No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

by Condoleezza Rice

  It was quite difficult to sleep that night at Zal’s residence. All night long helicopters skirted back and forth, patrolling the imperiled Green Zone. Earlier in the evening there had been mortar fire aimed at the house. Perhaps the rounds had been meant for me, or perhaps they were just random; haphazard gunshots had become common fare in Baghdad.

  The next morning I flew to northern Iraq to meet with Massoud Barzani, the president of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, and urged him to spend more time in Baghdad. He and President Talabani had an uneasy relationship; the two Kurdish leaders had once led rival factions, but, after signing a ceasefire agreement negotiated by David Welch in 1998, they had put aside their differences to confront Saddam Hussein. We needed both of those leaders to invest in a unified Iraq, and we particularly needed Barzani to crack down on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish militant group that launched cross-border attacks against Turkey.

  I tried to appeal to Barzani’s sense of pride in overthrowing Saddam and—frankly—to his vanity by saying that he was a founding father of the democratic Iraq. He always listened and always promised to cooperate with the leaders in Baghdad. He would even offer to come down from the mountains of Erbil to help govern. He rarely followed through, but he needed to feel respected lest he distance himself too far from Iraq’s central government. My time with him was necessary, if not wholly effective.

  After the meeting with Barzani, I went to the airport but was told that I shouldn’t board the plane. I worried that there might be some unfolding incident, but in a short while I learned that the problem was a mechanical one. Some debris on the runway had apparently been sucked up into the engine of the C-17 and rendered it inoperable. I was due to meet my colleagues in London for an important meeting of the P5+1 and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana. I watched the frantic scene as my staff, including Air Force General Will Fraser, my Joint Staff liaison, worked the phones to find another plane. It was always good to have a senior military officer around to get the Pentagon’s attention in circumstances like this.

  Two hours later, a backup military plane took me from Turkey to the United Kingdom. So that I’d make it on time, a London police helicopter met me at Heathrow and lifted me to the downtown meeting. The sights of the grand British capital at dusk were stunning—and soothing. For the first time since I’d gone to Iraq in 2005, I was grateful to be out of the country.

  …

  WHEN I ARRIVED in Washington, I went to see the President and told him what I’d encountered in Baghdad. He was troubled because, despite all of the difficulties we faced in Iraq, I’d always been able to step back, keep perspective, and maintain a modicum of optimism. The President, the Vice President, Steve, and I were alone—and I was as unvarnished in my assessment as I could possibly be.

  “They have a Bull Connor problem,” I said, referring to the segregationist that patrolled my native Birmingham. “In my neighborhood, when the police showed up, it wasn’t good news. That’s how it is for the Sunnis, and I’m not sure Maliki cares. But this isn’t just about him. It’s all of them: Hashimi, Mashhadani, Dulaimi, Barzani, Talabani. No one wants to act on behalf of Iraq—it’s all about each of them and their sectarian and personal agendas.”

  “How do you know that?” the President asked with a little anxiety in his voice.

  “They don’t even acknowledge the problem anymore,” I said. “The average Iraqi has no one to trust—not the government, not us. Life in Iraq isn’t even approaching normal, and it isn’t going to until the security situation improves.”

  Steve and the Vice President said nothing. The President and I were locked in a pretty intense exchange. He was so frustrated with the situation and with the Iraqis. I knew that he was seriously considering a surge of U.S. forces, and he would later tell Maliki that he was prepared to add troops if the Iraqis stepped up. I was tired, emotional, and on edge. I looked straight at him. “Mr. President, what we are doing is not working—really not working,” I said. “It’s failing.”

  “What would you do?” he asked. “How can we make this work?”

  I had launched an effort at State to look for answers. I thought about the situation in Iraq constantly. Still, I didn’t want to engage on “solutions” at this moment. “I don’t know,” I replied. “Let me go and think.” That was my moment of deepest despair about Iraq. I wasn’t sure that there was an answer to the President’s question. But that wasn’t an acceptable response. I was secretary of state and one of his closest advisors—and I was as responsible as anyone for the course we were on and the dilemma we faced.

  38

  AN EXPLOSION IN ASIA AND A CHALLENGE FOR U.S.-CHINA RELATIONS

  THE LIFE-AND-DEATH DECISIONS concerning Iraq were building to a fever pitch. Yet the rest of the world didn’t stop so that we could deal exclusively with that overwhelming challenge. North Korea had continued its insolent behavior, and it now appeared ready to raise the stakes with its nuclear program. In early October we were receiving reports that Pyongyang might be planning an underground nuclear test. The July missile incident had been bad enough, but exploding a nuclear device would be of another order of magnitude.

  On the morning of October 9 the North Koreans made good on their threat. The event had been preceded by a frantic phone call to President Bush from Hu Jintao. The Chinese had been given only a one-hour notice by Pyongyang. The President reminded Hu that North Korea’s action was a slap first and foremost at Beijing and asked what China was prepared to do given the embarrassment that the North Koreans had caused. Hu didn’t answer directly, but there was little doubt that, this time, Kim Jong-il had gone too far.

