Tough Love

by Susan Rice

  As national security advisor, I aimed to help set up the plays we were running; dish the ball to the star players, like Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, Vice President Biden, and of course the president; and assist them to score. That’s how I approached my responsibilities on major issues, ranging from Egypt, Snowden, and Syria, to Afghanistan, South Sudan, Ukraine, Ebola, Cuba, Iran, and the fight against ISIS. I provided similar assistance to the team who led our efforts to achieve the Paris Agreement on climate change and to Gayle Smith, who became USAID administrator, having crafted and implemented President Obama’s signature development programs, including Power Africa, Feed the Future, and the Young Leaders initiatives in Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Europe.

  In all our endeavors, whether we were responding to crises or advancing what I called the president’s “affirmative agenda”—those opportunities we elected to embrace to effect positive change—my focus was to ensure that my senior colleagues had the support they needed, when they needed it. As a practical matter, that meant providing clear strategic direction through the Deputies’ and Principals’ decision-making process as well as prompt feedback and guidance from the president. When resources were a key constraint, I worked with the agencies and the Office of Management and Budget to help obtain what was required. If a cabinet official sought reinforcement from the White House, I would deliver the necessary letter or phone call from the vice president or president. To ensure that our negotiators met the president’s expectations for success, I would provide my colleagues an unvarnished assessment as to whether what they had achieved was good enough, or they needed to do better.

  I kept in close communication with my counterparts when they traveled, mainly through frequent calls and emails with members of the NSC staff who were embedded in our interagency teams or directly with John Kerry, to whom I spoke at all hours of the day and night when he was on the road. Kerry would call back frequently to provide updates and seek guidance, trying to assess if the outcome he was pursuing would pass muster. Sometimes, I would have to run the issue by the president, but mostly I had a strong sense of when a result would suffice, or when it would not, and gave it to John straight.

  Kerry and I quickly developed a close and effective working relationship. John is dogged, relentless, and always willing to mount the hill ahead. He is a skilled and strong negotiator; still, to try to optimize the outcome, I sometimes encouraged him to go back into battle to gain a bit more. John might resist initially, explaining that he had gotten all that was possible and that a further push could upend the negotiation. We would parry back and forth, and then he invariably agreed to go back and try again. That is how Kerry eventually got Russian foreign minister Lavrov to accept that the 2013 U.N. resolution mandating the removal of Syria’s chemical weapons must foreshadow sanctions or the use of force to punish Syria, if it reneged. It is also how John achieved the most elusive elements we needed in the Iran nuclear negotiation.

  Literally, every time the president or I asked John Kerry to please go back and fight for more, whether on Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, or numerous other issues, he succeeded in obtaining a better outcome. Every time. Though I never confessed as much to John, I came to view this dynamic as almost a game. Even if what John had secured was not bad, I asked him to try for more, because I knew he could get it. Whatever the issue, whoever his interlocutor, I was confident he could take the outcome of the negotiation from minimally acceptable to exceptional, with more elbow grease, more cajoling, more pressure. And, he did.

  John and I sometimes argued. He would often call at the start of the morning, with an update or creative proposal but occasionally with what I considered to be a half-baked idea. In those instances, I felt I had to serve as the wet blanket, a repetitious voice of tedious sobriety. On these mornings, John surely thought I was a major pain in his ass. But our relationship worked. We were a good team.

  I admire John and supported him with those of our colleagues who occasionally worried that he seemed too hungry for a deal. John Kerry always strove to do his best and, despite being over seventy, he was fit, tireless, and never shied from the toughest assignments. Never did I hear John Kerry say “No, I will not” or “No, I cannot.” I would not have traded him for another partner.

  Most issues were not suited to be resolved solely between me, John, and even the president. They required the input and, preferably, the buy-in of the whole “interagency” team—those executive branch departments and agencies that play a significant role in national security affairs. Most matters have a diplomatic as well as military dimension and often an economic or law enforcement aspect. To make well-considered recommendations to the president on complex issues, the NSC needs to conduct a fair process in which every stakeholder has a voice and a vote.

