The World as It Is

by Ben Rhodes

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  WE FLEW TO POLAND and I shuddered a bit while they played “Taps” at the memorial for the Warsaw Ghetto. Part of my family had been Polish Jews. During my first trip to Poland in 2001, just a few months before 9/11, I’d come to Warsaw as a twenty-three-year-old backpacker and took a bus out to the town where they’d been from. Working off a guide book, I found a boarded-up synagogue and then a Jewish cemetery. Some of the headstones had been defaced with swastikas and excrement, along with the names of death camps. A few empty vodka bottles were smashed, suggesting it was the kind of place where far-right young men came to get drunk and make themselves feel empowered, the counterpoint to the story of human progress that Obama had just told in London.

  I was scheduled to break off the trip a day early the next morning. A year and a half after our wedding, I was going to meet Ann for our honeymoon—a few days in Vienna, Salzburg, and Prague. That night, I lay down in my room for the kind of fitful night where you never really feel like you’re asleep, but occasionally look at the clock and find that it has skipped forward by an hour or two. I got up around six and stuffed my remaining clothes into my bag. While the rest of the traveling staff slept, I wheeled my things out of the security bubble of the Secret Service–guarded floor, and out into the anonymous Warsaw street.

  The train station was a short walk away, and when I got there I was filled with dread that I would miss the train or get on the wrong one, as there was little English on the big board in front of me. Here I was, able to plan and execute a trip for the president of the United States, and yet I couldn’t trust myself to catch a train. When I finally did board the right train, I was so strung out I couldn’t close my eyes. I stared out at the green Polish countryside rushing by, at the tracts of blooming farmland, but my mind was still racing around. I fidgeted with my BlackBerry, worried that there was something I’d forgotten to do for Obama’s final day in Poland. When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed I was with people from work.

  I arrived in Vienna and took a taxi to a small, pleasant hotel room overlooking the Stephansplatz—the giant cathedral and square in the heart of the city. Thirteen years ago, I’d come here on my first long train ride in Europe as a student and met an ex-girlfriend in front of the cathedral. I had no cellphone or GPS maps in those days, so it felt like an achievement to find another human being in the middle of a foreign country based on a plan that had been made on the phone a few days earlier. I was back here now, completely drained, waiting for my wife, who was still a couple of hours out, having waited eighteen months for a honeymoon.

  For the first time since I went to work for the Obama campaign in 2007, Ann and I would have more than a week away from work or family. I sat on the bed and thought about where Obama was on his schedule in Warsaw. I felt a sense of emptiness and detachment from the events that had taken place over the last several months; it was as if another person had lived that experience—arguing with people in meetings, writing speeches whose every word would be scrutinized, delivering the views of the United States government in front of cameras. I looked out the window at the cathedral, with its soaring spires and perching gargoyles built by generations of workers who never saw the end result of their labors. I lay down on the bed, feeling like a character in a Cold War movie hiding out in a safe house, and finally drifted off to sleep.

  CHAPTER 13

  REACTION AND ACTION

  As we moved deeper into 2011, I became increasingly conscious of a divide between those issues where we were reacting to events and those where we were acting to shape them. This divide had always existed—the tension between what a president wants to get done and what the world forces him to respond to—but with the outbreak of the Arab Spring, the balance had shifted dramatically in the direction of reaction.

  That summer, a sense of crisis was escalating in Syria. It began with young people gathering in the streets, scrawling graffiti on the walls: THE PEOPLE WANT THE REGIME TO FALL. The forty-five-year-old dictator, Bashar al-Assad, responded with mass arrests and torture. We deployed the now familiar tools: public condemnation and targeted sanctions. But this was not Egypt—Syria was an adversary that could tune out the United States and count on the support of Iran and Russia, which were determined to prop Assad up. Over the summer, in response to attacks from the Syrian military, the protests turned violent, and members of the government and military started to defect. In July, the Free Syrian Army was formed to resist the Assad regime.

  Syria, in those days, was one more tableau on a sprawling canvas of crisis. We were fighting a war in Libya and trying to midwife a transition in Egypt. We were trapped in an awkward mix of criticism and support for a repressive government in Bahrain, and fighting al Qaeda in Yemen while the president there faced his own protest movement. Obama was locked in a political crisis at home, as congressional Republicans refused to lift the debt ceiling, prompting palpable fears that Congress could destroy the American economy. Two days before the money was scheduled to run out, Republicans agreed to lift the debt ceiling in exchange for deep spending cuts. The experience left us all feeling diminished—the accomplishments of the last two years were behind us, and now we were in a war of attrition with Republicans that we had not sought, and that no one could win.

  By August, Assad was moving beyond mass arrests to bombardments of neighborhoods. There was not yet any consideration of a military response by the United States. There was no Benghazi to be saved from an advancing army, no international coalition or United Nations mandate. The most immediate question was whether—or when—to call publicly for Assad to step down as the leader of Syria. We knew that he wasn’t going to heed our command, but we had issued similar calls regarding Mubarak and Gaddafi. There was a moral stance to be taken, and a political message to be sent that Assad was irredeemable in the eyes of the free world.

