I joined Baker on his September “tin cup” mission, covering nine countries in eleven days. He ultimately secured more than $50 billion in contributions, essentially defraying the entire cost of the U.S. military operation. Baker’s style was no-nonsense. He had a checklist of what he needed, and a rapidly growing U.S. military deployment in the Gulf to underline his credibility. In Jeddah, King Fahd dispensed with typical Arab indirection and told Baker the Saudis would provide whatever he wanted. The Kuwaiti amir, huddled with his family and government in Saudi exile, was just as receptive. The Turks immediately shut down the pipeline through which much of Iraqi oil exports flowed, and Baker arranged a substantial World Bank loan to help cushion the effects on Ankara. In Egypt, President Mubarak pledged to send Egyptian troops to join the coalition. While their military value was negligible, the symbolic power of Arab contingents alongside U.S. forces was considerable.
Baker also visited Damascus on that trip, beginning a series of encounters with the cunning and ruthless Hafez al-Assad, Syria’s president since 1971. Unsentimental about Saddam, a rival of many years from the same rough school of Arab leadership, Assad was impressed by the display of raw American power unfolding in the Gulf. Assad indicated a receptiveness to joining the coalition, and was clearly intrigued by Baker. He was even more intrigued by the prospect of sticking it to Saddam.
In Bonn, Kohl and Genscher, already in political debt to Bush and Baker for their support for German reunification, promised financial support. Baker joined Bush in Helsinki for another summit with Gorbachev. The Soviet leader, struggling increasingly with the challenge of holding the USSR together, saw the value of using his relationship with Bush to preserve a central diplomatic role despite the Soviet Union’s waning international prestige.
In November, I accompanied Baker on an even longer trip. This one covered twelve countries on three continents over eighteen days. Its principal aim was to shore up support for a decisive Security Council resolution to authorize the use of force if Saddam did not withdraw fully and unconditionally from Kuwait. Traveling on Baker’s aircraft, which had been Lyndon Johnson’s Air Force One, was always an intense experience.
Baker had a small private cabin up front, with a tiny desk and a couch on which he could barely stretch out. The rest of his senior staff sat in the adjacent cabin, which featured a horseshoe of couches around a large table, and the oversized chair that Johnson had often used when meeting with his aides. The pace was frenetic, with short sessions with Baker to review what had just transpired in the last stop and plan for the next one, and the rest of the flight spent making calls to Washington, preparing talking points for upcoming meetings, and drafting short reports for Baker to send to the president. Sleep was rare.
In the next cabin sat an overworked administrative team and diplomatic security detail, juggling all the constantly shifting logistics. At the back of the plane sat the State Department press corps—a particularly accomplished group, including Pulitzer Prize winners like Tom Friedman and The Washington Post’s David Hoffman. Baker and Margaret Tutwiler were masters at managing the press, respectful of their role and expertise. They knew that the relationship was a two-way street, and often tested ideas and formulas in off-the-record sessions on the plane. The department press corps, in turn, knew that Baker was a formidable figure at the heart of history in the making, and treated him with the same respect he showed them.
By the end of that grueling trip, Baker had secured substantial support for what became UN Security Council Resolution 678, passed on November 29, authorizing the use of “all necessary means” to force Saddam out of Kuwait if he did not withdraw by January 15, 1991. The Soviets joined the United States and ten other countries voting in favor of the resolution. The Chinese abstained, uneasy about the use of force and miffed that Baker had not visited Beijing. Cuba and Yemen voted against. Baker, who had spent several hours in Sanaa trying to woo Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, warned that this would be “the most expensive vote the Yemenis ever cast.” He wasn’t kidding. When Saleh declined to support the resolution, the State Department moved quickly to slash assistance to Yemen by 90 percent.
Saddam immediately rejected the UNSC ultimatum, but agreed to a meeting in early January in Geneva between Tariq Aziz and Baker, a last chance to end the crisis peacefully. I had never seen so much drama and anxiety surrounding a single meeting, and haven’t since. War was imminent, with more than half a million coalition troops now assembled near the Kuwaiti border, the most impressive and powerful international coalition since World War II.
There were worries about significant casualties, especially given the potential for use of chemical weapons by Saddam, who had deployed them in the past against the Iranians and his own Kurdish population. There were also fears that Saddam would choose the moment in Geneva to have Aziz offer a partial withdrawal while retaining control of the disputed oil fields along the border. That would be unacceptable under the terms of the Security Council resolutions, but it could undermine congressional support and throw a wrench into the coalition, likely causing the Soviets and others to press for a further pause on military action. The coalition we had worked so hard to build could easily unravel.
