In the Driver's Seat
HAYES, STEPHEN F.
In the Driver’s Seat Condoleezza Rice and the jettisoning of the Bush Doctrine BY STEPHEN F. HAYES Shortly before 10 A.M. on October 9, 2006, George W. Bush read a statement from the...
...Because by designating Bank Sepah and Bank Melli and the Quds Force and the IRGC and looking at what their central bank is doing, not only did we declare them the central bank for terrorism, we’re treating them like it...
...The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons,” he vowed...
...And in each case, the State Department has gone out of its way to avoid dealing with these provocations lest they jeopardize our diplomacy...
...It was the right thing to do...
...Unmarried and without close family, Rice often spends holidays and weekends with George and Laura Bush...
...So the leading hardliners—Vice President Cheney’s offi ce, the offi ce of the secretary of defense, Robert Joseph, the outgoing undersecretary for arms control— were kept in the dark...
...The Bush administration is pursuing policies now, she says, that will lay the groundwork for big things to come...
...government...
...Rice, though, grew increasingly close to Bush...
...And though Hill is portrayed sympathetically, the narrative is unintentionally damning...
...Two months earlier, the president had nominated her to be secretary of state...
...Cheney, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld each brought decades of foreign policy and national security experience at the highest levels of U.S...
...After a brief introduction from then-Senate Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Richard Lugar, a much longer series of extemporaneous remarks from Joseph Biden, and an effusive endorsement from Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein from California, it was fi nally Rice’s turn to talk...
...The question remains, with Iran’s nuclear ambitions unchecked, with North Korea a successful nuclear blackmailer, with Hezbollah’s success in Lebanon and Hamas’s in Gaza, with authoritarians like Ch?vez and Putin and Hu Jintao fl ourishing, with mass murder unchecked in Sudan and democracy thwarted in Zimbabwe: a foundation for what...
...But September 11, 2001, blurred such distinctions...
...They started over buffalo steak and continued for hours...
...She jumped in before I could ask a question...
...The United States condemns this provocative act,” Bush declared...
...And—but as importantly, I think we’ve—through the continuous policy of enlargement of NATO, now 12 of the 26 NATO members are former captive nations, and it has fundamentally transformed the nature of the alliance...
...The North Koreans had been pushing for bilateral negotiations with the United States since the beginning of the Bush administration...
...The Israelis communicated a strong inclination to take out the Syrian facility that heightened the disagreements on Bush’s national security team...
...It worked...
...Most obviously, the effects of the war in Iraq...
...There are several reasons for this...
...But when the Chinese diplomat conveniently left for an extended period of time, Hill continued the talks...
...We’re saying, “Don’t kill our soldiers or your people won’t be safe in Iraq...
...The president had repeatedly and categorically rejected any direct talks with the North Koreans...
...But what about proliferation and the full accountability President Bush threatened after North Korea’s nuclear test...
...Some of the minimal paperwork business is coming directly from the secretary,” Hill told Chinoy...
...And the good thing is we’re doing something about it...
...Because I did believe that if we surged forces and it didn’t make an effect—didn’t have an effect, that that was a very, very bad thing...
...First of all—look, I have never been in favor of pulling back any—pulling ourselves back from Iraq...
...And we have been really tough on designating their banks and it’s causing them enormous problems in the international fi nancial system...
...Rice sees more continuity than change...
...Is the improvement in our relations with our European allies due to the fact that we have pursued more conciliatory—some might say, more European—diplomatic policies since the beginning of her tenure...
...From the outset they made clear that they were interested only in talking about easing the fi nancial pressure that Hill had promised to address...
...One of those moments came back on October 11, 2006, at a press conference after the North Korean nuclear test...
...senators arrayed in a semicircle in front of her...
...There were plenty of times when, say, Cheney and Rumsfeld disagreed, and many more when Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz found themselves on opposite sides of one strategic decision or another...
...I think this is just a different alliance...
...Rice did not...
...He was joined by several key staffers on the National Security Council, at the Pentagon, and at the State Department...
