It Worked For Me

by Colin Powell

  The incoming Clinton administration was determined to achieve a far more ambitious goal. They took on the task of creating a democracy where democracy had never existed and where there was never much appetite for it. After the tragic Black Hawk Down episode in October 1993 illustrated the futility of that effort, we pulled out of Somalia.

  Later, in Bosnia, President Clinton got it right. The Serbian military was conducting violent and sometimes genocidal ethnic cleansing in that region of the former Yugoslavia. The situation was extremely complex; there was no clearly achievable political objective and no way to touch all the bases preferred by military doctrine. Even though the rules did not fit the situation, the President decided that action was required. Over a two-year period NATO slowly ratcheted up military operations against the Serbs. The President was right, and the NATO operations succeeded.

  In September 1994, President Clinton decided that military force would be necessary to reinstall as the legitimate president of Haiti Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been removed from office by a coup led by General Raoul Cédras. As our troops were assembling and boarding planes, President Clinton dispatched former president Jimmy Carter, Senator Sam Nunn, and me to try to persuade General Cédras and the ruling military junta to step down. For two days we argued with Cédras and his generals.

  At the critical meeting, President Carter asked me to explain what would happen to them if they didn’t step down. I described the force that had been assembled and the tactics that would be used. “The force will arrive tomorrow,” I told them.

  Cédras gave me a long look. Finally, to break the tension, he said, “Hmm, Haiti used to have the smallest army in the Caribbean. Tomorrow we will have the largest.”

  Cédras and the junta saw it was time to fold their cards and leave the table.

  When the 82nd Airborne arrived the next morning, they were greeted by General Cédras. After it was all over, I was reminded of one of my favorite classical maxims, sometimes attributed to Thucydides: “Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most.”

  In their initial phases, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq were extremely successful. Kabul and Baghdad fell quickly. We had taken out the governments, but the lack of clear and achievable follow-on objectives, or the means to achieve them, turned later phases into failures that took years and substantial surge forces to begin to reverse. The surge forces should have been there from the start. Wishful thinking had replaced strategic reality.

  I could cite many more examples from American military history. And I could draw hundreds more from American corporate and political history—in fact, from just about any human endeavor.

  Corporate leaders have to analyze their marketplace, their competitors, and the forces at their disposal. How do you mass your research and development, production, financial, and marketing forces to achieve your corporate goals? How do you deploy your leadership? How do you guard against surprises? When do you risk only using an economy of force? How do you exploit success or turn crisis and failure into an opportunity?

  Even the Bible touches on these subjects. Luke 14:31 says:

  Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?

  I would rather be the second king with twenty thousand than the first with his ten . . . and also have a clearer objective and a more decisive strategy.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The Pottery Barn Rule

  I was taught as a young infantryman that after you’ve taken your objective, be it a hill, a town, a bridge, or a key road junction, you consolidate your position, get hot food and dry socks for the troops, bring up more ammo, dig in, and get ready for the counterattack. The battle ain’t over yet and it will change form. As you consolidate your position and gauge the enemy’s reaction, you look for opportunities to keep going. The enemy may have been so shattered that you can exploit your success and pursue him to final defeat. Or, he may have reinforced his forces and is coming back after you, perhaps in ways you hadn’t thought of. Whatever happens next, you can be sure that you’re going to face more action. Get ready for it. Take charge.

  On the evening of August 5, 2002, President Bush and I met in his residence at the White House to discuss the pros and cons of the Iraq crisis. Momentum within the administration was building toward military action, and the President was increasingly inclined in that direction.

  I wanted to make sure he understood that military action and its aftermath had serious consequences, many of which would be unforeseen, dangerous, and hard to control. Most of the briefings he had been receiving had been focused on the military option—defeat of the Iraqi army and bringing down Saddam Hussein and his regime. Not enough attention had been given either to nonmilitary options or the aftermath of a military conquest.

  I had no doubt that our military would easily crush a smaller Iraqi army, much weakened by Desert Storm and the sanctions and other actions that came afterward. But I was concerned about the unpredictable consequences of war. According to plans being confidently put forward, Iraq was expected to somehow transform itself into a stable country with democratic leaders ninety days after we took Baghdad. I believed such hopes were unrealistic. I was sure we would be in for a longer struggle.

  Wars break things, kill people, and leave in their wake horrendous confusion, chaos, and physical and social upheavals. Victory doesn’t come automatically with the capture of the enemy capital. A defeated country under occupation is not a neat and orderly place. The old instruments of security and order are badly weakened or even totally destroyed. Normal transport and commerce are seriously disrupted. Even though the invading army may arrive as liberators, they may not be joyfully welcomed. There may be riots, looting, or widespread hostility to the occupiers, even sabotage and assassinations. Religious, political, or ethnic rivalries, kept under a lid before the invasion, may erupt unpredictably in the invasion’s aftermath.

