The Back Channel
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CHAPTER 5: AGE OF TERROR: THE INVERSION OF FORCE AND DIPLOMACY
1. “CIA Beirut Station Chief Is Among the Dead,” Washington Post, December 25, 1988.
2. Email to Secretary Powell, March 24, 2004, “Note from Bill Burns: Libya, March 23.”
3. “Remarks to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” April 17, 2001.
4. Memo to Powell, February 15, 2002, “Moving to Tenet Implementation.”
5. Paper for Powell from Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and the Policy Planning Staff, August 30, 2001, “Strategies for Preserving U.S. Political Capital in the Middle East.”
6. 2002 Riyadh 06674, October 21, 2002, “Talks in Egypt and Jordan.”
7. Memo to Deputy Secretary Armitage, November 19, 2001, “Deputies Committee Meeting on Iraq.”
8. Interview with Richard Armitage, “Bush’s War,” Frontline, PBS, December 18, 2007.
9. 2003 Amman 00467, January 22, 2003, “Meetings in Bahrain and UAE, January 21–22.”
10. Memo to Powell, February 14, 2002, “Regional Concerns Regarding Regime Change in Iraq.”
11. Email to Powell, April 1, 2002, “Next Steps on Middle East.”
12. Memo to Powell, July 29, 2002, “Iraq: The Perfect Storm.”
13. Email to Powell, August 16, 2002, “Iraq and the President’s UNGA Speech.”
14. Memo to Powell, January 16, 2003, “Today’s Iraq PC.”
15. Memo to Powell, July 22, 2002, “Role of the External Iraqi Opposition.”
16. Email to Powell, July 11, 2003, “Rethinking Our Iraq Strategy.”
17. Email to Powell, March 22, 2003, “Middle East: Update, 3/22 (1500).”
18. Ibid.
19. Memo to Powell, June 11, 2002, “Principals Meeting on Middle East.”
20. Email to Powell, June 13, 2002, “Rice Meeting with Israelis, June 13.”
21. Ibid.
22. Memo to Powell, June 25, 2002, “President’s Speech: Short-Term Follow-Up.”
23. Quoted in Aaron David Miller, The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace (New York: Bantam, 2008), 352.
24. Quoted in Charles Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992), 513.
25. Memo to Powell, March 11, 2003, “Read-Out of Libya Meetings.”
26. Email to Powell, February 6, 2004, “Libya Talks, February 6.”
27. Memo to Secretary of State–Designate Rice, December 6, 2004, “Policy Paper for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.”
CHAPTER 6: PUTIN’S DISRUPTIONS: MANAGING GREAT POWER TRAINWRECKS
1. Memo for the Record, October 22, 2006, “A Birthday Dinner with Putin’s Politburo.”
2. 2006 Moscow 6759, June 26, 2006, “Your Visit to Moscow.”
3. Ibid.
4. 2006 Moscow 1925, February 28, 2006, “Lavrov’s Visit and Strategic Engagement with Russia.”
5. 2008 Moscow 886, April 1, 2008, “Your Visit to Sochi.”
6. Email to Secretary Rice, April 11, 2006, “Note for the Secretary from Bill Burns.”
7. 2006 Moscow 6759.
8. 2006 Moscow 1925.
9. 2006 Moscow 11939, October 25, 2006, “Your Visit to Moscow.”
10. Ibid.
11. Angela E. Stent, The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014), 147.
12. Email to Rice, February 16, 2007, “Thoughts on Munich and Russian Government Reshuffle.”
13. Email to Rice, January 31, 2007, “Thoughts on Lavrov Visit.”
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Email to Rice, February 16, 2007.
17. 2007 Moscow 2776, June 11, 2007, “June 9–10 Conversations with Putin and His Senior Advisors.”
18. 2007 Moscow 2588, June 1, 2007, “Your Meeting with Putin at G-8.”
19. Email to Rice, February 8, 2008, “Russia Strategy.”
20. Stent, The Limits of Partnership, 167.
21. 2008 Moscow 886.
22. Ibid.
CHAPTER 7: OBAMA’S LONG GAME: BETS, PIVOTS, AND RESETS IN A POST- PRIMACY WORLD
1. In 1982, Walter J. Stoessel, Jr., became the first active foreign service officer appointed deputy secretary of state. Lawrence Eagleburger (1989–92) and John Negroponte (2007–9) were both retired from the Foreign Service when they were appointed deputy secretary by George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush respectively.
2. Memo to Secretary Rice, August 27, 2008, “Indian Civil Nuclear Initiative.”
3. Memo to Secretary Clinton, March 20, 2009, “A New Partnership with India.”
4. The best account of the back-channel talks is Steve Coll, “The Back Channel,” New Yorker, March 2, 2009. The Pakistan discussions are also addressed in Memo to Clinton, June 12, 2009, “Seizing the Moment with India.”