...Should Iran suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities—which is an international demand, not just an American one—we could begin negotiations, and we could work over time to build a new, more normal relationship— one defi ned not by fear and mistrust, but growing cooperation, expanding trade and exchange, and the peaceful management of our differences...
...Each new supposed “deal” with the North Koreans results in real concessions from the West—fuel oil, food aid, and the like—and phony concessions from the regime of Kim Jong Il...
...In the six-party talks we are ready to declare preemptive victory without any serious change in North Korea’s direction, including on nuclear weapons and programs, proliferation, and human rights or wrongs,” says David Asher, former coordinator of the State Department’s North Korea Working Group...
...The question is: Is this a regime that, under the right set of incentives and disincentives, is prepared to make some fundamental choices about its nuclear program that would ultimately put the United States and the rest of the world in a safer position vis-?-vis the Korean Peninsula and, most importantly, vis-?-vis proliferation...
...Time is not on our side,” he cautioned...
...She had added the words to her opening statement herself, and it is clear that she meant them...
...other aspects of North Korea policymaking, was limited to a small number of offi cials sympathetic to the softer line favored by Hill and Rice...
...Bush is comfortable around Rice...
...military has been laying out evidence of Iranian terrorist activity in Iraq...
...and if we’re going to move forward in the six-party framework, you, China, are going to have to work with us on verifi cation of proliferation activities, monitoring of verifi cation—monitoring, and, presumably, acting if something is wrong...
...They opened the article by noting that the State Department had been publicly touting its diplomatic progress with North Korea...
...Iran has been arming, equipping, and training insurgents in Iraq...
...Rice believes we are now in the early stages of a new, important historical moment, not unlike the one that came with the end of the Cold War...
...Rice’s ambitious objective was to handle the remaining two-thirds of that ignominious group with words...
...The busy diplomat made time to talk to Mike Chinoy, a former CNN reporter, for Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis, a book to be published in August...
...She said, ‘Bring it only to me.’ ” But Rice did more than just approve Hill’s proposal for another bilateral meeting with his North Korean counterparts...
...continues to ship massive amounts of fuel oil to North Korea, under the agreement that shut down the Yongbyon reactor, while the State Department attempts to coax further cooperation by raising the possibility that sanctions on North Korea imposed through the “Trading with the Enemy Act” might be lifted and that North Korea could be taken off the list of countries that sponsor terror, a move that would open the doors to billions in aid and loans with the potential to breathe life into the anemic North Korean economy...
...Their support for anti-coalition forces began before the war, when they allowed foreign fi ghters to transit freely between Iran and northern Iraq...
...They were not told what was on the agenda—a fact that suggested it was serious...
...Our European—our relations with our European allies are—traditional allies, are very good...
...The U.S...
...Rice says that while they’ve been worried for a long time about North Korea’s nuclear proliferation, she is looking forward...
...For the most part, the Bush administration has been content to decouple Iran’s support for terror—in Iraq and more broadly—from its pursuit of nuclear weapons, to make a “distinction between terrorists and those who knowingly harbor or provide aid to them” that the president said in 2002 we would never make...
...I’ll have to say that when . . . when, you know, Ray Odierno, who I knew well—he had worked with me—and Dave Petraeus were . . . believed that we could do it that was very affi rming to me...
...But talking about— TWS: But if they’re killing—sorry to interrupt...
...I asked about her place in the group, and whether she felt left out because Cheney, Powell, and Rumsfeld knew each other well...
...It was a diffi cult balance...
...Their language tracked closely with the warning Bush had given the North Koreans immediately after their nuclear test in 2006...
...Bush had suggested that this group—Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, and Rice—spend the evening discussing the coming war and the challenges they would face together...
...And so, obviously, I made the decision that the bilateral negotiations wouldn’t work, and the reason I made that decision is because they didn’t...
...Once again North Korea has defi ed the will of the international community, and the international community will respond...
...He did, however, get the North Koreans to return to the six-party talks...
...Several current and former Bush administration offi cials say that Rice opposed the surge and favored a reduction in U.S...
...troops—and seemed to limit the Bush administration’s options...
...But the troubles in Iraq mounted—from the intelligence failures on weapons of mass destruction to the continued presence of more than 100,000 U.S...