  War is never a happy solution, but it may be the only solution. We must exhaustively explore other possible solutions before we make the choice for war. Every political and diplomatic effort should be made to avoid war while achieving your objective.

  I had come up with a simple expression that summarized these ideas for the President: “If you break it, you own it.” It was shorthand for the profound reality that if we take out another country’s government by force, we instantly become the new government, responsible for governing the country and for the security of its people until we can turn all that over to a new, stable, and functioning government. We are now in charge. We have to be prepared to take charge.

  After carefully listening to my presentation, the President asked for my recommendation. “We should take the problem to the United Nations,” I told him. “Iraq is in violation of multiple UN resolutions. The UN is the legally aggrieved party. Let’s see if there might be a diplomatic solution to the WMD issue. If not, and war becomes necessary, you will be in a better position to solicit the help of other nations to form a coalition.

  “Of course,” I added, “if the UN certifies to our satisfaction that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that problem would be solved, but Saddam would still be in power. Is his elimination worth a war?”

  The President and his national security staff, including Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld, agreed with that course of action. The President presented it to the UN General Assembly on September 12, 2002, in his annual speech to the Assembly. In his speech he called for a Security Council resolution declaring Iraq in material breach of earlier UN resolutions and requiring that country to account for its WMD programs.

  After eight weeks of intensive debate and negotiations, UN Resolution 1441 was passed unanimously by the Security Council. The resolution additionally held Iraq accountable for its dismal human rights record and its support of terrorism.

  By
early March 2003, the President and other world leaders decided that UN efforts would not succeed, and the war came. Military victory quickly followed. Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003, Hussein and his regime were brought down, we declared “Mission Accomplished” and celebrated victory . . . and chaos erupted. We did not assert control and authority over the country, especially Baghdad. We did not bring with us the capacity to impose our will. We did not take charge.

  And Iraq did not in a few weeks magically transform itself into a stable nation with democratic leaders. Instead, a raging insurgency engulfed the country. Even as the country broke apart some senior members of the administration dismissed the insurgents as a few “dead enders,” as if they would quickly fade away. They didn’t fade away.

  Three years later, the President realized the seriousness of the deteriorating situation and ordered a surge of troops to reverse the growing catastrophe.

  The media gave a name to “if you break it, you own it”: they called it the “Pottery Barn Rule.” Though it did not come from me, the name was vivid, memorable, and accurately predictive, and the press stuck with it. The problem was that the Pottery Barn company had no such policy, and they were unhappy that people thought they did. And because the rule was associated with me, they were unhappy with me. Though I did my best to clear up the confusion in a television interview, the name stuck. Truth to tell, I wasn’t sorry. Pottery Barn got spectacular publicity out of their nonpolicy.

  Another truth: shops and commerce were never near my mind when I came up with “if you break it, you own it.” For me the rule is all about personal responsibility; when you are in charge you have to take charge. The rule has nothing to do with Pottery Barn or any other store.

  “Taking charge” is one of the first things a young Army recruit learns. The new soldier is taught how to pull guard duty—a mundane but essential task. Every recruit memorizes a set of rules describing how a guard performs his duty to standards. These rules are collectively known as the “General Orders.”

  One of those guard duty General Orders has stuck deeply in my head all these years and become a basic principle of my leadership style: A guard’s responsibility is “to take charge of this post and all government property in view.”

  In other words, “When in charge, take charge.”

  Imagine an eighteen-year-old private walking around a motor pool where twenty tanks are parked side by side. It is cold, it is deep into the night, and he is alone. He is not just in charge of where he is standing or walking; he is in charge of this post. He is in charge of all government property in view, including the tank park, the buildings, his sleeping buddies, the fences, everything. Take charge doesn’t mean keep an eye on it all or check occasionally. It means you are in charge, you are responsible, and you are supposed to act if anything is amiss or goes wrong. Even though you are only a private—as low as it gets in the Army—you are carrying the authority of your superiors and you had better act like it.

  The General Order immediately following that one tells you to call someone whenever your instructions don’t cover your situation. If you are confused or something weird happens, call for help. Call “the Corporal of the Guard.” But until help arrives, you are in charge.

  This establishes a “bias for action,” a readiness to take on any challenge. We drill it into our officers and sergeants: “Don’t stand there, do something!”

  In the days, weeks, and months after the fall of Baghdad, we refused to react to what was happening before our eyes. We focused on expanding oil production, increasing electricity output, setting up a stock market, forming a new Iraqi government. These were all worth doing, but they had little meaning and were not achievable until we and the Iraqis took charge of this post and secured all property in view.

  The Iraqis were glad to see Hussein gone. But they also had lives to live and families to take care of. The end of a monstrous regime didn’t feed their kids; it didn’t make it safe to cross town to get to a job. More than anything, Iraqis needed a sense of security and the knowledge that someone was in charge—someone in charge of keeping ministries from being burned down, museums from being looted, infrastructure from being destroyed, crime from exploding, and well-known sectarian differences from turning violent.