  Given my communications role, the Syria staffers on the NSC came to me and said they thought it was time to make the statement. Our diplomats thought it could lead to the closure of the embassy, but we were on that path anyway. Clinton supported it, and the Treasury Department had a stronger package of sanctions ready to go. Obama said he was open to doing so, provided that we acted in concert with our allies. A diplomatic strategy was prepared to maximize Assad’s isolation. I drafted a statement in Obama’s name, which included these sentences: “We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.” On the morning of August 18, I emailed Obama to make sure he was good with the text of the statement, and he replied yes. And so it was sent out to the world, with Cameron, Sarkozy, and Merkel issuing their own joint statement echoing Obama and saying Assad should “face the reality of the complete rejection of his regime by the Syrian people.”

  Looking back, while the focus has always been on whether we should have taken military action, I am haunted by the question of whether some more assertive diplomatic initiative could have avoided some of the violence to come, even if it didn’t require Assad’s immediate ouster. We were counting on the building pressure on Assad from within to be met with growing isolation from abroad in a way that would cause his regime to crumble. Meetings were held to plan for what would happen after he left power; openings pursued to test whether he would leave peacefully; evaluations done on which figures within his government could participate in a transition. Whereas U.S. government assessments had downplayed the potential for Mubarak to step down before February 2011, they now veered in the other direction, anticipating Assad’s ouster. Most analysts seemed to think his days were numbered, and so did I. Yet I detected a greater degree of skepticism from Obama, who cautioned us: “Syria could be a longer slog than we think.” He was, I think, turning over in his head the point he’d posed to me in the limo ride back from his speech on Libya: whether we had enough bandwidth to sh
ape the Arab Spring. Later, I would come to see he was also debating something else: whether it was shapable at all.

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  IN LATE AUGUST, WHILE Obama was on vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, I went up to New York City. I needed a quiet few days, a chance to get away by myself and visit old friends before flying out to California to meet Ann and her parents. Every time I arrive in the city, emerging from the escalators at Penn Station, I feel a release as soon as I disappear into the crowd. Some people relax in the country or on the beach; for me, it is a crowded subway car or a cramped Chinatown street. I walked for miles, emptying my head, looking at the Freedom Tower going up—sun beating off the glass, cranes bent in the sky. I checked my phone and noticed social media reports of Libyan rebels closing in on Tripoli. Sitting in Battery Park, I started getting emails from young staffers at the NSC and State—people who knew which social media accounts to follow. This is how the White House learned that Tripoli was about to fall: on Twitter.

  It had been five months since the first American bombs fell over Libya. Without putting a single soldier on the ground or suffering a single American casualty, we’d helped save thousands of lives, and now Gaddafi’s government was collapsing. It felt as though maybe, just maybe, the tide was turning against the strongmen of the Middle East. A friend of mine on the NSC sent me her favorite Gandhi quote: “In the end, tyrants fall. Think of it. Always.” It seemed possible to believe that.

  A few weeks later, Gaddafi was killed in his hometown of Sirte. A coalition drone struck his convoy; Gaddafi fled the vehicle and tried to hide in a drain pipe; a group of rebels dragged him out and killed him. It was an apt metaphor for the entire war: us in the air, Libyans on the ground. As Brennan told me, “a fitting end for one of the biggest rats of the twentieth century.”

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  THAT FALL ALSO SAW the end of Obama’s first-term push for Middle East peace. Every September, we would head up to New York for a few days at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), where the world descended for an intense period of diplomacy. Life at UNGA revolved around the Waldorf-Astoria, a grand old hotel on Park Avenue that seemed to revel in the fact that its best days were in the past—the hallway carpets slightly stained and faded; the walls filled with black-and-white photos of celebrities hanging out with one another in the 1950s, portraits of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. Every year around UNGA, the hotel would fill with diplomats, African and Middle Eastern delegations, journalists, spies, and a gigantic American contingent. The whole thing was tinged with nostalgia, including for another time in American foreign policy—the post–World War II years when the world came to us.

  The first night at UNGA, Obama and his top advisors always met in the penthouse suite at the Waldorf, which doubled as the residence for the American ambassador to the United Nations. Susan Rice had taken well to the job. She has a mind that can wrap itself around minutiae, and she had mastered the intricacies of the UN—how to navigate the various bureaucracies and procedures, how to craft a resolution, how to cajole votes. Her direct manner served her well in an environment that values strong personalities, and her relationship with Obama gave her that intangible asset that foreign governments value most: closeness to the president. We’d done some of our biggest business through Security Council resolutions on Iran sanctions and Libya, and she’d delivered. The position of UN ambassador is one of the stepping stones to secretary of state, and Susan was in a strong position if Obama was reelected.

