by Kim Ghattas
Both Obama and Clinton were also keen to project a united image to the world and avoid a repeat of the public sparring that had so marred the Bush administration. Powell was always watching his back while Condoleezza Rice and the defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld contradicted each other in public. The infighting further tarnished America’s reputation and credibility.
So there were no retractions, no immediate public readjustment of the position that Hillary had stated so forcefully. Obama only reinforced her words when he next spoke about settlements, because deep down he believed it was time for Washington to show tough love toward Israel. The new standard stayed out there, taking on a life of its own, and crucially it provided a convenient cover for the two key protagonists in the drama. Abbas was the most moderate Palestinian leader Israel had ever had to deal with but he always worried he would be branded a traitor to the cause and didn’t want his legacy to include the sin of signing away any bit of Palestinian land, even for peace. Bibi was risk averse as well, unable to accept that a Palestinian state could be created under his watch.
With an Israeli and a Palestinian leader who didn’t want to make peace anyway, it’s hard to tell whether a different approach from Washington would have produced a different outcome in the thankless, decades-long task of Mideast peacemaking, but the Obama administration’s Middle East peace efforts would not recover from this false start. For months the administration tried to adjust the trajectory it was on, but even Hillary’s statement in Jerusalem about Bibi’s unprecedented offer wasn’t enough to unblock the situation. When Abbas and Bibi finally agreed to sit down in the same room at the end of 2010, their positions were so far apart that the negotiations faltered within days.
Throughout 2009, Clinton and Obama were also learning to work together. All year, she had labored to gain the trust of the West Wing. Clinton wanted to erase the legacy of the bitter campaign by showing deference to the president and avoiding all impressions that she had her own agenda or was pushing her own policies onto the table. She kept her head down in Washington, developing her vision for her foreign policy as secretary of state, learning the details of the issues and the workings of the Building. In meetings at the White House, she was eager to sound supportive of the president, acting like a participant and not a leader.
Clinton’s counterparts around the world were also impressed by the loyalty she showed her former rival. She had more experience and she was older than Obama, but there was never a hint of bitterness or any attempt to sound more important than the president. The seamless political reconciliation was unfathomable in many countries.
For a while, the subject of her failed bid for the presidency would still come up in town halls in world capitals. Hillary congratulated a woman who had just won the presidency of a leading NGO for women’s rights in Mumbai and laughed heartily, telling her, “At least you won!”
It was hard to discern how much of the laughter was real and what residual bitterness still lingered. But Hillary also believed in what was meant to be: her presidency in 2009 was not. In public, on the world stage, Hillary was shining, reveling in the attention, as she worked to restore not only America’s image but also her own, with careful stagecraft by her aides like Philippe. They laid the ground for her slow emergence from the shadows at home, and by the time she had gone to Pakistan in October, Hillary had found her footing and her voice.
Obama, meanwhile, was discovering that the world did not respond to his soaring speeches with immediate cooperation, that if other countries had stood against America over the last few years, it wasn’t just because George W. Bush had been president but also because America was America. Clinton was not a fan of Obama’s lofty addresses, and he in turn often didn’t like her bluntness, but with Obama focused on the economy and the longer-term goal of reelection, Clinton’s more pragmatic, deal-making approach to foreign policy came to the fore. Clinton was focused on diplomacy and development but never forgot that America’s power was also military. She had allied herself with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and together they argued for a large surge of troops in Afghanistan. She pushed for tougher sanctions on Iran. She had spent the first year being a good soldier and a good listener, learning her brief and gaining the trust of the president and his aides. She had been mostly a participant. She would never become part of Obama’s very tight inner circle; there was no chumminess. But now she was ready to lead and speak more forcefully.
By the end of the year, Obama and Clinton were easing into their alliance, and they bonded together against the chaotic rise of the world’s emerging powers at a meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009. More than one hundred world leaders had come together to negotiate a new agreement on climate change at the Bella conference center, usually the stage for Copenhagen’s Fashion Week every season. The summit was the most disorganized gathering Hillary had attended since her eighth-grade student council.17 Chinese president Wen Jiabao kept deferring a meeting with Obama, claiming he wasn’t ready, while he was in fact secretly conferring with the leaders of Brazil, India, and South Africa. Behind the scenes, Beijing was trying to block all efforts to impose standards for measuring, reporting, and verifying progress on carbon reduction. The emerging powers didn’t understand why they were being asked to curb their carbon emissions at the risk of slowing their economic growth when climate change was the fault of rich nations that had spent the last few decades polluting the air and the world. (For years, the United States had flouted international agreements on climate change to protect its own economy.)
