Bob Zoellick, who’d been the U.S. trade representative (USTR), was my first choice for the job. He’d bring not only brilliance and intellect to our work but deep expertise in matters of economics and trade. As USTR Zoellick had held Cabinet rank and had some understandable qualms about becoming a “number two.” The President helped me assure Bob that he would be my alter ego and that he could make a unique contribution as the deputy secretary.
The President very much liked the idea of Zoellick, whom he knew and trusted, occupying this position. Some in the administration had raised John Bolton’s name, but I did not want to repeat Colin Powell’s experience. I wasn’t sure that I could fully trust John to follow my lead at State, and I didn’t want a clash later on should John be—or appear to be—insubordinate. Nonetheless, it seemed to me that he’d be a fine ambassador to the United Nations, where his skepticism about the organization was an asset with conservatives and, from my point of view, a corrective to the excessive multilateralism of our diplomats in New York.
I asked our ambassador to NATO, Nicholas Burns, to become under secretary of state for political affairs, the third-ranking position in the department and one traditionally held by a senior Foreign Service officer rather than a political appointee. Nick and I had known each other from the administration of George H. W. Bush, when he had served first as special assistant to Zoellick at the State Department and then as my deputy for Soviet affairs at the NSC. He hadn’t been an expert on the Soviet Union when I asked him to join me at the White House in 1990, but he was one of the brightest young people in the Foreign Service at the time. His career after that had risen meteorically. He’d served as the spokesman for Clinton-appointee Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, causing raised eyebrows among some of the political folk when he was nominated by President Bush to be NATO ambassador in 2001. But by the time he became “P,” as it is called, Nick had more than demonstrated his commitment to the President’s agenda. A polished, creative diplomat, Nick would become my “go-to guy” for the most difficult negotiating assignments.
The appointment of the under secretary for public diplomacy was closely watched as well, because there was strong sentiment in the foreign policy community and on the Hill that the United States was terrible at projecting its values and a positive image abroad. That stemmed in part from a somewhat rosy view of U.S. public diplomacy in the past. Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and Voice of America had been unqualified successes during the Cold War. The populations of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union had relied on them to break through the propaganda and lies of the governments that subjugated them.
The circumstances of the post–Cold War world were fundamentally different, though. Not only had media changed, replacing radio waves with satellite TV and the Internet, but the target of America’s outreach, the Muslim world, possessed little of the affection for the United States that was so deeply held by the anti-Communist populations of the Soviet bloc. The question “Why do they hate us?” was a complex one that tended to equate dislike of U.S. policies with hatred of the United States. A degree from an American university or college was the most revered credential in the world. And people lined up for blocks to get an entry visa to the United States. The problem was, our policies had rarely been popular with them, long before George W. Bush came to office. For many in the Arab world, the United States was associated with authoritarian regimes—not freedom, as in Eastern Europe. Their suspicions about the messenger overwhelmed the message.
I therefore had less ambitious goals for public diplomacy than some others in the foreign policy establishment had. It would be a huge task just to counter the propaganda of Arab satellite TV on a twenty-four-hour news cycle, to give more people—particularly young people—access to the United States and Americans, and to empower our diplomats abroad to engage the peoples of the places they served. The State Department’s public diplomacy apparatus needed reform to make it more nimble and central to the department’s mission abroad; public diplomacy shouldn’t be an afterthought.
Reflecting on it, I realized there was only one choice for that job with outsized public expectations: my friend from the White House Karen Hughes. Karen was the best and most creative communicator I’d met; she was close to the President; and, though she wasn’t a foreign policy expert, she’d been centrally involved in the execution of our policies from the beginning. After a lot of arm-twisting by everyone I could enlist, including the President, Karen agreed to take the job. In my last year, this critical role would be filled by Jim Glassman, who, after a distinguished career in journalism, editing, and publishing, had most recently served as the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors.
The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs would be the most important group within Karen’s organization. ECA, as it was called, oversaw most of the exchanges with foreign students and civil society activists. As a result it would be key in our efforts of outreach to the Muslim world and the Freedom Agenda. The Bureau had carried out its functions expertly but not very creatively. That had been the case since I had been an intern there in 1977. I asked a dynamo, Dina Powell, who had directed the Presidential Personnel Office in the White House, to become the ECA assistant secretary. An Egyptian American, fluent in Arabic and passionate about America’s promise, Dina would bring energy and new ideas to the bureau. She would launch several effective initiatives, including public-private partnerships and a program near to my own heart that made sports ambassadors of such athletes as the figure skater Michelle Kwan and baseball greats Cal Ripken Jr. and Ken Griffey Jr. She would become, in the course of my term, one of my closest and most trusted advisors.
The post of under secretary for economic, business, and agricultural affairs was also crucial, and I settled on Josette Sheeran. Josette had been Bob’s deputy when he was USTR, and she brought energy and expertise to the position. Her career path had been a bit unusual, including a stint as the managing editor of the conservative Washington Times.