...In many ways, George W. Bush’s reluctant acceptance of bilateral talks with the North Koreans is the story of the latter half of his presidency...
...In interagency deliberations Rice frequently suggested the surge would do little more than antagonize Bush’s allies—domestic and foreign— and result in higher casualties...
...It’s almost like a platonic boyfriendgirlfriend relationship,” says one close observer...
...At a speech in Davos in January 2008, Rice made sharp distinctions...
...But we’re on the hunt for them all the time...
...But you recognize the foundation for that was laid in the 1940s...
...I know people didn’t like the fact that we liberated Iraq,” she said to me in May...
...It was a clever message, open to different interpretations...
...The Agreed Framework fell apart in 2002 when the U.S...
...And, could we defi ne our national interest clearly enough that we knew that additional American forces would be successful...
...And we say, no, this is the world, not against Iran and the Iranian people, but against that horrible regime that’s oppressing its own people...
...I think it’s extraordinary, the transformation of the relationship there...
...I just think we’re at a very strong position in Northeast Asia...
...But by then Rice had other equally pressing priorities: resolving the nuclear standoffs with North Korea and Iran and pushing forward on the creation of a Palestinian state...
...Compared to other national security issues, this offi cial says, the North Korea “policy does not get subjected to the same level of questioning in front of the president...
...And so my trip to Beijing, my last trip to Beijing, was actually to say to the Chinese we have a problem because the North Koreans have been doing something very bad...
...She gave a masterful performance, displaying a strong grasp of the issues she was likely to face and offering a spirited defense of the Bush administration and her role in it...
...The [North Koreans were] especially concerned that we address the situation of the fi nancial measures that has, in their view, held up the talks for about a year now,” Hill said following his meetings...
...The State Department, too, has accused Iran of supporting terrorism that is killing American soldiers...
...Proposals ranged from a reduction and redeployment of troops mostly outside of Iraq (not unlike the plan pushed by several Democrats) to a “surge” of troops to Iraq and signifi cant changes in the mission...
...troops in Iraq...
...Pressed for three areas of improvement, Rice begins with the big picture and moves to specifi cs...
...There was no question that the North Koreans were at least sharing nuclear technology with the Syrians...
...Trying to broker Middle East peace is of course something that secretaries of state do almost as a matter of course as their time in offi ce comes to an end...
...She was, in effect, a referee mediating the now-legendary disputes that featured on one side Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and the State bureaucracy, and, on the other, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and the Pentagon bureaucracy...
...The Iranians are supplying very sophisticated IED technology to Shia insurgent and Shia terrorist groups that has, in turn, been used against American and British soldiers, and has led to the death of some of our soldiers over the last six to eight months,” said Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, the department’s third-ranking offi cial, back in October 2006...
...Earlier this year, the State Department helped make arrangements for the New York Philharmonic to perform in Pyongyang, an unprecedented bit of cultural diplomacy with Kim Jong Il’s regime...
...In internal deliberations, Hill and Rice, concerned that public disclosure of North Korea’s involvement could derail the six-party talks, argued for keeping the information secret...
...But in a passing acknowledgment that the nuclear test three weeks earlier might have undermined the claim, Hill conceded that he was not yet ready to celebrate...
...I tend to think of foreign policy, particularly when you’re at the beginning of a big, historical transformation, as being something” where you try to lay “a foundation rather than trying to complete...
...Anything that I’ve done with the president, I’ve done with [national security adviser] Steve Hadley, the vice president, and now, Bob Gates...
...These are, of course, acts of war...
...Her infl uence on the president is total,” says one senior Bush administration offi cial...
...Despite strong warnings from the United States in the past, the North Koreans had provided assistance to Syria in its efforts to build a nuclear reactor...
...While these issues are not insignifi cant, to many analysts they refl ect the myopia of diplomats so eager for a deal that they are missing the big picture...
...But, while State Department offi cials have joined the rest of the Bush administration in publicizing the Iranian activity, there have been few signs that the Iranians are paying a price for killing our soldiers...
...The president changed his mind...
...These are legacy deals, and legacy deals are bad deals...