Baker’s preparations for the meeting were characteristically exhaustive. His talking points were the product of extensive consultation in Washington. I spent nearly the entire plane ride to Geneva working with Dennis on the final version. Baker never read such points verbatim, but given the gravity of the moment, he planned to stick closely to the script. He had virtually memorized his terse introductory remarks, which ended with him warning that he hoped Aziz understood that this was the “last, best chance for peace.” Even his handshake with Aziz across the table at the start of the meeting had been well thought through; he was determined not to offer the conventional diplomatic smile, and kept a grim expression for the cameras. Aziz, usually full of bravado, looked tense.
Baker was carrying a long letter from Bush to Saddam, which among other things made clear that the United States would reserve the right to use any weapons in its arsenal if the Iraqis resorted to chemical weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction. Baker summarized the contents of the letter, but Aziz refused to take it or read it, perhaps unsure of how Saddam would react if he brought such an ultimatum home. After the meeting ended, with no sign of flexibility from the Iraqis, Baker addressed the biggest assemblage of international media I had ever seen. “Regrettably,” he began, “in over six hours of talks, I heard nothing today that suggested to me any Iraqi flexibility whatsoever on complying with the UN Security Council resolutions.” War was coming.
On January 12, Congress voted to authorize the use of force. Thanks in large part to the international support that Bush and Baker had mobilized, Saddam’s stubborn brutality and intransigence, and polling showing the support of two out of three Americans, skeptical American legislators had come around. On January 16, just after the deadline set by the UN Security Council had expired, the United States launched a massive air attack on Baghdad. I watched it on television at home that evening with Lisa, still uncertain about where this would all lead, but confident in the U.S. military, and proud of all that Bush and Baker had achieved in a classic model of diplomatic coalition-building.
While an overwhelming display of U.S. technological superiority, the air campaign still had its anxious moments. Coalition forces made a high priority of eliminating Iraq’s Scud missile capability, amid fears that Saddam would launch warheads loaded with chemical weapons. Inevitably, some Iraqi missiles struck Israel, which Saddam wanted desperately to bait into retaliation, thus expanding the conflict into an Arab-Israeli war and threatening Arab support for the coalition. Bush and Baker had worked closely with Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir to defend against Scud attacks, and to avoid walking into the trap that Saddam was trying to set. Larry Eagleburger made several trips to Israel to urge restraint. I accompanied him on o
ne of those missions and admired the gruff ease with which he connected with Shamir and other senior Israelis—and watched with amusement when he removed his gas mask during missile raid alarms to take alternating puffs from his cigarette and asthma inhaler.
Showing political courage, Shamir did not respond to the missile attacks, trusting that the Americans would quickly crush the Iraqi military. The subsequent ground operation in late February lasted barely one hundred hours. Saddam’s forces were routed, expelled from Kuwait, and fleeing headlong back into Iraq when President Bush ended hostilities. Bush’s decision, unanimously supported by his chief advisors, reflected remarkable discipline. It was certainly tempting to continue to pummel the Iraqi military, chase them all the way to Baghdad, and perhaps bring down Saddam’s regime. Bush and Baker knew, however, that the coalition mandate, codified by the UN Security Council, was to push the Iraqis out of Kuwait and restore the legitimate government there. Reaching beyond that goal ran the risk of disintegrating the coalition, with all the collateral damage that might do to shaping post–Cold War order. As Baker put it to a few of us in a conversation in his office after he returned from the White House on February 27, the last day of the ground operation, “Sometimes the most important test of leadership is not to do something, even when it looks really damn easy. Overreaching is what gets people in trouble.”
Despite the focus on the immediate military and diplomatic priorities, we had tried to help Baker think ahead about the long-term opportunities and risks that would undoubtedly emerge after Saddam was forced to withdraw from Kuwait. On the Gulf itself, we argued in a November 1990 paper that a freestanding balance of power among Iraq, Iran, and the Gulf Cooperation Council states was implausible after the crisis.10 We’d have to contain Saddam, and continue to provide support to the Saudis and their Gulf Arab partners. A little too hopefully, we suggested that “this crisis may increase the opportunity to improve U.S.-Iranian relations.” In another piece, we highlighted the wider U.S. regional stake “in quietly encouraging our friends to recognize that broader political participation and greater economic openness are important if the Arab world is to share in the progress sweeping other parts of the world.” We proposed an Arab regional development bank as one way to stimulate change. And we laid special emphasis on the potential for renewing Arab-Israeli negotiations, with Saddam’s brand of radical Arab nationalism discredited and our own regional and global influence virtually unchallenged. Though wary of all the pitfalls, Baker was intrigued by what might be possible on that front.
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ON THE WALL outside his office in Houston, former secretary Baker keeps several rows of framed newspaper cartoons. They depict, with varying degrees of cynicism, his relentless pursuit of a breakthrough on Middle East peace following the Gulf War, over nine trips to the region from March to October 1991—a reminder of how many people doubted that he could succeed, and of how improbable the whole effort seemed.