Later, when Josette left to become head of the UN World Food Programme, Reuben Jeffery, who had worked with Jerry Bremer in Iraq, took on that crucial role in economic affairs. Reuben was a former Goldman Sachs partner who brought deep expertise in financial markets and the global economy. As national security advisor I had seen the increasing relevance of economic power to our international position. There was no doubt that I would spend a good deal of time as secretary of state on issues of trade and the economy. With both Josette and Reuben, State had a strong voice in matters that were increasingly of equal weight to military and political issues in our policy.
Henrietta Holsman Fore became under secretary for management. The Department of State is a huge operation with all the attendant problems of personnel and facilities. Henrietta had founded her own small business and had most recently overseen a dramatic remaking of the management structures of the U.S. Mint. Henrietta and her strong deputies Pat Kennedy and Rajkumar Chellaraja had the skills and the good common sense to make certain that the department was well run. There were administrative practices that needed attention as well. I was shocked, for example, to learn that the Department had over fifty differenct cell phone contracts as opposed to a consolidated account, which could cut costs significantly. Tim Warner, who had been my closest advisor when I was provost at Stanford, helped lead critical reform efforts that improved the management of the Department.
Finally, I retained Paula Dobriansky as under secretary for global affairs, a relatively new creation of the Clinton years, which oversaw multilateral matters from the environment to women’s issues to human trafficking to relations with UN agencies. Paula and I had known each other in the 1980s, when we were young East Europeanists participating in the events that would lead to the end of communism in Europe. Paula had distinguished herself earlier in carrying the thankless brief on climate change at a time when suspicions of the administration were at their height. Eventually we would add the word “democracy” to her title, making her the und
er secretary for democracy and global affairs, a fitting addition given her long commitment to a U.S. foreign policy based on values. In that work Paula was joined by Barry Lowenkron, with whom I had worked in the George H. W. Bush years. As assistant secretary for democracy, human rights, and labor, Barry oversaw key elements of the Freedom Agenda.
These appointments at the level of under secretary gave me a strong team of people who could lead on issues and make decisions so that not every question floated to the top for resolution. Yet I needed to maintain a direct link to the all-important assistant secretaries for the regions of the world. These were the people to whom I looked to represent us abroad and give coherence to U.S. policy. They helped set the substantive policy course, oversaw the embassies, maintained relations with foreign governments, and negotiated on behalf of the United States. The Pentagon had combatant commanders for each region; similarly, the assistant secretaries were my diplomatic commanders and the vital counterparts of and counterweights to the military commanders around the globe. They had to be fully empowered and respected to be able to access high-level officials in foreign capitals and to be seen as speaking for me and for the President. I insisted that they have strong deputies who could run the bureaus in Washington so that they could stay on the road as much as 50 percent of the time. The assistant secretaries had to be seen as the faces and heard as the voices of U.S. foreign policy in their regions.
At any given time, the mix of political and career appointments to those crucial positions has varied. Under George Shultz, for example, a little more than one-half of the regional assistant secretaries were political appointees, not Foreign Service officers. The figure was two-thirds under Madeleine Albright. But I wanted to make career appointments to those positions wherever possible. It would be a signal to the Foreign Service that I valued them and a message that I expected commitment to the President’s agenda in return. In the final analysis, five of the six regional assistant secretaries came from the career ranks.
The one noncareer appointment brought Jendayi Frazer to the department as assistant secretary for African affairs. Jendayi had left the White House to serve as ambassador to South Africa. When deciding who would succeed Connie Newman, the highly effective assistant secretary under Colin Powell who continued serving until August 2005, I never considered anyone else. Jendayi had been an architect of the President’s highly acclaimed Africa policies and was trusted and admired throughout the region.
When it came to the other appointments, two Foreign Service officers who’d already demonstrated their competence and dedication while serving on the NSC staff quickly emerged as the lead candidates. As special assistants to the President they’d been an integral part of his inner circle at the White House, and he knew and trusted them. They were equally well respected in the Foreign Service and in the capitals of the regions they would oversee.
I asked Daniel Fried, who’d been ambassador to Poland and then special assistant for European affairs at the NSC, to become assistant secretary for European affairs. Dan and I had a long history, going back to 1989, when he was a young desk officer for Poland in the State Department. We’d conspired to push administration policy faster toward recognition of the events that were leading to the collapse of Soviet power. When Dan couldn’t get the ultraconservative State Department to sign off on his position papers, he would “bootleg” them to me and I would use them to shape White House policy.
Dan would be on the front lines in repairing relations with the allies, but he was tough-minded and would do so sympathetically but without apology for all that had transpired. He was well respected as a first-rate diplomat in both the department and the capitals of Europe.