...The issue there is what kind of mechanism are we going to use to prevent further circumstances like that or to learn whether there might be other circumstances like that...
...But I was—you know, I’m a generation younger and so I was sort of standing out—well, maybe not a full generation [she laughed and corrected herself], half a generation, half a generation...
...RICE: We’re not saying, “Please don’t kill our soldiers...
...We pulled out all of the stops,” a member of Hill’s team told Chinoy, “because we wanted to demonstrate we were serious and sincere...
...Bush said: “My most solemn duty is to protect this nation and its people against further attacks and emerging threats...
...Vice President Dick Cheney opposed the bilateral talks...
...I recently asked Rice if she opposed the surge and advocated a pullback of American troops...
...She was a mirror,” says an offi cial who worked closely with her...
...Syria’s Bashar alAssad, worried that he would be next, authorized his intelligence services to increase their assistance to the CIA...
...Their professional relationship blossomed into a warm personal friendship...
...I mean, you know, when I was listening to the president in September of 2001, the last thing I thought—not to minimize the importance of what we’re doing fi nancially—huge—but the last thing I thought was that we’d be sitting across the table from them saying, “Please don’t kill our soldiers...
...A lot...
...RICE: Well, we’ve said we would talk about everything, all right...
...Planning for the meeting, and for Stephen F. Hayes, a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is the author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President...
...But yeah, I had a lot of questions about whether we should surge forces...
...THE WEEKLY STANDARD: President Bush said in September of 2001, we will not negotiate with terrorists, you’re either with us or against us...
...And Pete Hoekstra, the vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, still has lots of questions...
...And we are now negotiating with the state that you called the central banker of terror...
...It is one of the few major policy battles Rice has lost during the second term...
...troop presence and pulling back from urban areas...
...Tension isn’t the right word, but anxiety...
...This was different, and it was palpable in the room, in the conversation...
...For more than a decade, North Korea has been developing nuclear weapons and lying to the world about it...
...Bush began his second term with the kind of bold, uncompromising vision that had characterized his fi rst four years in offi ce...
...TWS: If they’re killing our soldiers...
...I think we’ll wait until we’re done to see where we end up,” she says...
...No one in the Bush administration has socialized with the president as much as Rice...
...But we have gotten three Security Council resolutions against them, which doesn’t permit the Iranian—you know, part of this is that you don’t want the Iranian people to feel like this is aimed at them...
...The ultimate goal of U.S...
...The Clinton administration worked under “The Agreed Framework,” a deal that delivered generous assistance in exchange for North Korea shutting down its plutonium efforts at a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and submitting to monitoring and verifi cation from the International Atomic Energy Agency...
...Rice, a Russia specialist, came to the administration from Stanford University, where she was provost...
...allies on Iraq proved diffi cult...
...It was...
...Rice was not a bystander in the administration deliberations in the weeks and months after 9/11, but she did little to shape the major decisions that came in response...
...To Hill, the Bush administration was still full of people who were opposed to negotiations, and who felt the mere act of speaking with foreigners displayed weakness,” writes Chinoy...
...Just as the fall of Baghdad after three weeks demonstrated the dominance of American military power, the decision to remove Saddam Hussein indicated the willingness of George W. Bush to make good on his threats...
...In the second term, those who have chosen to test America’s resolve—the Iranians, the Syrians, the North Koreans—have often found it less than fi rm...
...So three months after Bush threatened serious consequences for North Korea’s continued intransigence, Hill and his team feted their North Korean counterparts with “friendly toasts” at a dinner in a private room at the Hilton Hotel in Berlin...
...If they’re proliferating to Syria, who else...
...It doesn’t seem to matter for the State Department...
...At fi rst, the ripple effects from that intervention seemed to have been what the Bush team predicted...
...No one has played a larger role in this shift than Condoleezza Rice, who has been the most infl uential member of Bush’s foreign policy and national security team since her promotion to the post of chief diplomat...
...According to Hill, documentation of the policy deliberations was discouraged, and in some cases the demands for secrecy originated with Rice...
...Cheney, who once signed a photograph to Israeli general David Ivri thanking him for taking out Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, favored it...
