Hard Choices

by Hillary Rodham Clinton

That same day, January 12, as Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri was in Washington preparing to meet with President Obama, his government fell apart amid factional infighting, a curse stalking every Lebanese government that has tried to balance the interests and agendas of its mixed citizenry of Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, and Druze. Meanwhile violence was escalating on the streets of Tunisia. It didn’t feel like a full-blown crisis yet, but there was definitely a sense that the region was starting to shake.

  My final stop was Doha, Qatar, for the speech to the regional conference that we had been working on so intently. Early on the morning of January 13, I walked into a crowded meeting room full of Arab leaders and outlined the region’s challenges as bluntly as I could: unemployment, corruption, a sclerotic political order that denied citizens their dignity and universal human rights. “In too many places, in too many ways, the region’s foundations are sinking into the sand,” I said, echoing the themes I had highlighted over the course of the trip. Offering a direct challenge to the assembled leaders, I continued, “You can help build a future that your young people will believe in, stay for, and defend.” If not, “those who cling to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries’ problems for a little while, but not forever.”

  Few Arab leaders are accustomed to hearing criticism delivered publicly and directly. Although I understood their feelings and customs, I thought it important that they take seriously how quickly the world was changing around them. If I had to be a little undiplomatic to do that, so be it. “Let us face honestly that future. Let us discuss openly what needs to be done. Let us use this time to move beyond rhetoric, to put away plans that are timid and gradual, and make a commitment to keep this region moving in the right direction,” I said in closing. After I was finished the American journalists traveling with me were buzzing about how blunt my words had been. I wondered if any actions would follow.

  The next day, with demonstrations in Tunisia swelling, Ben Ali fled the country and sought refuge in Saudi Arabia. Protests that had begun with a dispute over a fruit cart had grown into a full-fledged revolution. I had not expected events to underscore my “sinking into the sand” warning so quickly or dramatically, but now the message was undeniable. Yet as significant as these events were, none of us expected what happened next.

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  The protests in Tunisia proved contagious. Thanks to satellite television and social media, young people across the Middle East and North Africa had a front-row seat to the popular uprising that toppled Ben Ali. Emboldened, they began turning private criticisms of their governments into public calls for change. After all, many of the same conditions that drove frustration in Tunisia were present across the region, especially with regard to corruption and repression.

  On January 25, protests in Cairo against police brutality grew into massive demonstrations against the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak. Tens of thousands of Egyptians occupied Tahrir Square in the heart of the city and resisted efforts by the police to force them to disperse. Day after day the crowds in the square grew, and they became focused on a single goal: driving Mubarak from power.

  I had known Mubarak and his wife, Suzanne, for nearly twenty years. He was a career Air Force officer who had risen through the ranks to become Vice President under Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian ruler who fought the Yom Kippur War with Israel in 1973 and later signed the Camp David Accords. Mubarak was injured in the extremist attack that assassinated Sadat in 1981, but he survived, became President, and cracked down hard on Islamists and other dissidents. He ruled Egypt like a pharaoh with nearly absolute power for the next three decades.

  Over the years I spent time with Mubarak. I appreciated his consistent support for the Camp David Accords and a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians. He tried harder than any other Arab leader to convince Yasser Arafat to accept the peace agreement negotiated by my husband in 2000. But, despite his partnership with the United States on key strategic matters, it was disappointing that after so many years in power his regime still denied the Egyptian people many of their fundamental freedoms and human rights and was badly mismanaging the economy. Under Mubarak’s rule, a country known to historians as the “breadbasket of antiquity” struggled to feed its own people and became the world’s largest importer of wheat.

  In May 2009, Mubarak’s twelve-year-old grandson died suddenly from an undisclosed health problem. The loss seemed to shatter the aging leader. When I called Suzanne Mubarak to offer my sympathy, she told me the boy had been “the President’s best friend.”

  For the Obama Administration, the protests in Egypt presented a delicate situation. Mubarak had been a key strategic ally for decades, yet America’s ideals were more naturally aligned with the young people calling for “bread, freedom, and dignity.” When asked by a journalist about the protests on that first day, I sought to offer a measured response that reflected our interests and values, as well as the uncertainty of the situation, and avoided throwing further fuel on the fire. “We support the fundamental right of expression and assembly for all people, and we urge that all parties exercise restraint and refrain from violence,” I said. “But our assessment is that the Egyptian Government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.” It would turn out that the regime was certainly not “stable,” but few observers could have predicted just how fragile it actually was.

  On January 28, President Obama joined a meeting of the national security team in the White House Situation Room and asked us for recommendations about how to handle events in Egypt. The debate around the long table went back and forth. We delved once more into questions that had bedeviled U.S. policymakers for generations: How should we balance strategic interests against core values? Can we successfully influence the internal politics of other nations and nurture democracy where it has never flowered before, without incurring negative unintended consequences? What does it mean to be on the right side of history? These were debates we would have throughout the so-called Arab Spring.

