Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War

by Gates, Robert M

  When I arrived in Russia for the last time as secretary a day after the bombing in Libya started, I began in St. Petersburg, capital city of the Russian Empire from its founding on the Baltic Sea by Emperor Peter the Great in 1703 until the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. First stop was the Russian Naval Museum, to give a lecture to about 200 middle-grade Russian naval officers. The atmosphere was barely more welcoming than for my speech at the Russian General Staff Academy in October 2007; no applause when I was introduced and tepid applause when I finished. This time, though, the questions were not confrontational but curious. What did we see as the greatest threat? Was I streamlining the U.S. Defense Department? What role would the Navy play in U.S. security? What about joint operations and joint combat training with Russia? How about Russian naval officers attending U.S. military institutions? What was the most significant event for me as secretary? I left the session somewhat heartened by the prospect for future U.S.-Russian military exchanges and cooperation.

  I then motorcaded to the Peter and Paul Fortress, the original citadel of the city, where I had been invited to fire the “noon cannon,” set off daily since the days of Peter the Great. Following the ceremony, I visited the Peter and Paul Cathedral on the grounds, burial place of most Russian tsars. As someone who had studied Russian history all my adult life, seeing these sights was a pleasure that had been denied me for decades because of the Cold War and my CIA career.

  The next day, March 22, I flew to Moscow to meet with Defense Minister Serdyukov and President Medvedev. Putin was traveling. Libya was on everyone’s mind, especially in light of an unusual public difference of opinion between Putin and Medvedev. The day before, Putin had told some factory workers in central Russia that the UN resolution on Libya “reminds me of a medieval call for a crusade.” Medvedev had taken issue with that statement: “Under no circumstances is it acceptable to use expressions that essentially lead to a clash of civilizations—such as ‘crusade’ and so on.” He also defended his decision not to veto the Security Council resolution.

  The Russians later firmly believed they had been deceived on Libya. They had been persuaded to abstain at the UN on the grounds that the resolution provided for a humanitarian mission to prevent the slaughter of civilians. Yet as the list of bombing targets steadily grew, it became clear that very few targets were off-limits and that NATO was intent on getting rid of Qaddafi. Convinced they had been tricked, the Russians would subsequently block any such future resolutions, including against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

  Both Serdyukov and Medvedev expressed concern about growing civilian casualties in Libya as a result of our air strikes. I urged them not to believe Qaddafi’s claims about large-scale civilian deaths. We were taking every possible precaution to avoid such casualties and believed that very few Libyan civilians had been hurt or killed by our aircraft and missiles. I wanted the Russians to know that we believed Qaddafi was forcing civilians into buildings that were obvious targets and also that he was placing the bodies of people he had executed at the bombing sites. Medvedev said he was not happy to see NATO jets and missiles operating in Libya, but these actions were “the result of Qaddafi’s irresponsible behavior” and his “blunders.” He expressed concern that the conflict would go on indefinitely but was “not convinced things will calm down while Qaddafi is in power.” Medvedev then repeated what he had told Vice President Biden in Moscow just two weeks earlier: “Land operations in Libya may have to be considered.” He said Biden had told him that was impossible. Medvedev then worried aloud that “if Libya breaks up and al Qaeda takes root there, no one will benefit, including us, because the extremists will end up in the north Caucasus” part of Russia.

  Missile defense was the other main subject of discussion during my visit. Medvedev had made new proposals for NATO-Russian cooperation in this area at the NATO summit in Lisbon the preceding November, and he had followed up with a letter to Obama. Serdyukov began our discussion by noting that Medvedev’s letter had said it was “high time” for a breakthrough in this area. Among other things, Medvedev had proposed a “sectoral approach”—that is, Russian missile defense systems would protect Russia and “neighboring states,” thus “minimizing the negative impact of the U.S. system on Russia’s nuclear forces.” There should be a legally binding agreement assuring that U.S.-NATO missile defenses would not weaken or undermine Russia’s nuclear deterrent. I told Serdyukov we were interested in the proposals Medvedev made at Lisbon. Building on Serdyukov’s suggestion for operational data exchanges, I proposed that we establish two missile defense data centers, one in Russia and one in western Europe, where both Russian and NATO officers would be assigned. The centers could do collaborative planning, establish rules of engagement for missile defense, develop preplanned responses to various missile threat scenarios, and carry out joint exercises focused on countering common missile threats.