...In fact, he had reiterated this position at a press conference on October 11: And my point to you is, in order to solve this diplomatically, the United States and our partners must have a strong diplomatic hand, and you have a better diplomatic hand with others sending the message than you do when you’re alone...
...Although Hill’s boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, had given him wide latitude for his negotiations she had not authorized a oneonone meeting...
...And I think they weren’t in 2005...
...There are times that the president seems to understand this...
...We have no confl ict with Iran’s people, but we have real differences with Iran’s government—from its support for terrorism, to its destabilizing policies in Iraq, to its pursuit of technologies that could lead to a nuclear weapon...
...Nobody believes that this is a regime that you can believe...
...The previous day, in spite of its many promises over many years to discontinue its nuclear program, North Korea had tested a nuclear weapon...
...For the last two years, the U.S...
...While the North Koreans did return to the six-party talks in December, they were not willing to cut any deals...
...Rice was concerned about the diplomatic consequences of approving a preemptive strike...
...We had dinner together, and there was a kind of, you know, it was a kind of sense that these were people who had been together before, you know, they’d seen a lot together before, but they hadn’t seen this,” Rice recalled to me in an interview in August 2006...
...RICE: Well, those are two very major ways...
...It was not the only time she would use the phrase...
...The question that I’ve had—that I had at the time when we were looking at different options, because what we were doing in Iraq was not working, was if we were going to have more forces, what were they going to do...
...national interests...
...We agreed that we could— that we will fi nd a mechanism within the six-party process to address these fi nancial measures, that we would— it would probably be some kind of a working group to deal with this, and that we would try to address it that way...
...I was initially skeptical as to whether or not we could surge American forces and what would it mean to deliver population security...
...Cheney favored the surge...
...In the race to prevent Iran and North Korea from going nuclear, nothing is more important than time...
...And fi nally, I think that the administration’s work on—I’ll give you two more—Africa...
...government, the debate intensifi ed...
...And just last week, the United States announced 500 metric tons of food aid to North Korea...
...She cut me off before I could fi nish the question...
...troops and too many restrictions on the ones there...
...Hill gave them his word...
...When asked about the accomplishments of her time as secretary, Rice demurs, saying it’s too early for judgments...
...Hill did not receive—indeed, did not ask for—any assurances that North Korea would refrain from conducting further tests...
...And I then spent most of my time trying to fi gure out how we could surge civilians and turn this building around to actually support on the civilian side...
...We will negotiate with them if they suspend their enrichment and reprocessing activities and start down a different road...
...No, in fact, remember that I had—he had—the vice president had been secretary of defense when I was a special assistant to Bush 41 and Colin Powell had been chairman...
...In a Foreign Affairs article she authored back in 2000 as a representative of the Bush presidential campaign, Rice criticized the Clinton administration for a foreign policy so obsessed with diplomacy that it seemed to disregard U.S...
...Will they be punished...
...The North Koreans wanted the United States to ease the fi nancial pressures resulting from year-old sanctions on a bank in Macau involved in shady North Korean transactions...
...Rice showed a knack for anticipating where Bush would end up on an issue and getting there fi rst, in effect advising him to do what he was almost certain to do...
...If there was going to be a surge, what were they going to do...
...But “the North Korea process has been run outside the normal interagency,” says a senior Bush administration offi cial involved in the issue...
...Administration offi cials say the president was as clear in private White House conversations as he had been at his press conference: The United States would deal with this problem multilaterally...
...Bush administration offi cials were divided about what, if anything, to do in response...
...And we’ve acted on it, which is why the Quds Force commander, for instance, who was picked up in Irbil, is a real victory for that policy...
...Getting support from erstwhile U.S...
...When I asked Rice about this on May 9, I started by making the simple observation that we’re in the middle of some pretty intense times with North Korea...
...Let me—let me just start by saying I have not lost my understanding of the North Korean regime...
...Rice began the first term at a disadvantage among the members of Bush’s national security team...
...The previous day, the Wall Street Journal editorial page had criticized Rice on North Korea...
...the national security adviser runs the process...
...I have not broken out the cigars and champagne quite yet, believe me...