5. Hillary Clinton, Hard Choices (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), 83–100.
6. Contemporaneous personal notes.
7. Memo to Clinton, February 13, 2009, “February 11–12 Meetings in Moscow.”
8. Ibid.
9. Email to Clinton, September 7, 2009, “Note for the Secretary: Missile Defense.”
10. Memo to Clinton, December 5, 2011, “Monday Update.”
11. Michael McFaul, From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), 254.
CHAPTER 8: THE ARAB SPRING: WHEN THE SHORT GAME INTERCEDES
1. Email to Secretary Clinton, February 23, 2011, “Note for the Secretary from Bill Burns: Tunis, February 23.”
2. Hillary Clinton, “Remarks with Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez,” January 25, 2011, and Joe Biden, PBS NewsHour, January 27, 2011.
3. Robert Gates, Duty (New York: Knopf, 2014), 504.
4. Email to Clinton, February 22, 2011, “Note for the Secretary from Bill Burns: Cairo, February 21–22.”
5. Ibid.
6. Email to Clinton, June 30, 2011, “Note for the Secretary from Bill Burns: Tunis and Cairo, June 27–30.”
7. Email to Clinton, January 12, 2012, “Note for the Secretary from Bill Burns: Egypt, January 10–12.”
8. “WikiLeaks Cables Reveal Personal Details on World Leaders,” Washington Post, November 28, 2010.
9. Muammar al-Qaddafi, radio address, March 17, 2011.
10. Email to Secretary Kerry, April 25, 2014, “Tripoli, April 23–24.”
11. Email to Clinton, February 17, 2010, “Note for the Secretary from Bill Burns: Meetings in Damascus, February 17.”
12. Ernesto Londono and Greg Miller, “CIA Begins Weapons Delivery to Syrian Rebels,” Washington Post, September 11, 2013.
CHAPTER 9: IRAN AND THE BOMB: THE SECRET TALKS
1. Memo to Secretary Rice, May 27, 2008, “Regaining the Strategic Initiative on Iran.”
2. Ibid.
3. Memo to Rice, July 19, 2008, “Meeting with Iranians, July 19.”
4. Memo to Secretary Clinton, January 24, 2009, “A New Strategy Toward Iran.”
5. Ibid.
6. “A Nowruz Message from President Obama,” March 19, 2009.
7. Philip Rucker, “Hillary Clinton Defends Her ‘Hard Choices’ at State Department,” Washington Post, May 14, 2014.
CHAPTER 10: PIVOTAL POWER: RESTORING AMERICA’S TOOL OF FIRST RESORT
1. Memo to Secretary of State–Designate Christopher, January 5, 1993, “Parting Thoughts: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Years Ahead.”
2. From a 1946 lecture at the National War College, quoted in Barton Gellman, Contending with Kennan: Toward a Philosophy of American Power (New York: Praeger, 1984), 126–27
.
3. “Remarks by President Trump and President Putin of the Russia Federation in Joint Press Conference,” Helsinki, Finland, July 16, 2018.
4. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, volume 1, chapter XIII (1835).
5. John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
6. Michael E. O’Hanlon, Beyond NATO: A New Security Architecture for Eastern Europe (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2017).
7. James Goldgeier and Elizabeth N. Saunders, “Good Foreign Policy Is Invisible,” ForeignAffairs.com, February 28, 2017.
8. Charles W. Freeman, Jr., The Diplomat’s Dictionary (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Peace Press, 1997), 84.
9. Charles Freeman, Lecture Series at Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, Brown University, 2017–18.
10. Memo to Christopher, January 5, 1993.
11. Ibid.
12. John Norris, “How to Balance Safety and Openness for America’s Diplomats,” Atlantic, November 4, 2013.
13. Memo to Christopher, January 5, 1993.
14. Quoted in Dan Morgan, Merchants of Grain: The Power and Profits of the Five Giant Companies at the Center of the World’s Food Supply (New York: Viking, 1979), 301.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WILLIAM J. BURNS is president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2014 after a thirty-three-year diplomatic career. He holds the highest rank in the Foreign Service, career ambassador, and is only the second serving career diplomat in history to become deputy secretary of state. Prior to his tenure as deputy secretary, Ambassador Burns served from 2008 to 2011 as undersecretary for political affairs. He was ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008, assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs from 2001 to 2005, and ambassador to Jordan from 1998 to 2001. Ambassador Burns earned a bachelor’s degree in history from La Salle University and master’s and doctoral degrees in international relations from Oxford University, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar. He and his wife, Lisa, have two daughters.
burnsbackchannel.com
To inquire about booking William J. Burns for a speaking engagement, please contact the Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau at speakers@penguinrandomhouse.com.
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