Obama and Clinton decided to crash the secret meeting. They pushed aside a Chinese protocol officer guarding the door of the Chinese delegation room and started shaking hands, smiling like candidates on a campaign trail, while everyone ignored the naked dummies left over from a fashion exhibit that were scattered around the room. With Obama doing most of the talking and Clinton sliding him pieces of paper, they negotiated with the developing world. Clinton had laid the groundwork two days earlier, and Obama closed the deal. They were developing a natural pas de deux, but they still mostly stayed out of each other’s spotlight.
PART II
“You have come to visit our country, sir, at a season of great commercial depression,” said the major.
“At an alarming crisis,” said the colonel.
“At a period of unprecedented stagnation,” said Mr Jefferson Brick.
“I am sorry to hear that,” returned Martin. “It’s not likely to last, I hope?”
Martin knew nothing about America, or he would have known perfectly well that if its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always IS depressed, and always IS stagnated, and always IS at an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body they are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists at any hour of the day or night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable globe.
—Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, 1844
7
CAMELS ARE UGLY
It was Valentine’s Day again, exactly a year after Clinton’s maiden voyage to Asia, and we were going on the road once more. Snowmageddon had struck the U.S. East Coast, complicating everybody’s preparations for the trip. The advance team from the Line and from Diplomatic Security had to drive six hours south to find an airport that was operating despite the snow. Embassies in Washington were shut, and the State Department employees who looked after visas for outgoing delegations—including the media—were struggling to get stamps into our passports. To make matters worse, there were no cookies on the plane.
But at the end of the journey, a king awaited us.
We left Washington wrapped in our coats, sweaters, and earmuffs and proceeded to take off a layer at each stop of our journey. SAM had to refuel at the Irish airport of Shannon, the westernmost part of Europe and the first bit of dry land after crossing the Atlantic. Airport officials regaled us with stories about their other VIP visitors: Ahmet Davutoğlu, the Turki
sh foreign minister, was a frequent visitor. We all ordered a drink to help us sleep on the next seven-hour flight. After a quick stop in Qatar, we stepped into the heat at the royal terminal of the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh.
* * *
Hillary thought of her Bubble as a caravan going from place to place, which made her think of an old proverb: sometimes the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on. She called it a movable adventure. The caravan and the barking dogs with its imagery of a long majestic convoy of vehicles and camels snaking through the desert means one shouldn’t pay attention to petty criticism. Hillary had long ago developed a thick skin. She moved on quickly and didn’t take anything too personally, though her staff remained overprotective of her, even when she was literally in a caravan. On this occasion, she felt like was she was on a rock band tour.
The Saudi king had sent his personal bus to pick up the secretary and drive her to his private desert retreat in Rawdat Khuraim. It stood outside the VIP terminal at the head of the motorcade of heavy beige and black SUVs. Clinton’s limousine was there too, just in case, but the foreign minister Saud al-Faisal escorted her onto the bus, Fred stepping in right behind her. Tea and plates of nuts and dates streamed out of the small kitchen at the back of the bus, behind the two thronelike chairs where the elderly Saudi official and Clinton sat facing each other. It was highly unusual for Diplomatic Security to agree for Clinton to travel in any vehicle other than an armored American embassy limousine. Huma’s eyebrows had arched to the roof when she was told by the advance line officer in Riyadh that the king was sending a bus to pick up her boss. She asked for multiple pictures of the inside of the vehicle and checked with Hillary. Oh, come on, Hillary had said, Saud al-Faisal has asked for this. I’m going to do it. DS finally acquiesced. Both Clinton and the Saudis wanted this visit to be perfect. There was no room for more upsets: Obama’s last meeting with King Abdullah had not gone well.
* * *
Much has been written about the chummy ties between the royal family and the Bush administration, but the king had greeted Obama’s election with surprising relief.
“Thank God for bringing Obama to the presidency,” the king had told visiting American officials in the following months.18 He said it had created great hope in the Muslim world. America and the world needed such a president. He had only one request—that Obama restore America’s credibility around the globe. The two men had first met in London in April; Obama had then stopped in Riyadh in early June 2009 on his way to Cairo for his speech to the Muslim world.
The Riyadh meeting with the king had been a last-minute addition to Obama’s itinerary, hastily arranged and badly prepared. Obama was already frustrated with Bibi’s lack of flexibility on the question of settlements. He and Clinton had just issued their forceful calls for a stop to Israeli settlement construction, and Bibi’s recalcitrance was instantly obvious. Obama was planning to keep pushing the Israeli leader, but he wanted to create some momentum and was looking for an opening elsewhere. Clinton and Mitchell, the Middle East envoy, were meeting Obama in Cairo; he was surrounded in Riyadh by a team of close advisors, including Rahm Emanuel, his gung ho, abrasive chief of staff.