...In April 2007, the director of national intelligence called the ranking members of congressional intelligence and foreign affairs committees in for a meeting...
...Hill characterized the meetings as “positive” and “very constructive...
...So, no...
...In January, Hill quietly set up another informal bilateral meeting with the North Koreans, this time with the blessing of his boss...
...Look, you can see the consequences...
...On January 18, 2005, Rice sat calm and poised at a long table before more than a dozen U.S...
...Bush told the nation that he would be sending 20,000 additional troops—fi ve brigades—to Iraq...
...He had been authorized to meet with the North Koreans on the condition that the Chinese representative was also present...
...confronted North Korea about the fact that it had launched a clandestine effort to enrich uranium, a program that had existed for years without detection...
...And it’s been turbulent and it’s been diffi cult...
...I’d been through the collapse of the Soviet Union...
...RICE: Yes...
...The time for diplomacy is now,” she declared, articulating each word carefully for emphasis...
...It was not North Korea’s only clandestine operation...
...And while these have undeniably made efforts more diffi cult for both rogue states, the fact is that six years after Bush’s speech, North Korea is a nuclear power and Iran is either on the brink, if you believe the Israelis and the French, or making substantial progress, if you believe the CIA...
...But according to several offi - cials who worked with her, Rice had a deep insecurity about her own views...
...It wasn’t so much anything was spoken, because it was sharing stories about the Gulf War, sharing stories—but you could just . . . I think I could sense there was . . . I’m trying to fi nd the right word...
...policy, he proclaimed in his second inaugural address, is “ending tyranny in our world...
...After the service at the National Cathedral on September 14, 2001, Rice fl ew by helicopter to Camp David with Rumsfeld to join Powell and Cheney...
...When “dangerous regimes” fail to honor their prior commitments or serially reject generous offers to strike new ones, he said, “It ought to say to all the world that we’re dealing with people that maybe don’t want peace...
...He will raise his voice to her in a way that he would never consider with Robert Gates or Cheney...
...She took it directly to George W. Bush and sought to persuade him to reverse his unequivocal and very public rejection of such direct talks just three months earlier...
...Pressed on whether it was inaccurate to say that she was opposed to the surge, she responded: I had a lot of questions about the surge...
...In 2006, faced with mounting security problems and increasing ethnic violence among Iraqis, President Bush began to consider a wholesale change of strategy in Iraq...
...RICE: Well, there are lots of consequences, I mean, many of which, of course, happen in military operations that I’m not going to talk about...
...Look, I am fundamentally a believer in what we did in Iraq...
...She was a distinguished academic, but her highest level of government service came when she served on the staff of the National Security Council under George H.W...
...SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, and they are...
...Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi voluntarily gave up his own WMD programs, telling Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi that he did not want to be the next Saddam Hussein...
...We’re not actually negotiating with them...
...In both cases, despite our increasingly desperate attempts to convince them to take these negotiations seriously, their behavior became more provocative...
...And so we’re not negotiating with them...
...Despite his consistent condemnations of the U.S...
...I believe we did the right thing...
...Although she listed three “real differences” with the Iranian regime, she suggested such differences might be manageable and offered the prospect of a “new, more normal relationship” if Iran would address just one of them...
...Philip Zelikow, a top aide to Rice and former State Department counselor, circulated a strategy paper that proposed among other things reducing U.S...
...There has been the EU3, the P-5+1, the six-party talks, and numerous other ad hoc negotiating partnerships...
...The congressional leaders who had been briefed on the program wanted to learn more about the strikes and wanted to be able to share what they knew with their colleagues...
...Stephen Hadley, Rice’s former deputy and current national security adviser, broke the news to the lawmakers...
...I would be the fi rst to say that we won’t be able to deliver the fully formed, different Middle East...
...In our recent interview, I asked her directly if we would negotiate with Iran even while they are killing American soldiers in Iraq...
...Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hinted at more open elections, and there were municipal elections in Saudi Arabia...
...Inside the U.S...
...Part of this was a function of her job...
...And so the fact that there are three Security Council resolutions, deprives the Iranian government, the Iranian regime, of the argument that this is just the United States hostile toward Iran and its great culture...