  I met with Medvedev that evening at his modernistic dacha outside Moscow. He insisted that Russia needed legal guarantees that missile defenses were not aimed at Russia. “Either we reach agreement or we increase our combat potential,” he said. I repeated what I had told Serdyukov about the impossibility of getting a legal agreement ratified by the Senate and that the Baltic states would never accept Russian responsibility for their security. I knew that the Russians’ concern over Obama’s new missile defense approach was focused on the danger posed by future improvements to our SM-3 missile systems. I told Medvedev I understood their concerns. He and I both knew the early phases were of no concern to Russia, but as the United States continued to develop more advanced capabilities, “over time we can persuade you that nothing we have in mind will jeopardize Russia’s nuclear or ballistic missile capabilities.”

  Medvedev said he was grateful that Obama was president, that “I can work with him, make deals, and respect each other when we disagree.” He acknowledged that the Iranian threat was real. As we parted, he wished me “success in this part of your life and the next one. May they both be interesting.”

  My program in Russia concluded with a dinner cruise that evening on the Moscow River, hosted by Serdyukov. It was an elegant affair, reciprocating a similar cruise I had hosted for him on the Potomac the previous year. On my last night in Russia as secretary of defense, as we glided by the Kremlin, I thought about the remarkable path I had followed during the forty-three years since I began work as a junior Soviet analyst at CIA two days before the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia.

  Had Putin allowed Medvedev to run for reelection as president in 2012, the prospects for the Russian people and for the U.S.-Russian relationship would be far brighter. I felt that Medvedev understood Russia’s deep internal problems—economic, demographic, and political, as well as the absence of the rule of law, among others—and had realistic ideas about how to deal with them, including the need to more closely align Russia with the West and to attract foreign investment. However, Putin’s lust for power led him to shoulder Medvedev aside and reclaim the presidency. I believe Putin is a man of Russia’s past, haunted by lost empire, lost glory, and lost power. Putin potentially can serve as president until 2024. As long as he remains in that office, I believe Russia’s internal problems will not be addressed. Russia’s neighbors will continue to be subject to bullying from Moscow, and while the tensions and threats of the Cold War period will not return, opportunities for Russian cooperation with the United States and Europe will be limited. It’s a pity. Russia is a great country too long burdened and held back by autocrats.

  I flew from Moscow to Egypt, a visit described earlier, and then on March 24 to Israel. The day before, there had been a terrorist attack on a bus in Jerusalem, leaving one dead and thirty-nine injured. Rocket attacks on Israeli towns from Gaza were continuing, and a little over a week before my visit the Israelis had seized a ship carrying fifty tons of rockets and missiles to Gaza, including missiles from Iran. Political unrest across the Middle East had not interrupted the security threats to Israel.

  I
had not been to Israel since July 2009, although Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited me in Washington every two or three months. As I said earlier, we had developed a close relationship and were very candid with each other. After a formal welcoming ceremony at the ministry in Tel Aviv (seeing the Stars and Stripes and the Star of David flying together always moved me), we went to Barak’s office to meet privately. I was there primarily to reassure the Israelis of American steadfastness in the midst of the political earthquake under way in the Middle East.

  I opened the conversation by expressing condolences over the terrorist attack, to which Barak simply replied, “We will respond shortly to what happened.”