If the Israelis were not responding to pressure fast enough, perhaps the Arabs could be convinced to make peace offerings to Israel that the United States could then use to make Bibi budge. Such gestures were called CBMs, confidence-building measures, and whenever the parties to peace were too far apart, Washington used these as a fallback strategy to keep the process moving forward. The Israelis desperately wanted the gestures, which would make them feel less despised, or perhaps even grudgingly accepted, by their hostile neighbors. It sounded a lot less positive when Arabs described it: normalizing ties with the enemy. Israel had full diplomatic relations with only two Arab countries, the two countries with whom it had signed peace treaties: Egypt and Jordan. A handful of Arab countries had sporadic trade relations with Israel but from most of the Arab world you couldn’t even place a phone call to Israel: the phone would just give you a disconnect signal.
Over dinner at the king’s farm, Obama didn’t linger on the niceties and got down to business fairly quickly. He presented the eighty-six-year-old monarch with a long list of requests. He wanted the Saudi king to allow Israel’s national carrier El Al to overfly the country and asked that Saudi Arabia start receiving Israeli trade delegations. It sounded so simple, but it was like asking an American president to shake hands with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to help build confidence before the Iranians had promised to do anything in return. On the campaign trail as a candidate, Obama had said he would be ready to meet with America’s foes Iran, North Korea, and Cuba. As president, despite promises to reach out, he had been exceedingly cautious in public. Now he was asking the Saudis to publicly open their arms to Israel and embrace their enemy.
The king paused. “Whoever advised you to ask me this wants to destroy the Saudi-American relationship,” he said. He sounded deeply disappointed. Obama had not expected to leave empty-handed.
By definition, a monarchy is traditional, a reminder of days past. In Saudi Arabia, the king is an absolute monarch and Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, a combination of tradition, conservative mores, and orthodox religion that produces a highly risk averse and opaque foreign policy. Despite bitter rivalries among Arab countries and rulers vying for the position of regional leader, the Saudi king was still regarded by many as a reference, the ultimate protector of Arab and Sunni Muslim interests. He could not be seen to be appeasing the Israelis. But there was also a long history of American presidents asking favors and making promises in their conversation with Saudi royals—and King Abdullah remembered well being asked for CBMs once before by an American president.
In June 2003, at a peace summit in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, American officials had pleaded with Arab foreign ministers to offer similar CBMs and build normal ties with Israel in a communiqué. Conversations went deep into the night. The Israelis wanted it as an incentive; the Arabs saw it as the big final reward for peace. The Saudis just did not do bold gestures. Colin Powell threatened that President Bush would not show up in the morning. The Saudis retorted that their leader wouldn’t show up, either. Finally, the Americans relented. In the morning, President George W. Bush told the Arab leaders gathered, addressing mostly Abdullah who was still crown prince, “If I did not think we could do this, I would not be here.”19
In the end, Bush’s peace efforts amounted to naught and the Saudis shrugged—they had been right to be cautious. Who knows whether things would have been different if the Saudis had really reached out to the Israelis? Someone had to make the first step, and the Arabs were rarely if ever willing to do it. Perhaps King Abdullah remembered the disappointment that his own father had felt after his meeting with yet another American president sixty-four years earlier—an encounter that had marked the formal beginning of diplomatic ties between the two countries.
On February 14, 1945, World War II was drawing to an end, the Axis alliance was collapsing, and after meeting with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin in Yalta President Franklin D. Roosevelt sailed on the USS Quincy from Malta to the Great Bitter Lake of the Suez Canal to meet King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud. Abdul Aziz was the first ruler of Saudi Arabia, which had just discovered oil although no one knew yet the extent of the riches this would bring the desert peninsula. FDR wanted Abdul Aziz’s help with Zionism. He explained that the Jews who had suffered indescribable horrors at the hands of the Nazis had a sentimental desire to settle in Palestine. The king suggested that the Allies give the Jews and their descendants “the choicest lands and homes of the Germans who had oppressed them.”20 The king, like so many Arabs, did not understand why they had to pay for the crimes committed by Germany.
FDR complained that the king was not helping, and the king lost patience. There was no resolution, but FDR promised in person and later in a letter that the “U.S. Government would make no change in its basic policy
in Palestine without full and prior consultation with both Jews and Arabs.”21
Eight weeks later, FDR died and Harry Truman became president. Abdul Aziz felt the promise he had received aboard the USS Quincy was made by America, not just by the man who was its president. After all, as the absolute ruler of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz’s word was law. He was furious to discover that Truman did not feel bound by FDR’s letter and did not consult properly with the Arabs before walking down the road toward recognition of Israel. Nevertheless, the U.S.-Saudi relationship continued because the 1945 meeting was also the start of a key agreement between the two countries that has continued, almost uninterrupted, to this day: oil in return for security and arms.