  In addition to the national security advisor and deputy NSA, the cast that makes up the NSC Principals Committee consists of the secretaries of state and defense, the director of national intelligence, CIA director, U.N. ambassador, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, White House chief of staff, often the attorney general and the secretary of the treasury, and sometimes the secretaries of commerce and homeland security, the USAID administrator, or the U.S. trade representative. The Principals Committee, which I chaired, was the vehicle through which we set policy, tracked implementation, and teed up decisions for the president. The Deputies Committee, consisting of the second-ranking officials at the key agencies, did the intense preparatory work of crafting and culling policy options, and usually joined the Principals as backbenchers as we wrestled with the issue at hand.

  When President Obama convened the Principals for a National Security Council meeting, the sessions were always rigorous, and everybody was expected to be in top form, even if the subject was not their expertise. Having read every shred of paper carefully, he demonstrated an extraordinary grasp of detail and asked penetrating questions that generated new insights. The president wanted to hear the views of everyone at the table as well as the experts sitting along the walls. When satisfied that he had the necessary information, Obama carefully weighed but did not linger over tough decisions.

  Obama’s queries, taskings, and decision making had the effect of reminding all involved that, for better or worse, he was consistently the smartest guy in the room. Personally, I hated acknowledging that. But I knew the sooner I embraced this reality, the better prepared I would be.

  At NSC meetings, I was always on guard, trying not to commit the sin Obama most criticized me for. Going back to my early days at the U.N., Obama occasionally gave me feedback aimed at helping me perform at the peak of my game. Consistently, his biggest complaint was: “You have no poker face! You can’t reveal what you’re thinking and feeling all the time.”

  My face unconsciously can speak volumes about what is running through my head. It is most problematic when I am irritated, angry, or thinking that what I am hearing is stupid. Obama stayed on my case about composing an impassive countenance (something he excelled at) and even hinted early on that he expected me to surmount this challenge, if I were named national security advisor. I did gradually improve, but I have never fully mastered the poker face.

  The NSC and the Principals Committee met in the John F. Kennedy Conference Room in the White House Situation Room, the secure operations center in the White House basement that houses a twenty-four-hour watch. It places, receives, and transcribes presidential phone calls, provides alerts to staff, and connects national security personnel to one another across agencies and time zones. A wood-paneled conference room with the windows sealed and covered, JFK is the largest of three in the Situation Room, but still quite compact. With effort, we could fit twelve to fifteen people around the long oval wooden table.

  As chair of the Principals Committee, I sat at the head of the table with NSC staff against the walls and my cabinet colleagues in assigned seats at the table, according to rough protocol order. If the secretaries of state and defense wer
e each present (as opposed to their deputies), they would sit to my left and right, respectively, with others deliberately arrayed down the table. On the large video screen facing me was usually one or more principals participating remotely—often Samantha Power from New York, sometimes the VP or secretary of defense from aboard his plane, or Kerry from an embassy or makeshift secure tent in an obscure part of the world.

  Knowing these meetings consumed a large quantity of the precious time of the most important policymakers in the world, I tried to ensure that they were well-prepared and well-executed. To start, I carefully reviewed and edited the papers written by NSC staff in advance of the meetings to make sure they were clear, comprehensive, and framed issues crisply for decision.

  At the beginning of PC meetings, I sought to minimize posturing and lengthy intelligence presentations. I tried to walk the participants through the agenda in a linear fashion, aiming to elicit views, forge consensus or, failing that, clarify and encapsulate differences, so they could be represented precisely to the president. I also aimed, but too often failed, to start and end the meetings on schedule. My intent, that I hope to have met, was to leave participants with the sense that the issues and all perspectives had received a full airing.

