No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington Page 6

  I put on a robe and went to get the paper, thankful that for once it had been delivered a little early. “Go to page A20.” There in bold headlines was an interview in which Colin had said that we’d tell the South Koreans that we’d take up the Clinton administration’s approach to North Korea. “Do you want me to take care of this, or do you want to?”

  “I’ll take care of it, Mr. President.” That, in a nutshell, is what the national security advisor does: takes care of it.

  I called Colin and went through the same drill. “Get your newspaper.” He did. He immediately saw the problem. Colin had intended to communicate that we were reviewing the policy but would not necessarily throw out all aspects of the Clinton approach. Truthfully, the Post had “overwritten” the story. The tendency of journalists to take a kernel and turn it into a full-blown scoop is one that I came to know well—and suffer from—throughout my eight years in Washington.

  Colin was calm and thoroughly professional and said that he would take care of it. I went to the Oval immediately upon arriving at the White House and told the President that Colin would retract his statement by the time he arrived for the meeting. He did, calling the press to say that he “had gotten out a little forward on his skis.” The damage had been done, though, and the public perception of Colin Powell being reined in by the White House lingered and festered.

  The meeting with Kim Dae-jung was polite, but it was very clear that we were worlds apart on how to deal with the North. I do not doubt that Kim was a compassionate man and undoubtedly concerned about the human rights abuses and the misery of the North Korean people, whose malnutrition resulted in as much as a five-inch height differential with their South Korean brethren. Yet he gave every indication that he would never challenge the North in any way. We were convinced that the Agreed Framework was doing little to deal with Pyongyang’s arsenal and that South Korea’s largesse was helping to prop up the regime. George W. Bush was offended by the tyranny of Kim Jong-il and could not understand why South Korea’s government seemed unmoved.

  One of the hardest things about diplomacy is to put yourself into someone else’s shoes without compromising your own principles. The United States, sitting on a protected continent away from the monstrous North Korean regime, could be more aggressive in confronting it. For South Korea, a relatively new and prosperous democracy, accommodating the regime was a price worth paying to maintain stability and peace. North Korea has thousands of missiles and artillery pieces that could reach Seoul, only thirty miles from the border. And too much focus on the plight of the North Korean people had another downside: what would happen at the time of unification of the North and South? Many years later a senior South Korean diplomat would tell me that his biggest worry about the North was that Seoul would be saddled with millions of “brain-damaged midgets.” He was not being cruel; he was articulating the special vulnerability that South Korea felt.

  The United States had different interests. North Korea’s nuclear program was a global, not just a regional, issue. Its treatment of its own people offended not just the President personally but also our country’s commitment to human rights. Those dueling perspectives would divide us until the ascent in 2008 of Lee Myung-bak, who placed greater public emphasis on North Korean abuses. But for the moment, there was little common ground on which to move forward.

  That was painfully obvious in the press availability after the meeting. President Bush always did his best to cover over differences with his guests. As was the usual practice, the two sides got together before the press conference and agreed how to handle difficult questions so that there was not an obvious break. But the press, armed with Colin’s comments of the day before, did not buy it. The visit ended sourly with a split between the United States and one of its closest Asian allies.

  And the issue of how to deal with North Korea would soon cause some of the most divisive moments within the administration.

  The Special Relationship Begins

  RELATIONS WITH OUR European allies started somewhat more smoothly. The President’s first meeting with a European leader, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain, scheduled for February 23, was greatly anticipated. The “special relationship,” as the friendship between Great Britain and the United States is known, is as solid as any in international politics. There is a kinship and a deep sense of shared values forged through years of shared sacrifice, particularly during World War II. The relationship is so comfortable that I once had to remind a presidential speechwriter that Great Britain was not America’s oldest ally; that would be France. It’s not that no differences exist, but there is a deep feeling that if you cannot count on the Brits, you are really alone.

  The political relationship transcends changes in administrations in London and Washington. Nevertheless, the personal relationships between British prime ministers and U.S. presidents have differed in terms of warmth and depth. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were close because they were cut from the same ideological cloth and saw the world similarly. The relationship between Thatcher and George H. W. Bush was cooler and sometimes difficult, particularly during the period of German unification, about which Mrs. Thatcher harbored deep reservations.

  Because Bill Clinton and Tony Blair shared, as Reagan and Thatcher had, an ideological kinship, their relationship came to symbolize the triumph of center-left politics, dubbed the “Third Way,” and its revitalization of Labour Party politics in Britain and the Democratic Party in America. They were personally close, as were their wives, Hillary Clinton and Cherie Blair, both lawyers with the instincts of social activists of the late 1960s. In fact, I chuckled to myself when a few months later, during our first visit to Chequers, the British prime minister’s equivalent of Camp David, I encountered a prominently displayed picture of the Blairs and the Clintons. I wondered if someone had forgotten to move it.