  For once, we had more than Iran to discuss. He was interested in my meetings in Egypt, and the bombing of Libya, which had begun just a few days before. He was, naturally, very concerned about developments in the region. He told me Egypt was losing its grip on the Sinai peninsula and hoped it was only temporary because of the potential for large-scale smuggling of weapons into Gaza. I told him that both Tantawi and the prime minister in Cairo had reaffirmed to me their commitment to the Egyptian peace treaty with Israel and said that they would continue to work with the Israeli government. Speaking as a friend, I said now was the time for Israel not to hunker down but to act boldly in the region—to move on the peace process with the Palestinians, to reconcile with Turkey, and to help Jordan. I added that the good news about the turmoil in the region was that it was not about Israel or the United States—“No one is burning U.S. or Israeli flags, yet”—but about internal problems in the Arab countries, and we needed to make sure that that remained the focus. Barak said the best approach on Libya would be to keep hitting the military until they turned on Qaddafi. He hoped the regional turmoil would spread to Iran, where he said the mullahs were celebrating Mubarak’s fall and the increase in oil prices because of the broad unrest. We need to accelerate the sanctions, he continued, in order “to help this earthquake to reach Tehran.”

  Barak asked about Obama’s view of events in the region, and I told him that while some in the United States thought the president wasn’t tough enough in international affairs, I totally disagreed. Obama had sent 60,000 troops to Afghanistan and had now attacked Libya. He was aggressively pursuing al Qaeda. While he was willing to talk with adversaries such as Iran, I said, “when push comes to shove, he is willing to push back and protect the interests of the United States and our allies.”

  At a subsequent joint press conference, Barak said that the security relationship between Israel and the United States had never been stronger, and that cooperation between his ministry and the U.S. Department of Defense was unprecedented. On the unrest across the Middle East, he said that nothing like what was going on had been seen since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and it was a moving and inspiring phenomenon. He added, though, that “a pessimist in the Middle East is an optimist with experience.”

  The next morning we drove up the Israeli coast to Caesarea for a breakfast meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu. Caesarea was built by King Herod the Great a few years before the birth of Christ, and I would have liked to explore some of the ruins, but business left no time for pleasure. There were about twenty people at the breakfast, so both Netanyahu and I stuck pretty close to our script, although the prime minister understandably took a very tough line on the need to respond forcefully to the recent terrorist attacks. We talked about the continuing problem of Iran and, of course, about Libya and the political unrest across the region. The Israelis clearly were nervous about events, seeing considerable potential for trouble and little opportunity for outcomes that were in Israel’s interest. As I had with Barak, I urged Netanyahu not to go into a defensive crouch but to seize the moment with bold moves in the peace process. Bibi wasn’t buying.

  I ended my visit with an eighty-minute motorcade to Ramallah in the Palestinian West Bank to meet with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. It was the first time a U.S. secretary of defense had made such a trip. As I left Israeli-controlled territory, the motorcade rolled into a large fenced area and then, inside that, a sizable enclosure with high concrete walls. Everybody but me had to transfer to Palestinian armored vehicles for the drive to Ramallah. I suppose I was allowed to continue on in my own vehicle as a courtesy. Even so, my security team was pretty edgy at this point. When I met with Fayyad, he complained that although Palestinian security had never been better—we had trained them—there had been an increase in Israeli military incursions. Further, he said, violence by Israeli settlers—including “outright terrorism”—had been on the rise, but the Israeli authorities had “done nothing to rein it in.” I shared with Fayyad what I had told Netanyahu about using the regional turmoil to take bold steps for peace, adding that progress would require bold steps by the Palestinians as well. I thought my comments had about the same effect on Fayyad as they had on Netanyahu.

  Less than two weeks later, I made my last visits to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the UAE. After a particularly productive conversation in 2010, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had asked me to stop by and see him whenever I was in the region, “even if only for an hour.” I had done just that in early March, and now I was back again less than a month later. We met for nearly two hours at his palace in Riyadh, a huge white marble building. His office was about ten times the size of my Pentagon office and ornately decorated with dark wood and eight crystal chandeliers. In a meeting attended by many, we agreed that the bilateral military relationship was strong and affirmed that the $60 billion arms sale he and I had concluded was on track. The king said modernization of their eastern navy (in the Persian Gulf) was the next project.