  Managing the PC is a tough challenge. The Principals, who are already leading large agencies, typically think they have better things to do than sit for up to two (or more) hours at the PC table. Yet, even when at USUN, I viewed effective participation in the decision-making process for the president as the Principals’ most important responsibility. Everyone at the table is very tightly scheduled—with a foreign counterpart meeting, dinner to host, or plane to catch just after our meeting is set to end. Each principal also has a strong personality, healthy ego, and firm views.

  During my tenure as NSA, the Obama principals mostly liked and respected each other, but not always and not every day. I didn’t mind combat, either around me or involving me, but I tried to ensure the arguments didn’t get too personal. Occasionally, the debate was barbed, and shots flew. Kerry and Defense Secretary Carter could get into it. Secretary Hagel might complain about the length and frequency of PCs or the granularity of the discussions. Brennan sometimes “got his Irish up.” Power’s presentations could veer into the heavy and high-minded. Clapper typically tried to offer some comic relief. Kerry sometimes delivered long, passionate arguments that left his colleagues more exhausted than moved. And, on rare occasions, Denis threw a curveball that upended the whole discussion.

  I too could get impatient, even angry, with any or all of them and abruptly shift gears from a more open and collegial style to a more pointed and directive one. On occasion, if I sensed that one or more of my colleagues had failed to read the preparatory materials or was winging their commentary, I might uncharitably bombard them with a relentless interrogatory designed to elicit clarity in their position or reveal the weakness of their arguments. More often, I tried to employ humor to ease the tension or keep long meetings tolerable.

  Most of the time, the Principals were able to reach consensus, and President Obama usually accepted their collective recommendation, but often only after pressure-testing their reasoning. At times, the Principals differed, and the debate would become robust. Starting from my childhood experiences at the family dinner table, I have always been comfortable with argument, even anger, so I did not shy from encouraging all to state their positions emphatically but respectfully. When the battle ended, it was my job to present the Principals’ views fully and fairly to the president in a detailed memo without any “spin on the ball,” and to close the memo with my own best recommendation as to how to proceed.

  The range of issues with which the Principals Committee wrestled was broad and diverse, but certain matters, including Afghanistan and others I will highlight, consumed major shares of our time through the end of the administration.

  I left the formal dinner incensed.

  As we gathered back at the ambassador’s residence to review what had just occurred, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Jim Cunningham and General Joseph Dunford, then our theater commander, seemed disheartened, even disgusted, but not shocked. They were accustomed to Afghan president Hamid Karzai being one of the most disagreeable leaders any of us had ever encountered.

  In November 2013, I took my first solo trip after becoming NSA to Afghanistan. While I had visited Afghanistan as U.N. ambassador with the Security Council, this time I was there as President Obama’s right hand to meet with U.S. forces, visit military outposts across the country, hear our ambassador’s and commander’s unvarnished assessments, and meet with Afghan officials.

  Back home, the president would soon face critical decisions about the scope and scale of our post-2014 presence, the date after which the U.S. and NATO combat mission was set to end. Most urgently, we were also trying to obtain Karzai’s signature on a Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), which would govern the terms of America’s military role after 2014. Without the BSA, U.S. forces would not have adequate legal protections and could not continue eradicating foreign terrorists or training and assisting the Afghan Security Forces to fight the Taliban, which remained a serious threat to the Kabul government. Four billion dollars in annual international assistance to Afghanistan (from the U.S. and NATO partners) also depended on finalizing the BSA.

  After painstaking negotiations and repeated brinkmanship, Karzai had finally agreed with Kerry on the text of the BSA. The Loya Jirga, a traditional Afghan decision-making conference, had just overwhelmingly approved the deal. So we expected the document would soon be signed.

  My two-hour meeting with Karzai concluded with a small dinner at his residence. There, Karzai ruined what had been a relatively cordial discussion by suddenly insisting on new, capricious, and unachievable preconditions for signing the BSA. Worse, he broke into a typical but never tolerable rant about the alleged sins of the United States and the perfidy of U.S. forces.

