No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

by Condoleezza Rice

  The next day I went to see Abbas and asked to see him in the little dining room adjacent to his office. I sketched out the details of Olmert’s proposal and told him how the prime minister wanted to proceed. Abbas started negotiating immediately. “I can’t tell four million Palestinians that only five thousand of them can go home,” he said.

  I demurred, saying that he should make his concerns known to the prime minister. “Are you ready to talk with him alone?” I asked. Abbas said that he would but could not appoint a trusted agent—he wanted to do this himself. I sensed that the internal politics of the Fatah party were such that he could not sidestep Abu Alaa, a power in his own right and sometimes a rival within the party. This is going to be a problem, I realized. But just get them together, and see what happens—one step at a time.

  I called the prime minister before I left and said that Abbas was ready to talk but wanted to do it himself. The prime minister said that he’d arrange a meeting. “What language will you use?” I asked.

  “English,” Olmert replied.

  “Remember that you speak it better than he does. He’ll be at a disadvantage,” I countered.

  “It isn’t my intention to put him at a disadvantage,” he replied. I think he really means that, I thought. “I’ll be in touch, Prime Minister,” I said. “And I’ll tell the President about our discussions.”

  Olmert ended by saying, “Remind him of our first meeting when I said that I wanted a deal.”

  When I returned to Washington, I had a very good idea of what we, the United States, needed to do. General Will Fraser had taken the task of Roadmap coordination. I would ask him to accelerate his efforts. General Jim Jones had assumed the role of special envoy, and I asked him to think about how to approach the IDF on security arrangements for the new Palestinian state. It occurred to me that some of the Israeli demands—for instance, for a permanent IDF presence inside the new Palestinian state to guard the Jordan Valley—might be accommodated by a “regional solution.” In other words, I could possibly try to convince the Jordanian king to place his troops alongside others, even NATO forces, on that border. I raised the idea of a NATO role with the Alliance’s Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, saying that he should do nothing and tell no one for the time being. The Israelis might be convinced to accept Jordan’s forces because they trusted them, and the Jordanians would certainly accept U.S. help. I was not at all confident that the Pentagon or NATO would want to play such a role, but if we were that close to a deal, it might be possible. Other concerns, such as control of air space or border security, might have technical solutions. Perhaps the United States could accelerate sharing of early-warning radar data with Israel—and help with the Iranian threat at the same time. I talked to Bob Gates and asked if the Joint Staff could help Jim Jones. Gates readily agreed, though there was some resistance in the Joint Staff to becoming deeply involved in what was seen as the “peace process.” My view was that without reliable security arrangements for Israel there would be no agreement. The new Palestinian state had to come into being in a way that enhanced rather than detracted from regional—and Israeli—security. The State Department couldn’t deliver those conditions, but the Pentagon could.

  I wanted to make sure that the key Arabs knew what was going on too, though I was pretty sure Abbas was briefing them. The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, was the king’s most trusted advisor. Adel’s grandfather had worked for the king’s grandfather; he was as close as possible to being a member of the royal family without actually being in the al-Saud bloodline. I told Adel what I’d heard from Olmert, presenting the ideas about Jerusalem as my own so as to shield the Israeli. He promised to share the information with the king only. I assumed he’d also tell Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister. That was fine. One good thing about the Saudis was that they didn’t leak.

  Before leaving the region, I had talked to the king of Jordan. I didn’t ask him for any specific commitments, but I knew that he would come along if and when a deal was imminent. In fact, no Arab was going to fully commit until we were on the cusp of an agreement; my job was to get Olmert and Abbas to that place and then ask the Arabs for help.

  The Egyptians were somewhat more complicated interlocutors because they do leak. Nonetheless, I took the foreign minister into my confidence, as well as Omar Suleiman, the chief of internal security and the closest person to Mubarak. The Egyptian president apparently told his advisors that we’d never succeed and I’d crash down in a heap. But of course he didn’t say that to my face. The truth was that Mubarak had never really forgiven me for my Cairo speech of June 2005, in which I’d used unprecedented language to call for political reform in Egypt and the region. I understood that, but I needed Egypt in order to conclude a deal.

  The President, Steve, and I sat in the Oval and reviewed the bidding. “It sounds like he’s serious—really serious,” the President said.

  “Yes, he is,” I replied, “and he knows he’s running out of time.” The rumor mill was churning away about Olmert. An investigation was under way into a variety of corruption allegations, including charges that he had diverted political contributions for personal use. The word “indictment” was being thrown around with some regularity. We agreed that we’d ignore the storm clouds and work with the prime minister until it was no longer possible to do so. And I would intensify my work with Abu Alaa and Tzipi to see if we could sync the two negotiating tracks—or at least get them closer. It was not the process that we’d envisioned at Annapolis, but it was the one we had—and it had a chance of succeeding.