  Pleasantries done, the king excused virtually everyone else, and the two of us, and the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel Al-Jubeir, who interpreted, privately turned to Egypt and Iran. The king, in his late eighties, was not in good health physically—he still enjoyed smoking cigarettes—but was very sharp mentally. I walked into the meeting knowing that he was very upset with the United States for what he saw as our abandonment of Mubarak and our failure to fully support other longtime friends and allies, such as Bahrain, facing similar unrest. In fact, there had been loose talk by some senior Saudis about fundamentally altering the relationship with the United States and developing closer relations with other big powers such as China and Russia.

  Reading from notes, Abdullah had a stark message for me and for the president:

  • Our two countries have had a strategic relationship for seventy years. I value it and support all facets.

  • The relationship is essential to the security of the world.

  • America’s reputation is at stake. Events in Egypt and in the early stages in Bahrain have affected America’s reputation in the world.

  • Some are comparing the treatment of Mubarak to the abandonment of the Shah.

  • I believe this is wrong, but you have to manage the perception.

  • You should look at how your friends view you.

  • Individuals in both the U.S. and Saudi governments are saying things that cast doubt on the relationship. We must not allow them to succeed. The relationship has been tested and not broken by temporary events.

  • Iran is the source of all problems and a danger that must be confronted.

  He concluded by saying that his message was intended to be supportive.

  While we favored democratic reform, I said, the United States had not been the cause of the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, or Bahrain. These were the protests of people who had been forced to live too long under autocratic governments. I said our only advice to the Egyptian government, and to the protesters, had been to avoid violence and to embrace peaceful reform. I had told the king of Bahrain that stability there required reform led by the royal family. And while Iran had not caused the protests, I said, it was exploiting them for its own purposes.

  After a long discussion of the unrest, the king again said the Gulf region’s leaders were bothered by the way the United
States had turned its back on Mubarak and that, in light of talk of putting him on trial, the United States should protect him. I was noncommittal.

  As we parted, Abdullah said he had “heard rumors I hope are not true—that you are leaving.” I said that I was leaving in a few months, to which the king replied, “Make it a few years.” I joked that President Obama insisted that I still looked healthy, but I had told him that was just on the outside. And then we parted company for the last time.

  MILITARY SUCCESSION

  One of the most significant responsibilities of the secretary of defense is recommending to the president officers to fill the highest positions in the military. It is a complicated business, involving not just picking the right person for each job but ensuring that the appointments are equitably distributed among the four services and dealing with the “daisy chain” of vacancies that cascade from each appointment. These senior personnel decisions usually are made months in advance because of the need to identify replacements and the uncertainty of every confirmation process.

  As I said earlier, in July 2009, the president told me that he wanted to talk to Hoss Cartwright about succeeding Mike Mullen in 2011 as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Obama, like Bush, had quickly come to admire Cartwright. The White House staff and the NSS also liked working with him. I let the chairman’s succession issue simmer for nearly a year. However, by early summer 2010 time was growing short for me to act, inasmuch as I thought I would be leaving by the end of the year. I thought there was zero chance Obama would nominate Petraeus as chairman. The White House didn’t trust him and was suspicious that he had political ambitions. An alternative candidate for chairman I had in mind was Army General Marty Dempsey, then leading the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command. Previously he had commanded a division in Baghdad during the bloody first year of the Iraq occupation, led the training of Iraqi security forces, and had served superbly as the deputy commander and then acting commander at Centcom. I wanted very much to ensure that the next chairman or vice chairman had commanded in Iraq or Afghanistan. For my own job, my short list included Hillary, Colin Powell, Panetta, and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.