means to fix it. Merely preventing Libyan planes from flying and bombing would not stop the ground forces with tanks from seizing successive cities on the road from Tripoli to Benghazi. Moreover, we discounted the ability of the U.K. and France to sustain an effective no-fly zone on their own, despite their considerable bluster, and knew that they would not launch without the backing of the Security Council, which required our assent.
The calculation in Washington shifted when on Saturday, March 12, 2011, the twenty-two-nation Arab League adopted an unprecedented statement calling on the UNSC to impose a no-fly zone and protect civilians, while recognizing the Libyan opposition forces as the legitimate government. On Monday, Lebanon introduced a draft resolution to implement the Arab League decision. France and the U.K., which had for weeks been agitating for a no-fly zone, championed the text as well. The looming question was: What would the U.S. position be?
Washington continued to dismiss a no-fly zone as worse than nothing, and I had argued that case forcefully in closed-door, “informal” meetings of the Security Council. Because I so roundly rejected a no-fly zone, the U.K. and French ambassadors had concluded that Washington wanted to do nothing.
On early Tuesday evening, I stepped out of a vehement and inconclusive Council debate to walk back across First Avenue to our office at the U.S. Mission in time to join a meeting with President Obama and his national security principals via secure videoconference. Hillary was plugged in remotely from Paris. The issue—what to do about Libya—was the same one we were debating in the Council. Qaddafi’s forces were moving steadily eastward down the coast capturing town after town from the rebels and closing in on the insurgency’s stronghold in Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city. Qaddafi had vowed to wipe out its residents, warning: “Prepare yourselves from tonight. We will find you in your closets.”
The Principals debated back and forth, as the president listened intently and, per usual, asked probing questions. Gates, Biden, Donilon, and White House chief of staff Bill Daley argued we should not intervene. While taking the humanitarian risks into account, these colleagues stressed that, ultimately, we had no compelling national security interest in Libya and should not involve ourselves in another Middle Eastern conflict. Even though the Arab League had requested U.N. (and thus U.S.) involvement, my colleagues maintained that Libya was not our fight and, effectively, that the likely costs of letting Qaddafi take Benghazi and retain his iron grip were acceptable when compared with the risks.
I argued the opposite—we should try to save innocent lives. The Arab Spring would be killed in the crib if Qaddafi were allowed to wipe out his citizens. The country was important as a linchpin in central North Africa, tucked between volatile Egypt and Tunisia and a gateway both to Europe and Africa’s terrorist-infested Sahel region to the south. Though not yet a genocide, mass atrocities were certain as Qaddafi brandished the means and the motive to kill thousands imminently. I maintained that President Obama should not allow what could be perceived as his Rwanda to occur—a moment when the world looked to the U.S. for leadership, and we blinked. A comparatively limited U.S. military commitment could make a meaningful difference. We should not agree simply to a no-fly zone. If we were serious, we needed a much wider U.N. mandate to protect civilians, and I believed there was a reasonable chance we could get one out of the Security Council.
Ben Rhodes, Tony Blinken, and Samantha Power joined me in advocating for action. To my surprise, so did Hillary Clinton. Having just visited Egypt, and now in Europe for consultations with Arab and European leaders, she changed her mind, morphing from reluctant to intervene to supporting U.S. involvement.
Obama was frustrated. We were under pressure to make a decision, and the only option he had been given was a feckless no-fly zone, which everyone agreed wasn’t worth the candle. Why, he railed at his national security advisor and Pentagon team, were we not in a position to consider viable alternatives? He abruptly adjourned the meeting to host an annual dinner for the four-star combatant commanders and their wives. “We’ll come back here in two hours. By then, I want some real options on the table,” Obama ordered.
Meanwhile, at the U.N., the informal meeting on Libya had ended inconclusively. My team and I had prepared for various contingencies, including the possibility that we would be asked by the president to pursue a far more ambitious resolution of the sort I believed we needed. That draft was in my back pocket, just in case.
When the NSC meeting resumed, we discussed concrete options, including an approach that would entail first bombing Libyan air defense systems to gain exclusive control of the skies and then targeting Qaddafi’s heavy weapons—tanks, artillery, aircraft—and any massing Libyan tr
oops if they threatened civilian areas. All agreed this was a more logical approach if we were going to engage militarily, but the Principals still differed on whether or not to act. As he often did, President Obama polled not just the Principals at the table for their views but also the expert staff seated along the walls of the wood-paneled White House Situation Room. The staff generally favored action.