  When we returned to Israel later in May for the sixtieth anniversary of its founding, the President addressed the Knesset. It was clear that Israelis believed they had no better friend than George W. Bush. His speech was emotional and showed great empathy for Israel’s continued sense of vulnerability.

  I had reviewed and approved the speech. Now, listening to it, I thought it should have done more. Somehow the President should have used the moment to challenge the Israelis to make tough decisions—the peace process wasn’t even mentioned. How did I let that happen? I wondered. I’m certain that there would have been no objection to language about Annapolis—but somehow it didn’t get done. It was a missed opportunity for diplomacy but a triumph for U.S.-Israeli friendship.

  Publicly challenging the Israelis to make a bold move might not have been the right call, though, given the need to bolster Olmert against the growing storm clouds of legal and political trouble. The President said later that watching the members of the Knesset sitting next to the prime minister reminded him of sharks circling their prey as they suspiciously eyed both him and one another. That was precisely the state of affairs. The prime minister’s days were numbered.

  …

  THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN issue was starting to take a lot of time. After years of criticism that we hadn’t been active enough, there were suddenly those—both in the press and in the expert community—who implied that we were wasting our time. My trips to the region were increasingly mocked as useless talking sessions with no discernible progress. Arshad Mohammed of Reuters and others pressed me endlessly on what we were trying to achieve. After meeting with Abu Alaa and Tzipi, I could only point obliquely to the “seriousness” of the parties. Indeed they were methodically going through the issues and coming to agreement on a few—some of consequence, including the need to negotiate on the basis of the 1967 line with agreed swaps (and, as Tzipi always added, taking into account the population realities on the ground, meaning the settlements). I could, of course, say even less about what Olmert and Abbas were doing. I swallowed my pride as pundits held forth about the empty Annapolis process. Keep your head in the game and your ego in check, I told myself. They don’t know what they are talking about.

  So Much Left to Do

  IN MY LAST YEAR, I was finding it hard to deliver on all of the promises that I’d made to make “one last visit” to other parts of the world. In all honesty, my fo
cus was on the Middle East peace process where I thought we might get a breakthrough; solidification of the progress in Iraq; and finding ways to reverse the growing negative trends in Afghanistan. I felt too that we had to make one last push in the Six-Party Talks and the P5+1 to stop the forward progress of the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs. I managed a quick stop in Iceland on May 30, a visit that I promised in exchange for the leadership’s agreement to our redeployment of four F-15 fighters and 1,200 servicemen and -women from the base at Keflavík to areas around the world where they were needed more. Don Rumsfeld had first raised the issue in 2001, noting correctly that there was no Soviet threat to confront in Icelandic airspace. The Icelanders had gone crazy, claiming that we were reneging on the 1951 U.S.–Republic of Iceland bilateral defense agreement. It took five years, but we finally worked out a deal that signaled our continuing commitment to our ally and permitted the sensible redeployment. My brief visit to the country, which is built on volcanic rock, was short but not without controversy. As I arrived, I learned that the Icelandic Parliament had passed a resolution condemning Guantánamo. At the press conference, I simply suggested that the Parliament do its homework and referred it to the assessment by the Belgian official who had called it a “model prison.” I was tired of nonsense like this and was perhaps less diplomatic as my time wound down.

  On the other hand, Latin America was not just a stop to fulfill a promise. I had really wanted to go back to the region and found the time in March for a two-day trip. My brief stop in Chile felt rushed, and I was sorry for that. The foreign minister, Alejandro Foxley, had been a terrific colleague, and I was glad that we found time to launch a program of educational exchanges between our countries in 2007, as well as a Chile-California partnership during my 2008 trip. Not long after becoming foreign minister, Alejandro had mentioned the desire to improve the English-language skills of Chileans so that they could pursue graduate education in the United States. We showed that bureaucracies could get things done rather quickly.

  I’m a firm believer in the importance of educational exchanges. That comes in part from my own experience at Stanford with foreign students who are exposed to the United States and our values. In fact, when I was provost at Stanford, we started a program called the New Democracy Fellows for students from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. I have encountered some of them now working at high levels of government and business, including Alexei Sitnikov, my PhD student, who regularly advises the Russian presidency. Clearly, not all experiences are positive. But overwhelmingly, foreign students come to appreciate Americans as people even if they don’t like our policies. And many of those young people go on to become leaders in their countries.

  Unfortunately, after September 11, 2001, we experienced a precipitous decline in the number of foreigners studying in the United States. The necessary tightening of our visa programs produced unintended consequences. Often the visa application process was so lengthy that a student missed the start of the school year. It became difficult for students to take up their studies, go home for vacation, and return in time for the new semester due to the need to apply for a visa each time. Those were real constraints. But there were problems of perception too, a feeling that the United States did not want foreign students and indeed feared them.