  Karzai plainly hated the U.S., and increasingly many of us (myself included) reviled his vitriolic nationalism, incorrigibly corrupt governance, and pompous leadership style. Above all, we resented his frequent disparagement of American servicemen and -women, including those who had died on Afghan soil. That night, Karzai accused U.S. forces of committing a litany of crimes… busting into Afghan homes at night and terrorizing civilians for no reason… killing innocent Afghans indiscriminately… harboring a secret ambition to dismember the country.

  Despite U.S. and Afghan forces having fought the Taliban for over a dozen years to protect the Kabul government, Karzai even said he would happily accept a Taliban-led Afghan government, if that ensured a unified state. After several minutes of his bile, I couldn’t take any more. Calmly, I told Karzai that I found his ingratitude for the service of American forces totally unacceptable: Thousands of young Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice to enable Afghans to live in greater security and to build this fragile nation. American taxpayers have given Afghanistan tens of billions of dollars. Your denigration of our forces, the American people, and our leaders is deeply offensive. The Afghan people want us to stay. If you refuse to sign the BSA, you will find out what it is like for Afghans to have to fend entirely for themselves.

  Without a BSA, I warned, the U.S. and NATO will have no choice but to plan to withdraw all forces by the end of 2014. Karzai risked throwing his country’s security down the drain. Thankfully, thereafter, the dinner ended swiftly and civilly, but I left convinced that Karzai aimed to force a U.S. withdrawal. On one level, I was disgusted and dismayed by his behavior, but on another I felt satisfied that he deserved what he would get, if America withdrew. The problem was: the people of Afghanistan did not.

  Karzai ultimately refused to sign the BSA. It was only concluded after he left office and was replaced as president, in September 2014, by the far more sober, responsible, and gracious Ashraf Ghani.

  After a run-off and U.N. vote audit, Ghani was deemed the winner of a close and bitterly disputed election against his
rival Abdullah Abdullah. Questions over the legitimacy of Ghani’s victory and the real risk of the country dividing along ethnic lines meant that a compromise was needed, however difficult and unpalatable. John Kerry, along with NSC senior director Jeff Eggers, a steady, experienced Navy SEAL and counterterrorism expert who saw combat in Iraq, patiently devoted many long days to trying to broker a solution that avoided new elections (which were neither feasible nor affordable), while enabling a new government to be formed and the BSA to be signed. President Obama spent hours on the phone talking repeatedly to both Ghani and Abdullah, finally getting them to agree to form a unity government, in which Abdullah served as chief executive under Ghani’s presidency. It was a jury-rigged concept that neither liked but both reluctantly accepted.

  Back in Washington, I stayed in close touch with Eggers and Kerry—offering guidance and ideas on the way forward, ensuring that the president utilized the background and core messages they had provided, and obtaining time on the president’s schedule to make the series of calls to Ghani and Abdullah. Previously, during the negotiation over the BSA, my job had been to keep State and DOD on the same page, as both had critical interests at stake, and to backstop our negotiators as they wrangled with their Afghan counterparts.

  Throughout this period, we faced another enduring challenge: how to gain the release of Americans taken hostage in Afghanistan. Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl had been captured and held as a prisoner of war by the Haqqani faction of the Taliban for almost five years, after walking away from his outpost under murky circumstances. It is the American creed not to leave a soldier on the battlefield, and Bergdahl, whatever his motives and mental disposition, was an American serviceman and POW.

  After lengthy mediation through Qatar, in June 2014 we secured Bergdahl’s release in exchange for the transfer to Qatar of five Taliban detainees held at Guantánamo Bay. As we anticipated, the trade sparked immediate Republican-stoked controversy. They questioned whether Bergdahl was worthy of the effort, having been accused by fellow soldiers of desertion. They proclaimed that the price paid was too high, that we wrongly negotiated with terrorists, and suggested that the administration inappropriately skirted the requirement to give Congress thirty days advance notice of transfers from Guantánamo. The furor was further fueled by announcing Bergdahl’s release in a Rose Garden press event with the president flanked by Bergdahl’s parents.