Faced with the monumental demands of dealing with the Soviet Union and Europe at the end of the Cold War, Baker avoided getting drawn into Arab-Israeli issues. In the Middle East, he saw few opportunities and lots of headaches. He had little patience for the endless arguments about peace process theology. His early experience with Prime Minister Shamir, a stubborn Israeli nationalist deeply suspicious of anything that might weaken Israel’s grip on the West Bank and Gaza, had been unhappy. In May 1989, Baker had told the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in Washington that “now is the time to lay aside, once and for all, the unrealistic vision of a greater Israel.” Shamir was not amused. When Shamir’s protégé, then–deputy foreign minister Bibi Netanyahu, accused the administration of “lies and distortions,” it was Baker’s turn to be unamused. He banned Netanyahu from the State Department for the next eighteen months.
The Arabs did not do much to endear themselves to Baker, either. The U.S. dialogue with the PLO opened at the end of the Reagan administration had been stilted and unproductive. When a radical Palestinian faction staged an unsuccessful attack along the Israeli coast near Tel Aviv in May 1990, Baker was irate at Arafat’s refusal to condemn the raid, or even distance himself from the Palestinian group that was responsible. Shortly thereafter, Bush and Baker suspended the dialogue indefinitely. Baker told my colleague Aaron Miller, “If I had another life, I’d want to be a Middle East specialist just like you, because it would mean guaranteed permanent employment.” Beneath the sarcasm, Baker’s lack of interest in getting dragged into interminable problems was unambiguous. He hated being “diddled,” and the Middle East seemed overrun with diddlers.
After the Gulf War in the spring of 1991, however, Baker saw an opening. The defeat of Saddam Hussein boosted Arab moderates. Mubarak felt more secure. The Saudis and the Gulf Arabs owed the Bush administration their survival. Assad was sobered by the steep decline of his Soviet patrons, and impressed by American military and diplomatic prowess. A connoisseur of power, he understood that the ground was shifting in the region. King Hussein of Jordan was anxious to get back in good graces with Bush and Baker after staying aloof from the Desert Storm coalition. Arafat’s sympathy for Saddam left him in similarly difficult circumstances, cut off from Arab financial support and worried that he was losing touch with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who were engaged in a fitful uprising against Israeli occupation. His leverage was decreasing too.
Yitzhak Shamir was uneasy about the outcome of the war. On the one hand, Saddam’s ability to threaten Israel had been dealt a massive blow. On the other, however, Shamir was anxious about where newfound ties with key Arab states might take the U.S. administration. Gorbachev was increasingly consumed with the collapsing Soviet Union, and had little alternative to cooperating with Washington on the Middle East, so long as Soviet pride of place was preserved. All of this added up to a moment of diplomatic opportunity that was exceedingly rare in the Middle East. As Dennis Ross argued to Baker, “We’ve just seen an earthquake. We have to move before the earth resettles, because it will, and it never takes long.”
There was also an element of pride and competitiveness in Baker’s thinking. Crucial as his role had been in constructing the Desert Storm coalition, the war was naturally a moment for presidential leadership. President Bush was center stage, the full might of the American military beside him. Now Baker had before him a chance to win the peace, to show what American diplomacy could accomplish in the wake of sweeping military successes. For the consummate problem-solver, what bigger challenge was there than Arab-Israeli peace?
Baker was not especially interested in the arcane details of Arab-Israeli issues, or the history and culture of the region. He had an enormously retentive mind for what he needed to know to navigate a negotiation and bridge differences, and a gift for managing complicated personalities. He lowballed public expectations, always convinced that it was better to underpromise and overdeliver. His refrain to those of us immersed in his peacemaking effort was that we had to “crawl before we walk, and walk before we run.” Baker’s near-term goal was not to secure a comprehensive peace agreement, but rather to use the leverage that the United States had, before it evaporated, and set in motion a process that would for the first time bring the Israelis and all the Arab parties into direct negotiations with one another, within a framework that might sustain the process and perhaps even eventually produce substantive accords.
He had in mind a two-track approach, tilted more to the Israeli insistence on separate bilateral talks with each of their Arab adversaries than the historic Arab argument for an international conference that could impose binding outcomes on the parties. In a nod to Arab and international opinion, the process would start with a meeting of all the parties, which would simply launch talks rather than prescribe their end states. Then there would be a set of individual negotiations: Syrian-Israeli, Lebanese-Israeli, and talks between Israel and a delegation of Jordanians and Palestinia
ns not formally connected to the PLO. The conference would launch a second track, engaging all the parties as well as key global players on wider regional challenges like water, environment, and economic development. Consistent with discussions with Gorbachev in the run-up to the war, the Soviets would nominally co-sponsor the initial conference and the ensuing process.
Given his earlier frustrations with Shamir, Baker realized that the key was to create a structure so attuned to Israeli concerns that the prime minister couldn’t back out. Baker had to persuade the Syrians to temper their animosity toward Israel, and cajole the Palestinians into swallowing hard and accepting conditions for their participation that they resented deeply.
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