...Not at all...
...A senior Republican in the House says the Bush administration is too focused on getting a deal and offers this blunt assessment: “We’ve been down this road before—Clinton did it, now Bush is doing it...
...One day there would be a fi ght about something and the next day she would say there was an ‘emerging consensus.’ But it was a false consensus...
...And fi nally, NATO...
...TWS: Are there other examples besides the capture in Irbil where we are saying to Iran not only don’t do this, but, “Here are the consequences...
...You know, that’s not bad...
...While State was in the process of establishing a huge presence in Baghdad, across Iraq the uniformed military were America’s de facto diplomats...
...So this has been very much an administration effort...
...I believe we have to win...
...One thing, however, was not ambiguous: Rice intended to signal a new American attitude toward the world and coming changes in the way the Bush administration would conduct foreign policy...
...We are sending other conciliatory messages, too...
...So Bush has lowered his expectations and, more than three years later, has mostly abandoned the tough-guy rhetoric that characterized his fi rst term...
...Today, her critics claim that Rice has lost sight of her own admonition...
...We’re acting...
...And that’s why we’re setting up a monitoring and verifi cation working group for the six-party talks, in addition to the other things we’ve done like the PSI, Proliferation Security Initiatives...
...But in 2005, we weren’t dealing with questions of whether we should have liberated Iraq...
...Multilateral agreements and institutions should not be ends in themselves,” she warned...
...She was at Camp David nearly every weekend they were there,” says an administration offi cial...
...Several current and former colleagues criticized her management, accusing her of trying to fi nd agreement among senior offi cials where there was none...
...The congressional leaders were told to keep the information “close hold” and forbidden from sharing it with their colleagues on the intelligence and foreign affairs committees...
...He seemed to be particularly encouraged that the North Koreans had reaffi rmed their commitment “to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula...
...Rice, though, was almost always the referee...
...So one of the lead elements of our policy that Treasury and State worked out together is that they will not use the international fi nancial system for ill-gotten gains of terrorism...
...But confi rmation of this gambit came from a reliable— if unexpected—source: Chris Hill...
...But— TWS: That’s irrespective of whether they’re continuing to support insurgents in Iraq...
...Okay...
...Anxiety...
...And six years is a lot of time...
...In order to facilitate discussions with the North Koreans Bush had agreed in 2003 to participate in multilateral negotiations, the so-called “six-party talks...
...It’s very emotional...
...I don’t cut out people of my team,” she said...
...government for its failure to be more conciliatory and his attempts to rationalize North Korean irrationality, Chinoy’s book is very well sourced and impeccably reported...
...I was lucky enough the last time around to be here at the end of a big, historical transformation,” she says...
...On January 10, 2007, in a national address from the White House library, Bush announced the surge...
...I believe we are winning...
...The crowd in the hearing room—216 of the Hart Senate offi ce building—was standing room only...
...Then they wrote: Early last month, Israel conducted an airstrike against a facility in northern Syria that press reports have linked to nuclear programs by North Korea, Iran or other rogue states...
...You know, we have a minimal contact between Ryan Crocker and his counterpart in Iraq, where we let them know exactly what we think about what they’re doing and where we’ve delivered the message on a number of occasions that their people will not be safe in Iraq if they’re trying to kill our soldiers...
...And . . . TWS: What other ways have we acted on that, would you say...
...But when I hear people talking about the stable Middle East that we’ve disrupted, I have to ask them, ‘What stability was that?’ ” She goes on, I think we have stronger relations with Japan, South Korea than we’ve ever had, and yet a working relationship with China despite differences, and through the sixparty talks, a mechanism for cooperation on what could have been an area of confl ict between the powers...
...The fi rst term set up what we’ve been able to do in the second term...
...I think we have changed dramatically both the alignment in the Middle East and the expectations of what the Middle East should be and will be,” she says...
...Iran was not the only rogue state eager to test the Bush administration...
...They agreed, and over the course of the summer attended additional briefi ngs...
...But I think what’s expected of it and where it’s headed is fundamentally different than when we came...