  The issue would come up in almost every conversation between the President and foreign leaders—and not just in the Middle East. I remember sitting with the prime minister of Singapore, who introduced his Cabinet members, each of whom had studied in the United States. “You are jeopardizing one of your greatest strengths,” he had said. “Our young people think you don’t want them in the United States, and they’re going to other places like England now.” The President was appalled to learn how dramatically student exchanges had been curtailed, and when I became secretary it was one of the issues he asked about most frequently: “How are we doing at getting students into the United States?” By 2007 I was able to tell him that we’d recovered from the post-9/11 slump and students again were studying in the United States in increasing numbers.

  Still, I felt that exchanges shouldn’t be a one-way street. Americans are notoriously monolingual and, frankly, a bit provincial. I’ve long been an advocate of study-abroad programs. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and I teamed up to spotlight the importance of student exchanges, holding the U.S. University Presidents Summit on International Education in 2006. One great strength of the American higher education system is its diversity, so we invited leaders from community colleges, liberal arts schools, and private and public research universities. Margaret would visit countries in South America, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Asia with several university presidents to further emphasize the importance of the issue.

  If the stop in Chile underscored our commitment to educational exchange, my trip to Brazil was a chance to showcase the administration’s—and particularly my—advocacy of minority rights in Latin America. It was very difficult to get the press to pay attention to issues beyond the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. I was determined to structure my trip to Brazil in a way that brought focus to the breadth of our efforts in Latin America. Our ambassador, Cliff Sobel, had the perfect idea: why not go to Salvador da Bahia, the cultural home of Afro-Brazilians?

  I’d visited Brazil for the first time in 1993 as a Chevron director. The company named oil tankers after members of the board of directors, and when my turn came, the christening ceremony was in Rio. In a grand ceremony, accompanied by five days of parties, I launched the Condoleezza Rice, a 136,000-ton supertanker. Anna Perez, who worked for Chevron (and would later work for me at the White House), had thoughtfully suggested renaming the ship when I became national security advisor, rightfully fearing that it might draw the attention of an enterprising terrorist. So the Condoleezza Rice is no more, but it was fun to have a supertanker bear my name for a while.

  During the trip, I was somewhat taken aback by the racial divide in Brazil. Brazilians had always protested that they had no race problem. Yet it seemed to me that the field hands were Africans (dark-skinned), the service personnel were mulatto (biracial), and the government officials were European/Portuguese. Brazil was the country most similar to the United States in its ethnic makeup, but it seemed to have experienced little of the civil rights revolution that had changed the face of American politics and society.

  Latin American leaders were comfortable talking to me about their struggles with racial equality and efforts at affirmative action. Indeed President Uribe of Colombia had called me the day that he announced the appointment of his first Afro-Colombian to a cabinet post. Perhaps leaders such as Uribe were comfortable because I was honest with them about America’s own struggles. In fact, as I often said, the U.S. State Department was no model of racial diversity. “I can go all day and not see another person who looks like me,” I told the director general in advocating for more aggressive minority hiring. There were of course legendary black Foreign Service officers—among them Ambassadors Ruth Davis, Edward Perkins, and Horace Dawson—but they were few and far between. I appointed the department’s first chief diversity officer, Barry L. Wells, and championed programs like the Pickering Fellows and the Rangel Fellows to interest minorities in Foreign Service careers. Still, even after the terms of consecutive black secretaries of state, the racial makeup of the diplomatic corps hardly “looks like America.” This is a tragedy for a country that is the model of multiethnic democracy. I know that Colin felt the same way.

  But as disappointing as the U.S. record is on this score, the rest of the world is still light-years behind. Thus, I took note when President Lula criticized his own country’s record on race relations, condemning discrimination in unambiguous terms in a November 2007 statement. Before departing Brasilia, I signed the U.S.-Brazil Joint Action Plan to Eliminate Racial Discrimination with the Afro-Brazilian minister Édson Santos and my counterpart, foreign minister Celso Amorim.

  Then I headed for Bahia, the heart of Afro-Braz
ilian culture and life. I loved it. We went to a church that had been built by African slaves. It had taken one hundred years because the men had constructed it on their one day off, Sunday. Simple yet elegant, the small sanctuary was as spiritual as any I had ever seen. Then we emerged into the square, lined by the citizens of Bahia. Yes, there were a few protesters who made the evening news. But my memories will always be of the black faces and outstretched hands—citizens happy to see a fellow daughter of the African diaspora.

  The night before, the governor had thrown a dinner for me quite unlike the stuffy, formal affairs to which I was accustomed. The food was great—a bit like my Louisiana grandmother’s Creole cooking—and the dancing, even better. Gilberto Gil, the best-known Afro-Brazilian jazz musician, entertained and then we all got up and danced, first in the room and then on the patio in the warm Brazilian night. I love Brazil and the Brazilians. I told myself, You’ll come back here when you can really have fun!

  Maliki the Leader