  Like many other young people around the world, some of President Obama’s aides in the White House were swept up in the drama and idealism of the moment as they watched the pictures from Tahrir Square on television. They identified with the democratic yearnings and technological savvy of the young Egyptian protesters. Indeed Americans of all ages and political stripe were moved by the sight of people so long repressed finally demanding their universal human rights, and repulsed by the excessive force the authorities used in response. I shared that feeling. It was a thrilling moment. But along with Vice President Biden, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, I was concerned that we not be seen as pushing a longtime partner out the door, leaving Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and the region to an uncertain, dangerous future.

  The arguments for throwing America’s weight behind the protesters went beyond idealism. Championing democracy and human rights had been at the heart of our global leadership for more than half a century. Yes, we had from time to time compromised those values in the service of strategic and security interests, including by supporting unsavory anti-Communist dictators during the Cold War, with mixed results. But such compromises were harder to sustain in the face of the Egyptian people demanding the very rights and opportunities we had always said they and all peoples deserved. While before it had been possible to focus on the Mubarak who supported peace and cooperation with Israel and hunted terrorists, now it was impossible to ignore the reality that he was also a heavy-handed autocrat who presided over a corrupt and calcified regime.

  And yet many of the same national security interests that had led every previous administration to maintain close ties with Mubarak remained urgent priorities. Iran was still attempting to build a nuclear arsenal. Al Qaeda was still plotting new attacks. The Suez Canal remained a vital trade route. Israel’s security was as essential as ever. Mubarak had been a partner in all the
se areas, despite anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiments among his own people. His Egypt served as a linchpin of peace in a volatile region. Were we really ready to walk away from that relationship after thirty years of cooperation?

  Even if we did decide that was the right choice, it was far from clear how much influence we could actually have on events on the ground. Contrary to popular belief among many in the Middle East, the United States has never been an all-powerful puppet master able to achieve any outcome we desire. What if we called for Mubarak to step down, but then he refused and managed to stay in power? What if he did step down and was succeeded by a lengthy period of dangerous disorder or by a successor government no more democratic and actively opposed to our interests and security? Either way, our relationship would never be the same and our influence in the region would erode. Other partners would see how we treated Mubarak and lose trust and confidence in their relationships with us.

  Historically, transitions from dictatorship to democracy are fraught with challenges and can easily go terribly wrong. In Iran in 1979, for example, extremists hijacked the broad-based popular revolution against the Shah and established a brutal theocracy. If something similar happened in Egypt, it would be a catastrophe, for the people of Egypt as well as for Israeli and U.S. interests.

  Despite the size of the protests in Tahrir Square, they were largely leaderless, driven by social media and word of mouth rather than a coherent opposition movement. After years of one-party rule, Egypt’s protesters were ill prepared to contest open elections or build credible democratic institutions. By contrast, the Muslim Brotherhood, an eighty-year-old Islamist organization, was well positioned to fill a vacuum if the regime fell. Mubarak had driven the Brotherhood underground, but it had followers all over the country and a tightly organized power structure. The group had renounced violence and made some efforts to appear more moderate. But it was impossible to know how it would behave and what would happen if it gained control.

  These arguments gave me pause. Along with the Vice President, Gates, and Donilon, I counseled caution. If Mubarak falls, I told the President, “it all may work out fine in twenty-five years, but I think the period between now and then will be quite rocky for the Egyptian people, for the region, and for us.” But I knew the President wasn’t comfortable sitting by and doing nothing while peaceful protesters were beaten and killed in the streets. He needed a path forward that urged Egypt toward democracy but avoided the chaos of an abrupt regime collapse.

  On Meet the Press on Sunday, January 30, I tried to set out a sustainable approach. “Long-term stability rests on responding to the legitimate needs of the Egyptian people, and that is what we want to see happen,” so I said that we hoped to see a “peaceful, orderly transition to a democratic regime.” My using the word orderly rather than immediate was intentional, although unpopular in some quarters of the White House. Some on the President’s team wanted me to at least foreshadow Mubarak’s departure, if not call for it. I, however, thought it was crucial that the rhetoric from me and others in the administration help Egypt achieve the reforms most of the protesters sought with a soft landing rather than a hard thud.

  When I spoke with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit that week, I urged the government to show restraint and demonstrate that it would be responsive to the demands of the people. “It’s going to be challenging for President Mubarak to make the case that he’s heard people after thirty years unless he holds free and fair elections and doesn’t try to engineer his successor,” I told Aboul Gheit. “That is not tomorrow’s business,” he responded. “Tomorrow’s business is to pacify the people and settle them down.” But he agreed to pass along my concerns.

  Mubarak, however, wasn’t listening. Even as unrest escalated and the regime’s control of the country appeared to be slipping, he delivered a defiant speech late on the evening of January 29 in which he fired many of his Cabinet Ministers but refused to resign or limit his own term in office.

  I recommended to President Obama that he dispatch an envoy to talk with Mubarak in person and persuade him to announce a strong package of reforms, including an end to the country’s repressive emergency law that had been in effect since 1981, a pledge not to run in the elections already planned for September, and an agreement not to put forward his son Gamal as his successor. These steps might not satisfy everyone, but they would be significant concessions and give the protesters a chance to organize ahead of the elections.