...We have gone from a policy of preemption to a policy of preemptive capitulation,” says a disillusioned State Department offi cial...
...And, frankly, I would rather have the Chinese and the South Koreans in the room on a verifi cation mechanism...
...It took a war to eliminate the threat presented by the fi rst member of the “axis of evil,” and fi ve years later American troops are still fi ghting to allow Iraqis to consolidate that victory...
...A declaration that only tells us what we already know—perhaps because someone has coached them on what to say—is worthless, as is a deal that looks past the existential threats that matter most to our security—weapons, proliferation, and clandestine production...
...In reality, of course, the sides did not always line up quite as neatly as the early narrative histories would suggest...
...Information was sketchy, but the facility looked to be modeled after the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon and construction appeared to be in advanced stages...
...She had to defend President Bush, and most especially his decision to remove Saddam Hussein—a decision that was increasingly unpopular...
...we were dealing with questions of how to help the political transition in Iraq and reintegrate Iraq into the international system...
...That’s the question...
...The failure to secure Baghdad, he said, came because there were not enough U.S...
...The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or nonstate entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States,” Bush had said, “and we would hold North Korea fully accountable...
...In a May 9, 2008, interview, Rice denied to me that she deliberately closed the circle of presidential advisers on North Korea...
...And although the Iraqis held three successful elections in 2005 and began to stumble their way towards democracy, the worsening security problems there meant that the State Department necessarily played a secondary role to the Pentagon...
...What else might North Korea be doing...
...The initial news reports were maddeningly vague and very few people understood what had happened and why...
...He fi xed his face to look resolute...
...Two of the Republicans who had been briefed, Representatives Peter Hoekstra and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, took the unprecedented step of venting their frustrations in the pages of the Wall Street Journal...
...On September 6, 2007, Israeli jets bombed the Syrian facility...
...Among the fi rst challenges for the new secretary of state and her new diplomacy in the second term was an old problem: Iraq...
...Where else could there be a North Korea-designed reactor that we don’t know about...
...That’s a slightly different message...
...So yeah, I stood back a little bit from it to kind of observe it...
...That’s what a president does...
...And not only are we saying that, we’re doing it...
...In the period since Bush made those comments there has been a seemingly endless series of multilateral negotiations aimed at retarding these programs or ending them altogether...
...But that speech is better understood in retrospect as a coda to his fi rst term than a bridge to the current one...
...There would be no bilateral talks with North Korea...
...She tried to protect the president by keeping him from making hard decisions and overruling his advisers...
...If this event proves that Syria acquired nuclear expertise or material from North Korea, Iran or other rogue states, it would constitute a grave threat to international security for which Syria and any other involved parties must be held accountable...
...on October 9, 2006, George W. Bush read a statement from the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House...
...But by taking on the diplomatic challenges presented by North Korea and Iran, Rice was revisiting issues that had generated some of George W. Bush’s most uncompromising positions of the fi rst term, expressed in some of his most aggressive rhetoric...
...And of course, it’s very heartening, and heady even, to complete the liberation of Eastern Europe or complete the unifi cation of Germany or, ultimately, complete the collapse of the Soviet Union...
...Bush administration offi cials, however, continued to insist that the information be restricted to the small group that had been previously briefed...
...Bush had accompanied his warning about the “axis of evil” with a solemn pledge...
...Some have unwisely chosen to test America’s resolve, and have found it fi rm...
...She needed to demonstrate an understanding that the war was not going well but, as a member of the national security team responsible, be careful about giving ammunition to critics of the president...
...Don and I have known each other for years, going back to Republican politics in Chicago and some corporate work...
...The American response came three weeks later, on October 31, when Christopher Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacifi c Affairs and the government’s chief negotiator on North Korea’s nuclear program, met privately in Beijing with Kim Gye Gwan, North Korea’s deputy foreign minister...
...Christopher Hill didn’t care...
...Bush was defending his commitment to diplomacy and spoke of the need to work with allies...
...The meeting itself was a major concession...
...Chinoy had access to many of the key characters in the drama that has unfolded over more than a decade...
Vol. 13 • June 2008 • No. 36