  As Blair’s visit approached, Washington (and for that matter London) chatter was about whether George W. Bush, a conservative Texan and foreign policy neophyte, would have anything at all in common with the sophisticated, smooth, and somewhat left-leaning Tony Blair. Tony Blair was a leader who exuded vast confidence and competence, a “rock star” in international politics. The press was intentionally setting up a test for the new U.S. President. Could he hold his own with Blair?

  Since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s time in office, Camp David, nestled in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains, has been the presidents’ weekend retreat from the pressures of Washington and the gilded cage of the White House. It is rustic in an elegant way, with individual cabins complete with fireplaces and large outdoor decks in a wooded setting. Over the years it has also become a place to take foreign leaders who merit the signal of importance and camaraderie that everyone reads into such an invite.

  The Blairs arrived on Friday afternoon, February 23, 2001, becoming the Bushes’ first foreign visitors to Camp David. There was a low-key welcoming ceremony at the helipad in keeping with the bucolic setting of Camp David: no national anthems, just the marine and navy honor guard displaying the national flags. As would become standard practice, the guests were given a little time to freshen up before the first meeting in Laurel Lodge, the main meeting cabin at Camp David.

  Meetings between heads of government, particularly first meetings, are somewhat scripted. Any event of the kind sends the White House into hyperdrive. Briefing books have to be prepared by the NSC staff, covering every imaginable issue that might arise. Someone has to worry about the social arrangements: Who goes to dinner with the principals, and who entertains the rest of the staff? What press interviews need to be held to set the stage and by whom? The two-day visit takes many weeks of preparation. And if you are a smart national security advisor, you read every word and go over every detail, no matter how small.

  Then there is the work to be done with the staff of the visiting leader. David Manning, Prime Minister Blair’s exceptionally capable and trustworthy foreign policy advisor, and I had worked to put together a pr
ogram. That was routine practice before the “bosses” met. But I knew that my relationship with David was not going to be routine. David was a career diplomat, elegant and urbane—and funny. He’d served as the counselor and head of the Political Section at the British embassy in Moscow, and we shared a fascination and frustration with Russia and Russians. We became very close, and I’m grateful to have found pals like David and Catherine Manning, a friendship that has outlasted our government service.

  In the light of all that these men would do together after September 11, 2001, the agenda we put together for that first meeting at Camp David seems, in retrospect, very mundane. The two talked about the development of a European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP), which many American experts saw as a competitor of NATO. Blair wanted a nod from the President that the United States would support enhanced independent European forces. The President wanted to make sure that the Europeans, who were unwilling to spend more for defense, would not simply hollow out NATO by trying to make their already meager forces do double duty. And we wanted a reference to the importance of missile defense—or at least an acknowledgment of the importance of both offense and defense. They both got what they needed. There was a kind of review of the international landscape, including an agreement to work together to strengthen the sanctions on Saddam. They talked about Russian President Vladimir Putin and missile defense, the President telling Blair that he was determined to withdraw from the Anti–Ballistic Missile Treaty. Blair was calm, urging only that we try to work out a deal with the Russians rather than withdrawing unilaterally.

  So the first encounter was pretty unremarkable, but I thought that the President was nervous, talking rapidly and in a staccato cadence that was a little hard to follow. When the discussion turned to a nettlesome trade dispute between the European Union and the United States concerning bananas, Blair did something that, either inadvertently or by design, broke the ice. It wasn’t hard to tell that the President’s knowledge of the issue was not, frankly, very deep. Blair made his two or three points in response and said, “And I have now just said everything that I know about this issue.” With an agreement to kick the issue over to the “experts,” everyone relaxed.

  The two men continued their discussions over a walk around the grounds and then met the press. One of the final questions was “What do you two have in common?” The implication was, of course, that they had nothing in common. The President said, “We both use Colgate toothpaste.” Okay. There has long been speculation about how, exactly, he knew that, but it was an amiable end to a very good day.

  That night after dinner, all of us went to the small movie theater and watched Meet the Parents. Well, I watched part of it. As the President tells it, I was laughing robustly through the first half of the movie and then fell silent. I awoke to the prime minister of the United Kingdom and the President of the United States standing over me, saying, “Wake up, Dr. Rice.” In my job, you slept when you could.

  I believe that during those private talks, George W. Bush and Tony Blair began to see that they shared something more important than ideological kinship in the modern political sense. They shared values, and in time they would see that they shared a willingness to do difficult and controversial things. That was what they had in common, and it would soon make them undertake, together, actions to radically change the status quo in world politics.

  A Crystalline Structure Called the Kyoto Protocol

  IT WAS A good thing that the President had established a relationship with the British prime minister, because he would soon need friends in Europe. From the start George W. Bush was viewed with suspicion by the European powers, uncertain of how this brash Texan would exercise U.S. power. Ironically, it was not a matter of war and peace that led to the first confrontation with our European allies; it was climate change.