  Susan had also stayed in close touch with me—reviewing drafts of speeches, popping in to see me when she was in the West Wing, greeting me with a hug and slap on the back. Alone among people of cabinet rank, she’d taken the same forward-leaning positions as Samantha and me on Egypt and Libya. If she couldn’t quite read what was going on at the White House, she’d give me a call. If she thought I said something stupid, she’d respond with a bemused “What you talkin’ about, Willis?” There was a sense that those of us who had gone through the campaign together were family and, implicitly, had one another’s backs.

  She had altered the stodgy feel of the penthouse by hanging large canvases of modern art, and as we sunk into well-worn chairs and couches, a waiter served drinks and hors d’oeuvres.

  Susan painted a grim picture on Middle East peace. We were working to secure a majority of votes on the Security Council against recognizing the Palestinians—that way, they would be less likely to force the issue to a vote. With everything else going on in the world, we had a play to run to ensure we won Gabon’s vote to block Palestinian statehood. I found the whole thing depressing—we weren’t doing anything other than averting even worse outcomes.

  This became clear in our meetings with foreign leaders, who all seemed to be playing roles in a drama that they knew would end in the same way: with the United States blocking the Palestinians at the United Nations, Israel isolated, the Palestinians frustrated. In a meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, Erdogan read back the words from Obama’s speech at the previous year’s UNGA with a thin smile—imploring everyone to work for the goal of being back at the UNGA the following year with a peace deal, one that could welcome Palestine to the General Assembly. Obama and Erdogan had forged a working relationship, albeit one that took up a lot of time. Erdogan liked to debate matters at length. With each passing year he grew more stubborn—as he consolidated power at home, he seemed less accustomed to dissent of any kind. Obama argued that it was untenable for the Palestinians to achieve statehood at the UN—it had to be negotiated with Israel. Look at South Sudan, he said—it took many years and a negotiated settlement for the world’s newest country to be born.

  And it took years of sanctions on the north, Erdogan shot back. Are you suggesting the same for Israel?

  After the meeting, Obama called me up to his suite to go over the speech he would give to the UNGA the next morning. We went through edits, and then he paused on the Middle East section, in which we were fully embracing Israel’s position. “I hate it when Erdogan has arguments to make,” he said.

  “The Sudan one was pretty good,” I said.

  “The thing is,” Obama said, “I really don’t think the Palestinians should go to the UN. I just can’t make Bibi want peace.”

  “Have you seen Jerry Maguire?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he answered.

  “Dealing with Netanyahu is like that,” I said. “Help me help you.”

  Obama laughed. It would become something we’d repeat over the years when Bibi inevitably rejected any effort at peace. I stayed up until two finishing the speech, toughening the language to make it stronger in support of Israel. I had no problem summoning the words to defend Israel in front of a group of delegates that included a lot of hypocrites and outright anti-Semites. The Palestinians did need to achieve statehood through a negotiation with Israel, but it was also obvious that Netanyahu wasn’t going to negotiate seriously.

  After the speech, I wandered back to the Waldorf for Obama’s meeting with Sarkozy, who had surprised us that morning by declaring his support for Palestinian recognition by the General Assembly. Obama was annoyed; we are not usually surprised like that by allies on such a sensitive matter. Sarkozy breezed into the conference room followed by his entourage, a short, elegantly dressed man in constant motion, and sat down next to Obama. The press came in and Sarkozy lavished praise on Obama. As soon as they were gone, Obama got serious. “Nicolas,” he said, “you’ve got to give us a heads-up on things.”

  Sarkozy cut him off. Barack, he said, you are absolutely right. Let me tell you why I did what I did. I despise this man Netanyahu. He humiliated you in the Oval Office. He lied to me. He went on and on—grabbing his lapels, pounding the table for emphasis.

  Obama smiled throughout, and tried to lighten the mood. “Nicolas,” he said, “I’ve already got my Nobel Prize. I’d be happy
to see you get yours.”

  Our last meeting of the day was with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. They met alone, with only one staffer for each side, so I stood waiting in the hallway outside the room. When the door opened, I saw Obama guiding Abbas by the elbow out of the room. An older man, slow and deliberate in his movements, he shook Obama’s hand and left to walk down the hall. He looked deflated, a man playing a role leading nowhere, buffeted by forces stronger than himself from all around: Israel, the United States, the Arab states. I had no way of knowing whether he truly wanted to make peace, but I knew that he was finding little more than rhetorical support from us.

  Obama signaled for me to come in and eat dinner with him: his usual plate of salmon, brown rice, and steamed broccoli. The simplicity of his meals always said something about his discipline—food was something that sustained his health and energy in this job, not something to be enjoyed.

  “How do you want me to read this meeting out?” I asked.

  “Here’s how you should read it out,” he said. “I’ve decided to be a one-term president. I’m going to support the Palestinian bid at the United Nations.”

  He was tweaking me—knowing that I was disappointed at where things had ended up, but also knowing that I had no better ideas. He was unable to push Israel to stop its settlement of Palestinian land, and despite Netanyahu’s intransigence, he would always side with Israel when push came to shove. It felt as though the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was something we had to manage, not solve—keep the two sides talking; persuade the Palestinians not to give up on the prospect of a state altogether; block the United Nations from piling on Israel. Reaction, not action.

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