  Mike Hayden, the CIA director, called me at about ten o’clock on the night of October 8—already the ninth on the Korean peninsula—to say that the expected test had taken place. I immediately arranged a conference call of the other five ministers in the Six-Party Talks, reaching them in the wee hours of the morning. The Chinese foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing, said very little, but it was clear that we were united in the need to go to the United Nations. Within six days, reflecting the international community’s outrage over the incident, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1718, with Beijing casting a “yes” vote in a direct strike at its client in Pyongyang. Sanctions targeting military equipment and luxury goods (which the regime fancied) bolstered the resolution, this time under Chapter VII authority.

  Given the anger at Kim Jong-il, the resolution was not unexpected. But the real tests of our relationship with China were still to come: How far would Beijing go in pressuring the North? Could we count on the Chinese to do the right thing? Beijing understood the dangers of a nuclear North Korea but feared an unstable one even more. That tradeoff limited China’s willingness to pressure Pyongyang to the point that might bring the regime down. And the Chinese were aware too that Kim Jong-il’s collapse might hasten unification on the peninsula—totally on South Korea’s terms.

  The Bush administration’s relationship with China had begun in an inauspicious manner with the downing of the U.S. reconnaissance plane in April 2001. But over the next few years, the interaction had become more stable and productive. The task of managing China’s rise as an economic and political power was critical to the future of the international system. Shortly after arriving at State, I asked Bob Zoellick to take special responsibility for nurturing the U.S.-China interaction. On his first trip to Beijing, Bob gave an important speech, encouraging China to become a “responsible stakeholder” in international affairs. It took some time for the Chinese to find a translation for the phrase, but they liked what it meant when they finally figured it out: the United States would welcome, not fear, China’s rise and wanted Beijing to be an active partner, commensurate with its growing influence.

  That was easier said than done. The problem wasn’t that Beijing was too active. Rather, the Chinese exhibited a studied passivity that was detached in an almost Socratic way: they commented on issues but rarely worked
to resolve them. I got so tired of hearing their standard refrain—“China will always act in the interest of peace and prosperity”—that one day I finally stopped Li in mid-sentence. “No, you won’t,” I said. “You’ll act in your own interest.” He was a bit startled, but I felt better having said it even though the next time he returned to the same empty language. I once asked a Mandarin-speaking colleague if there was something about the language that made the Chinese always seem to be speaking in slogans. He assured me that there was not.

  Slowly but surely, though, we made progress in getting the Chinese actually to act in a useful manner. China reacted quickly after September 11, 2001, sharing information more fully than we’d expected about terrorists’ activities in Central Asia and in the ethnically troubled regions abutting their territory. Cooperation was delicate because, as with Chechnya in Russia, the terrorism issue was tangled up in an ethnic conflict—in this case with the Uighurs. Though some Uighurs were indeed extremists—we found a number of them fighting in Afghanistan—they were largely acting in opposition to Beijing’s heavy-handed repression of minorities.

  The Chinese also came to appreciate the President’s patient and even-handed treatment of issues concerning China’s economic growth and the escalating demands in Washington to “punish the Chinese” for trade protectionism and currency manipulation. The huge trade imbalances were always a source of significant tension with the Congress. Only months before the 2004 election, the President refused to accept a “dumping” petition (a claim that a foreign country is “dumping” goods into another country’s economy at a lower price than that charged at home to gain market share) for sanctions against Beijing. The Chinese could see that George Bush had gone the extra mile to protect the relationship and would not succumb to easy opportunities to blame China for the United States’ economic difficulties. Unfortunately, Beijing rarely reciprocated.

  The management of the economic relationship benefited from the arrival of Hank Paulson as secretary of the Treasury. At Goldman Sachs, Hank had been deeply involved in myriad matters concerning the Chinese economy and U.S.-China relations. He had excellent contacts across the Chinese government and was well regarded.

  Hank came to see me shortly after his appointment. As we lunched on the eighth floor of the State Department, he somewhat hesitantly floated an idea. He wanted to establish a U.S.-China Economic Dialogue that he would cochair with the Chinese vice premier. The dialogue would address issues of the environment and trade as well as general economic issues. I learned later that he’d proposed the notion to the President. “I’m not sure how Condi will react,” the President had told Hank. “She might think that you’re trying to be secretary of state for economics.” He shouldn’t have worried. I was confident that State would retain influence over any key decision, and I would ask the deputy secretary to accompany Hank whenever the Dialogue met. Anyway, it seemed to me that a separate channel for the thicket of economic issues was a good idea. I was never a fan of linkage politics and didn’t really believe that threatening the U.S-China economic relationship in retaliation for differences in the security field or on human rights would work. We needed to solve economic issues with China because of their centrality to the health of our own and the global economy. Still, when necessary I could reinforce Hank’s message, and he could reinforce mine that the totality of the relationship mattered even if there were no actual quid pro quos. That said, I was by no means off the hook for purely economic issues.