  During the campaign the governor had been clearly opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement that would commit industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 percent below their 1990s levels over the following decade. He opposed Kyoto because it exempted roughly 80 percent of the world, including major population centers such as China and India, from compliance. He also argued that it would have had an adverse effect on the U.S. economy. He was not alone. The U.S. Senate had, in a nonbinding resolution, rejected the accord 95 to 0, causing President Clinton to shelve the treaty.

  Nonetheless, though skeptical of some of the more alarmist predictions about climate change, the governor had shown sensitivity to the issue of carbon emissions and had promised in the campaign to regulate power plants’ emissions of four pollutants, including the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

  I was in my office on March 13, 2001, when I got a phone call asking me to “clear” (sign off on) a letter from the President to four Republican senators who had asked the administration to clarify its position on limiting pollutants to address the greenhouse gas effect.

  I immediately saw a problem with the letter, and since I knew that there was some urgency, I went directly to the President to tell him that we needed to change one sentence. That sentence criticized the Kyoto Protocol in the harshest possible terms and suggested we would have nothing to do with it. I wanted to add mitigating language saying that even though we could not support the treaty because it was fatally flawed, we would work with our allies to address the problem of climate change. I thought that it was the kind of standard line diplomats used all the time and that the President would have no problem with it.

  When I walked into the Oval and described the approach, the President looked surprised and said, “But the letter is already gone. The Vice President is taking it up to the Hill because he has a meeting up there. I thought you cleared the letter.” I was flabbergasted. I hurriedly called Colin and then Christine Todd Whitman, the EPA administrator, to tell them what had happened and to suggest that they call in immediately to protest. The President said, “It’s too late.”

  Later, when it was clear that nothing could be done, I returned to the Oval to talk to the President. I said, “Mr. President, this is going to color your foreign policy from the outset, and that’s a problem.” I also said that I was appalled that the Vice President had been allowed to take a letter to Capitol Hill on a matter of international importance without my clearance or, more important, that of the secretary of state.

  In fairness to the President, I think he had thought of the letter as addressing a domestic issue for our Congress. After all, we had been clear that we would not support Kyoto. What was the big fuss? But I knew better. As I predicted, we suffered through this issue over the years: drawing that early line in the sand helped to establish our reputation for “unilateralism.” We handled it badly.

  My immediate reaction was not to admit the mistake. It was my bad luck to have a meeting with the European Union ambassadors at the Swedish envoy’s residence the very next day. I should have just said that the letter didn’t fully reflect our view and that we’d work with them. Instead, because they were so aggressive in their questioning, I became combative too. “Kyoto is dead on arrival,” I intoned. The meeting was “off the record” but obviously would be reported back to their capitals. In fact, it took a nanosecond for those words to ricochet around the European continent.

  Unfortunately, the situation continued to get worse. The President was scheduled to visit Sweden for his first U.S.-EU summit. The European Union was at that time composed of fifteen countries and had several principal bodies, including the European Parliament, the European Commission, and the European Council, headed by a country presidency that rotated among the members every six months. At that point, Sweden held the presidency. The meeting with the commission president and the Swedes was deadly dull, with everyone reading their talking points and staff-produced “interventions” made on every conceivable issue. At one point we were discussing NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe, and I told the President that I wanted to say something. Much to my astonishment, he announced to the group, �
�Condi, you got something to say real quick.” I was furious because his offhand tone seemed to belittle my participation.

  In the early days, the President also had a tendency to finish my sentences for me. Finally one day, standing in the Oval, I said, “Mr. President, I know we’re close and that you think you know what I’m going to say. I know you don’t mean any harm, but I’m sure others see it as a sign of disrespect for my opinion.” He was crestfallen. I felt bad bringing it up, but I was walking a fine line. I was staff, not a Cabinet secretary. At home and abroad, leaders and colleagues had to know that the President listened to me. As time went on I became very aware that no one doubted our relationship. The President would tell people that we were like brother and sister. Yet it wasn’t always easy to get the balance right.

  That evening in Sweden, the President went to dinner with the heads of government of the European Union. Colin was at a foreign ministers dinner. Karen Hughes and I were the “plus two,” meaning the two staff allowed in the room with the President. Seated around a long table in a rather unattractive and quite cold room, the President was treated to lecture after lecture about climate change. The script didn’t change; it was just delivered in different languages: “Climate change is a great international crisis, and the United States is turning its back on its responsibilities and its allies.” “Don’t you know that the whole planet is at stake and only Kyoto can save us?” It was as if no other subject existed. Though I’d predicted that this would happen, I too was appalled.

  At one point the President took his translation earpiece out of his ear. Uh oh, I thought, he’s going to show them that he doesn’t care what they think. I was relieved when, moments later, he just shifted it to his other ear.

  Fortunately, José María Aznar, the prime minister of Spain, who would become a close ally of the President, helped calm the atmosphere by lighting a cigar. A few others also helped. Prime Minister Blair made his points without the accusatory tone that dominated the evening. The Finnish participant made fun of the Danish intervention, which seemed to suggest that windmills were the answer to the world’s climate problem.