  For this delicate assignment, I suggested Frank Wisner, a retired senior diplomat who had served as Ambassador to Egypt from 1986 to 1991 and had developed a strong personal relationship with Mubarak. They had spent many hours together discussing the region and the world. Like his great friend Richard Holbrooke, Wisner cut his diplomatic teeth in Vietnam before representing our country in hotspots all over the world. In addition to Egypt, he served as Ambassador in Zambia, the Philippines, and India before retiring in 1997. I thought that if any American could get through to Mubarak, it would be Wisner. But some in the White House were skeptical of Wisner and his mission. They were ready to cut Mubarak loose. President Obama was losing patience, but he ultimately agreed with me to give diplomacy one more chance.

  Wisner met with Mubarak on January 31 and delivered our message. Mubarak listened but didn’t give an inch. He was stressed, maybe even bewildered by what was happening around him, but he was in no way ready to give up his power. Like so many autocrats before him, he had come to view himself as inseparable from the state. Mubarak was enough of a realist to know he couldn’t sit in his palace and ignore the protests altogether. So he sent out his newly appointed Vice President, the longtime intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, to propose a national dialogue about possible reforms. Two days earlier Mubarak had selected Suleiman to fill the long-vacant Vice Presidency as a half-hearted attempt to calm the protests. Neither the promise of a national dialogue nor the appointment of a Vice President placated anyone.

  That night the military also released a remarkable statement declaring that it would not use force against the Egyptian people and recognizing the legitimacy of the protesters’ rights and demands. This was an ominous sign for Mubarak. If the military abandoned him, there was no way he could remain in power.

  The first day of February saw more huge protests. That afternoon in the White House Situation Room, the national security team once again debated what to do. Halfway through our discussion, we received news that Mubarak was going on television to address the nation. We turned to the large video screens and waited to see what the embattled leader would say. Mubarak looked old and tired but sounded defiant. He promised not to run in the September election, to seek reforms to the Constitution, and to ensure a “peaceful transfer of power” before the end of his term. But he did not lift the emergency law or say that his son would not run in his place, nor did he offer to begin handing over any of his absolute powers. Mubarak had actually come around to much of what Wisner had asked of him, but it was too little, too late—both for the crowds in the streets and the team in the Situation Room.

  “That’s not going to cut it,” President Obama said, visibly frustrated. Then he called Mubarak and said the same thing. We debated whether the President should make a public statement declaring that he was done waiting for Mubarak to do what was right. Once again senior Cabinet officials, including me, counseled caution. We warned that if the President appeared to be too heavy-handed, it might backfire. But other members of the team appealed once again to the President’s idealism and argued that events on the ground were moving too quickly for us to wait. He was swayed, and that evening he went before the cameras in the Grand Foyer of the White House. “It is not the role of any other country to determine Egypt’s leaders. Only the Egyptian people can do that,” President Obama said. “[But] what is clear—and what I indicated tonight to President Mubarak—is my belief that an orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now.” When Press Secretary Robert Gi
bbs was asked at his briefing the next day to define “now,” his answer left little room for doubt. “Now means yesterday,” he said.

  Things in Cairo got worse. Regime supporters came out in force and clashed violently with protesters. Men wielding clubs and other weapons swept through Tahrir Square on camels and horses, cracking heads. I called Vice President Suleiman to make it clear that such violent repression was absolutely unacceptable. The Egyptian leadership did not repeat this tactic in the following days. On February 4, I spoke once again to Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit. In earlier conversations he had come across as confident and upbeat. Now he couldn’t hide his frustration, even desperation. He complained that the United States was unceremoniously shoving Mubarak out the door without considering the consequences. Listen to what the Iranians are saying, he warned. They are eager to take advantage of Egypt’s potential collapse. His fear of an Islamist takeover was visceral. “I have two granddaughters, one six and the other eight,” he told me. “I want them to grow up to be like their grandmother and like you. Not wearing a niqab like in Saudi Arabia. This is the fight of my life.”

  His words stayed with me as I flew to Germany to address the Munich Security Conference, a key gathering of leaders and thinkers from across the international community. For all our talk about supporting democracy, what did that really mean? Surely more than just one election, one time. If Egypt’s women saw their rights and opportunities rolled back under a newly elected government, was that democracy? What about if minorities like Egypt’s Coptic Christians were persecuted or marginalized? If Mubarak was going to leave the presidency and Egypt was going to begin a transition, then these questions about what would happen next would become relevant and pressing.

  In Munich, as in Doha a month before, I made the case for political and economic reforms across the Middle East. “This is not simply a matter of idealism,” I said. “It is a strategic necessity. Without genuine progress toward open and accountable political systems, the gap between people and their governments will only grow, and instability will only deepen.” Of course, these transitions would look different and proceed at different speeds in each country, depending on their unique circumstances. But no nation could ignore the aspirations of their people forever.