Having digested all the various perspectives and asked piercing questions, Obama spoke. He said he would favor U.S. military action, but only under several conditions: 1) that I could obtain UNSC authorization for a robust mandate to protect civilians; 2) that Hillary could get the Arab League countries to agree to participate; and 3) that the U.S. role would be limited—we would launch the attacks, take out Qaddafi’s air defenses, and establish air superiority but after that the Europeans, especially the Brits and French, would have to carry the bulk of the load.
Biden reiterated his opposition but took some comfort in Obama’s conditions, predicting that there was no way Russia would allow this resolution to pass. I offered my own assessment, “The Russian position so far is ambiguous, so the vice president could be right that they will veto any resolution. But I also think there is a decent chance we can get this resolution through. Mr. President, I will give it my best shot.” Getting the Arabs to put real skin in the game, rather than just rhetoric, also seemed a significant hurdle. So, the meeting ended with us having marching orders but the outcome in doubt.
The next morning, I came to the U.N. with a head of steam and a tough, sweeping authorization in the form of a draft resolution at the ready. As soon as the Security Council meeting started, I asked for the floor. With the full force of emotion commensurate with the gravity of the situation, I laid out the U.S. position:
I spent most of last night in a series of meetings with my president and his national security team. I am now prepared to share the U.S. position. Our view is that the situation in Libya is dire; and, we have very little time to save lives. After considerable deliberation, the U.S. is prepared to back a strong resolution to protect civilians and strengthen sanctions on the Qaddafi regime. We will not support a simple no-fly zone, which will do nothing to stop the forces massing on the ground heading for Benghazi. With the robust mandate we seek, we will take out Libyan air defenses, their heavy weapons—like tanks, artillery, and aircraft—and halt advancing columns of soldiers. This would need to be an unfettered mandate to protect civilians, and I don’t want any ambiguity about what we intend to do with it. This will be an air war to save innocent lives. The U.S. is prepared to join militarily with like-minded countries in a coalition to enforce the resolution to save innocents. The choice is yours: you can vote with us; or, accept responsibility for another historic failure of this Council to act to prevent a potential genocide, when the means were available to do so. Your governments must decide which side of history you will be on. Mine will be on the side of meaningful action to save civilians and the population of Benghazi.
Just before I said my last word and leaned back in my seat, my team moved quickly around the room, handing out our draft resolution that would implement what I had outlined.
The Council was dead silent for several seconds after I finished. Everyone was somewhere between moved and shocked. Lebanon broke the silence and signaled that it was on board with a stronger U.S. text. The United Kingdom followed suit. France was flummoxed. My counterpart, Gérard Araud, with whom I had a complex and not yet entirely friendly relationship, balked. Why raise the bar? Why not stick with a no-fly zone? He thought that we were bluffing. To the press, on background, he opined that he suspected the U.S. was playing games—upping the ante so far that we were trying to ensure our draft would fail, while allowing us to claim credit nonetheless. It was a typically French conspiratorial view of events that was not entirely unjustified, given the abrupt shift in the U.S. position.
Privately, I assured Gérard that we did not play that way: What you see is what you get. We genuinely favored the more robust mandate as the only approach we thought had merit, if we were going to act. My message was—So, let’s work together to get this done.
Russia, sensing an opening, offered its own alternative draft resolution that simply called for a cease-fire in Libya with no enforcement mechanism. It was a last-minute gambit to derail our more robust text. The Russian draft gained little to no traction in the Council and, uncharacteristically, Churkin dropped it without much of a fight. After France signaled it would support the U.S. text, I “put it into blue,” which meant the resolution was finalized, no further changes could be made, and it could be voted on—up or down—within twenty-four hours.
By the end of the day, as my team quietly polled Council members, it seemed we were in striking distance of enough votes. Russia and China, almost always hostile to U.N.-authorized humanitarian intervention, were question marks. They had no special affinity for Qaddafi, but also don’t like giving the U.S. free rein, especially to use force. The three African members—Nigeria, Gabon, and South Africa—were also uncertain, as the African Union had long benefited from Qaddafi’s largesse and hated to see the U.S. intervene in Africa with Arab forces rather than support African-led diplomatic and military efforts. Germany and Brazil made clear they were likely to abstain. We needed at least nine of fifteen Council members to vote yes, and no veto-wielding members to oppose.