Tom Shannon had also served at the NSC as special assistant for Western Hemisphere affairs. As I’ve noted, the President and I thought it important to reenergize our policies in the neighborhood. He’d come to office hoping to make Latin America a key priority, but we hadn’t yet managed to exhibit the energy and creativity in that region that he wanted. Tom Shannon was a trusted aide and a renowned diplomat and could carry that brief. He’d also managed the Cuba issue very well. The President and I shared a deep disdain for Communist Cuba and had very little tolerance for calls to “reach out” to the bloody dictator, Fidel Castro, whom I remembered mostly for his shortsighted decision to place Soviet missiles aimed at the United States on his territory. But in Europe and in some foreign policy circles this unrelenting attitude toward Cuba was viewed with disapproval. Tom proved to be very capable in managing the issue, largely because he was himself deeply committed to a more democratic Latin America—a vision that wouldn’t be fully realized until the Cuban people were free. And he capably handled the thorny domestic politics of the issue as well.
I asked David Welch, then serving as U.S. ambassador to Egypt, to take up the critical post of assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs, overseeing the Middle East. David is one of the finest diplomats of his generation, a well-respected Arabist, and he had served in some of the toughest places. He’d been in Pakistan when our embassy was burned in 1979 and Syria during the Lebanese civil war. And as was the case with Dan Fried, I’d known David and worked closely with him during the George H. W. Bush administration.
David had been somewhat skeptical of the decision to invade Iraq, and I knew that. But he brought deep expertise to the issue, having negotiated the still-working ceasefire between the two major Iraqi-Kurdish factions in 1998. David was also cautious with regards to the democracy agenda in the Middle East. Our conversations convinced me that the differences were ones of tactics not strategy: a little tension on that score wouldn’t be a bad thing. And if we were to make progress on the Palestinian issue, David would have to be at the heart of it. All the major players respected him, and that would be key to success.
Dan, Tom, and David were self-evident picks. That wasn’t the case with the assistant secretary for East Asian affairs. The region presented numerous problems, everything from managing the rise of China to strengthening relations with Southeast Asia to dealing with North Korean proliferation. Asia had no mature regional institutions like NATO or the European Union, and relations between the major players were contentious, with many unresolved issues from World War II. How did one deal with a maturing democratic ally in Korea who harbored deep suspicions of our long-standing Japanese ally? What about Russia’s unresolved conflicts with Japan and Tokyo’s strained relations with China? What of the tensions between Seoul and Beijing? East Asia was a thicket of bad bilateral relations. The United States was struggling to maintain good relations with each of the powers and often found itself caught up in the hostility of a region that had not yet put World War II behind it.
East Asia was also the region with the most assertive Pentagon profile. The combatant commander for the Pacific was always something of a proconsul, a four-star admiral operating from his base in Hawaii and prone to pronouncements on matters that at best blurred the boundaries between diplomacy and military policy and at worst shattered them. And it didn’t matter who held the post; it seemed to be a permanent feature of the command. The department needed someone who would develop good relations with Pacific Command but stand toe-to-toe with the admiral when necessary.
Moreover, I needed someone who would think differently about East Asia. In the Foreign Service there were Koreanists and Sinologists and those who knew Japan (often referred to derisively as “agents of the Chrysanthemum throne”), but there were no real regionalists in the way that David knew the whole Middle East or Dan all of Europe. I turned to Christopher Hill, who was as close to a generalist as one will find in the Foreign Service, though most of his work had been in Europe. Returning from a successful posting as ambassador to South Korea, Chris had an understanding of the region yet none of the innate prejudices that so bedeviled long-standing specialists. He was a creative thinker and a tough, persistent diplomat who had helped Richard Holbrooke face down Slobodan Miloševič in Serbia.
The remainin
g bureau was a new and crucial one: South and Central Asia. I’ve mentioned the reaction that I had on September 15 at Camp David when we rolled out the map of Afghanistan. The immediate concern was to strip al Qaeda of its safe haven, but the strategic value of Afghanistan lay in its geography. There was a reason it had always been an object of the great powers’ attention in what had historically been known as the “Great Game.” Sitting above Pakistan and India to the South, Central Asian states to the north, and Iran to the west, a stable and democratic Afghanistan had the potential to transform the entire region. It would not happen quickly, but if it were ever to happen, the first step was to redefine the territorial confines of South Asia. That meant that the Central Asian states of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan had to be thought of as relating to South Asia, not Europe. The reason those states had been lodged in European Affairs in the State Department was the legacy of their past incorporation into the Soviet Union. I decided to break them out and combine them with the South Asian countries to create a new bureau that represented the current and future geopolitics of the region. There were some howls from traditionalists, including some in those countries who didn’t particularly like being lumped with backward Afghanistan instead of developed Europe. But Afghanistan would never grow economically and politically without a regional home that made sense.
No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington Page 37