  So prevalent were these problems in my meetings in Beijing that, after yet another desultory conversation about China’s horrendous record on intellectual property rights (IPR), Hu had a surprise for me one day. “You’re always talking about IPR,” he said. “Let me introduce you to the woman who is in charge of making sure that piracy is prosecuted.” In walked Madame Wu Yi, a stoutly built woman standing no more than five feet tall. I had, in fact, met her before in my office as national security advisor. Back then we had laughed at both of us being included in Forbes’s “Most Powerful Women in the World” list. She was indeed formidable, a former petrochemical plant manager who had become the government’s dependable troubleshooter. Wu had, for instance, overseen the successful effort to contain the SARS pandemic in 2003. But the challenge she faced this time was on full display when on my way back to the hotel—no more than two miles from the Great Hall of the People—I saw many a street vendor selling pirated goods.

  My portfolio intersected a great deal, therefore, with the economic team. In addition to a seamless relationship with Hank, I enjoyed a close and easy interaction with the trade representatives, Robert Portman and later Susan Schwab, with Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, and with Sam Bodman at the Energy Department. As national security advisor, I had worked on economic issues, mostly concerning Russia, with Commerce Secretary Don Evans and Energy Secretary Spence Abraham. But as secretary, economic issues were a more regular part of my day, particularly trade problems.

  In this work, Susan and I became and remain great personal friends, sharing a love of shopping and performances at the Kennedy Center. We also enjoyed a laugh once in a while at how much we stood out in the red suits that we wore among the dark-suited men in the room. Susan had a tough job because trade policy is always as much about domestic politics as it is international relations. I tried to help as much as possible, carrying many a message about opening the beef market in Korea, the pork market in Russia, and the financial services sector in China. “What do you want me to say?” I’d ask her in a customary phone call or meeting before I traveled.

  “You know the script,” she’d answer. “There is nothing wrong with our—fill in the blank. Open your market!” She would then send me backup materials that made me more conversant about Russian claims of trichinosis in American pork or Korean concerns about mad cow disease in beef. I became more knowledgeable about such issues than I had ever expected—or wanted—to be.

  The truth is, I never felt any of the tension that is often reported between State’s “strategic” view of China and that of the President’s economic advisors. Perhaps there were strains at lower levels, but at the Cabinet level I don’t remember a single conflict concerning economic policy toward China—or, for that matter, Russia or Europe—that required the intervention of the President. My colleagues respected my overall leadership of key relationships, and I understood their special task in managing the challenges of an integrated global economy.

  The ease in our relationships was especially important given the increasing overlap of security and economic matters. As national security advisor, I’d added the treasury secretary to the regularly attending members of the National Security Council. We became very dependent on the Treasury to help pressure bad actors—utilizing the power of executive orders, Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, and other measures to blacklist individuals and financial institutions for supporting WMD proliferation, money laundering, and terrorism.

  Sitting in my cabin on a return trip from the Middle East, Stuart Levey, under secretary of the treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, spoke with my counselor, Phil Zelikow, and me about what more we could do with regard to Iran. He indicated we could take the use of these tools to a new level by pressing international financial institutions and corporations—even in the absence of formal sanctions—to limit their investments in and dealings with Iran.

  I’d been impressed with our ability to mobilize international financial action against North Korea without having to go to the United Nations. A briefing early in my tenure as secretary of state by David Asher, a senior advisor on East Asian affairs and the coordinator of our North Korea policy, had outlined, persuasively, the strengths of this approach. The process worked liked this: The Treasury would designate entities—front companies, for instance—that it identified as supporting terrorism or weapons proliferation or, in the case of Section 311 sanctions, as being “of primary money laundering concern.” Once “listed” by the Treasury, an entity would oft
en be denied access to the U.S. financial system, and any other institution—say a German bank—that conducted business with it would risk being similarly restricted from the U.S. market.

  The early results of such efforts had been dramatic. After the United States had designated the Macau-based Banco Delta Asia as an entity “of primary money laundering concern” for facilitating suspicious transactions on behalf of the North Korean regime, many financial institutions had reportedly severed their ties with Pyongyang. Few foreign banks were willing to risk losing access to the U.S. financial system simply to do business with the “Hermit Kingdom.”

  Iran had much deeper ties to foreign countries and companies and was better integrated into the international system. If we could keep international banks and corporations from doing business with Iranian entities, it would help shut them out of the international financial market. And since the euro, dollar, and yen were the currencies that mattered in the global economy, we could avoid having to get the Russians and Chinese on board.

  Although these measures were on occasion better in theory than in practice, they would nevertheless become one of our most important levers. We had to be careful not to use this economic tool for blatantly political purposes. Treasury was a vigilant guardian, making certain that the evidence gathered supported the contention that a suspicious entity was indeed supporting proliferation or terrorism.