That night, Gérard convened the P5 ambassadors at the French Mission to discuss the timing of the vote and next steps. Churkin pulled me aside for a private conversation. Without prelude, he said, “I believe Moscow will abstain on your resolution.” That meant the veto-wielding Russians would not vote yes but also would not block passage of the resolution.
I looked at him quizzically. Moscow almost never signaled in advance how it would vote on a controversial text. It also struck me as very strange that the Russians, even under Medvedev, would so readily allow such a robust resolution to pass that would give us carte blanche on the use of force, impose exceptionally tough sanctions, and authorize a blockade of Libyan arms imports. I had thrown the whole kitchen sink into that resolution, larding it up with authorities that we had never previously achieved in other contexts like North Korea and Iran. Yet Churkin did not seem troubled by his instructions and appeared to relish sharing them in advance. I asked him what he expected the Chinese to do, knowing that Russia and China closely coordinate their U.N. votes on everything of consequence. He said he thought they too would abstain.
Now, I was suspicious. We had just surmounted the biggest hurdle to getting our text adopted, but something didn’t feel right. The Russians, I surmised, were betting that we would get bogged down in Libya. I believe they figured we were making a major mistake, and they had decided to give us just enough rope to hang ourselves. Or maybe, Vladmir Putin, then Russia’s prime minister, was giving his president Dmitri Medvedev, whom he would replace the next year, enough rope to hang himself.
I reported to Washington that the holdouts now seemed to be the Africans, whom we needed to vote in favor of the resolution in order for us to cross the nine-vote threshold. Gabon would not be a problem if we could get Nigeria. My hunch was that Nigeria seemed get-able with some effort, and Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson, my former Clinton-era principal deputy, managed to secure Nigeria’s support. But South Africa was a problem, given its typical prickliness and the governing African National Congress’s revolutionary aversion to Western involvement in the continent’s affairs.
With the vote scheduled for late afternoon on Thursday, March 17, President Obama called President Jacob Zuma of South Africa to press for his support. The NSC staff reported to my team that Obama sensed he had gotten a favorable response, but Zuma was not clear. Moreover, in New York we had not heard anything at all from the South African Mission. My staff was chasing them, trying to determine their position, but could not find out even if they had received instructions from Pretoria, much less what they were. That’s why I staked out
my South African counterpart at the entrance to the Security Council.
When the vote was called, ten members including all the Africans supported the resolution, and five (Russia, China, India, Brazil, and Germany) abstained. Raising my hand to vote yes, I unwittingly created an image that would gain fame in Libya. It was nighttime in Libya when the Council session concluded. The Libyan ambassador chased me down excitedly after the vote to hug and thank me, and he shared live footage on his phone of massive crowds in Benghazi cheering and celebrating the vote. The image of me in my green jacket, raising my hand to vote yes and scanning the large, circular Council table to verify that we had the needed votes, was played over and over again on a big screen in Benghazi’s main square. Ironically, my homage to St. Patrick’s Day led to the iconic picture that captured the moment for the Libyan people.
I got the U.N. vote and did all the press engagements that the White House requested in its aftermath. Secretary Clinton had worked skillfully to get the Arabs on board, particularly Qatar and the UAE. President Obama talked to French president Nicolas Sarkozy and British prime minister David Cameron and obtained their commitment to carry the bulk of the military load. The conditions had been met. Obama publicly warned Qaddafi one last time to halt his advance on Benghazi, but Qaddafi persisted.
A few days later, President Obama left for a long-planned official visit to Latin America with his family and the White House team. It was spring break for my kids, and we flew as planned to Anguilla in the Caribbean. We desperately needed this time away together. Separation from my family was always the most difficult part of my job at the U.N. The kids were six and eleven when I began in New York, and by the time I left would be ten and fifteen (almost sixteen). When we set off for the Caribbean that spring, eight-year-old Maris and Jake, almost fourteen, were each becoming the two very different individuals they are today. Maris, steady and still wise for her years, seemed to be adjusting to school and friends, while Jake had begun a more dramatic transition from boy to an independent-minded teenager. He and his dad fought frequently in my absence, as Jake tested his boundaries.