  When we went in, we had a plan, which the President approved. We would not break up and disband the Iraqi army. We would use the reconstituted army with purged leadership to help us secure and maintain order throughout the country. We would dissolve the Baath party, the ruling political party, but we would not throw every party member out on the street. In Hussein’s day, if you wanted to be a government official, a teacher, cop, or postal worker, you had to belong to the party. We were planning to eliminate top party leaders from positions of authority. But lower-level officials and workers had the education, skills, and training needed to run the country.

  Yes, Iraq was a one-party tyranny. Yes, dangerous elements remained in the party and army. They would have to be identified and removed. Yes, many Iraqi soldiers had deserted. But viable structures remained, whose vacancies could easily be refilled.

  The plan the President had approved was not implemented. Instead, Secretary Rumsfeld and Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, our man in charge in Iraq as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, disbanded the Iraqi army and fired Baath party members, right down to teachers. We eliminated the very officials and institutions we should have been building on, and left thousands of the most highly skilled people in the country jobless and angry—prime recruits for insurgency.

  These actions surprised the President, National Security Advisor Condi Rice, and me, but once they had been set in motion, the President felt he had to support Secretary Rumsfeld and Ambassador Bremer.

  Meanwhile, at this decisive moment, we started sending troops home, removing senior commanders and their staffs, and cutting off the flow of additional troops. Back home we had “Mission Accomplished” celebrations, and the White House looked into arranging victory parades.

  A hill had been taken, but the battle would continue for years to come. The victory over the Hussein regime was just the beginning of a long campaign, which we should have anticipated, but had not prepared for.

  We broke it, we owned it, but we didn’t take charge.

  In 2006, President Bush ordered his now famous surge, and our forces, working with new Iraqi military and police forces, reversed the slide toward chaos. But years and many lives had been lost. U.S. and coalition forces have now left Iraq. Conditions in Iraq are vastly improved, but the campaign is still not over. We all hope that the Iraqis will be able to bring it to a successful conclusion and leave to their future generations a country free, democratic, and at peace with its neighbors and itself.

  Any leader approaching an “if you break it, you own it” decision should preface his thinking with “try not to break it.” But if there’s a chance that you might break it, if you plan to break it, or if there’s no way you can avoid breaking it, consider the costs of ownership and have plans ready to deal with the possible consequences of breaking it.

  Plans are neither successful nor unsuccessful until they are executed. And the successful execution of a plan is more important than the plan itself. I was trained to expect a plan to need revision at the moment execution starts, and to always have a bunch of guys in a back room thinking about what could go right or wrong and making contingency plans to deal with either possibility.

  The leader must be agile in thought and action. He must be ready to revise a plan, or dump it, if it isn’t working or if new opportunities appear. Above all, the leader must never be blinded by the perceived brilliance of his plan or personal investment in it. The leader must watch the execution from beginning to end and do what it tells him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  February 5, 2003

  The United Nations

  Although it has been many years since I gave my famous—or infamous—Iraq WMD speech to the UN and the world, I am asked about it or
read about it almost every day. February 5, 2003, the day of the speech, is as burned into my memory as my own birthday. The event will earn a prominent paragraph in my obituary.

  “Is it a blot on your record?” Barbara Walters asked in my first major interview after leaving the State Department.

  “Yes,” I answered, “and there is nothing I can do about it.”

  What’s done is done. It’s over. I live with it.

  Most people in public life have passed through a defining experience they’d prefer to forget, and to be forgotten, but won’t be. So what can you do about it? How do you carry the burden?

  In January 2003, as war with Iraq was approaching, President Bush felt we needed to present our case against Iraq to the public and the international community. By then, the President did not think war could be avoided. He had crossed the line in his own mind, even though the NSC had never met—and never would meet—to discuss the decision. On January 30, 2003, in the Oval Office, President Bush told me it was now time to present our case against Iraq to the United Nations.

  The date he selected for the presentation was February 5, just a few days away.

  The speech would cover several areas, from the Hussein regime’s abysmal human rights record, to its violations of UN resolutions, to its support of terrorists. But its chief focus was to be its weapons of mass destruction. Though Saddam did not use WMDs during Desert Storm, he had them. He had used chemical weapons against his own people years earlier, and he had used them against the Iranians in the 1980–88 Iran-Iraq War. The intelligence community believed he not only still had WMD stockpiles, but also had continued to produce them. In the post-9/11 atmosphere there was deep concern that these weapons could get into the hands of terrorists.

  Although the intelligence community differed about aspects of the Iraqi WMD program, there was no disagreement over the fact that the Iraqis had one. They were certain that Saddam had WMDs and was producing more. (UN weapons inspectors were always skeptical about these conclusions.)