Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story (20 page)

President George W. Bush nominates Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State, November 16, 2004.
© Kevin Lamarque/Reuters/Corbis

The Gorbachev Era
is a collection of essays by leading figures in the field of Soviet studies, many from Stanford, which had been presented at a summer program at Stanford in 1985. In addition to editing the book, Condi contributed two essays entitled “The Development of Soviet Military Power” and “The Soviet Alliance System.” Dallin’s entries were “The Legacy of the Past” and “A Soviet Master Plan? The Non-Existent ‘Grand Design’ in World Affairs.”

Dallin’s wife, a Soviet specialist at the University of California at Berkeley, also contributed two essays to the book, and she recalled how the project got started. “The Stanford Alumni Association had asked Alex to develop a series of lectures for its summer program while Chernenko was still the Party’s General Secretary,” she said. “By the time of the lectures Gorbachev was the country’s new leader and a major transition was under way in the USSR. The chapters examine the nature of the various crises confronting the Soviet system—economic, political, social, military, foreign policy—and also represent one of the early efforts to speculate about what possible direction Soviet policy might take under Gorbachev.” Dr. Lapidus contributed two chapters to the book, “Soviet Society in Transition” and “The Soviet Nationality Question,” and she recalled that her husband and Condi worked well together in spite of their differing political views. “Clearly they approached international affairs and the USSR from rather different political perspectives,” she said, “but these differences didn’t stand in the way of a warm personal relationship, and Condi paid a touching tribute to Alex at a memorial service in our garden when he died.”

The most difficult part of Condi’s life in 1985 was being far away from her parents. Back in Denver, her mother was battling breast cancer and that year, at age sixty-one, she died. Condi flew home to attend the funeral and to grieve with her father and the many relatives who flew to Denver to be with them. Friends recall that music—which was so central to Angelena’s life—encircled them as they thought about her quietly back at the Rice home. “I never shall forget the day we returned from her mother’s funeral,” said Evelyn Glover, a family friend from Birmingham. “When we came in, Condoleezza prayed with everyone and said, ‘Let’s play some of mother’s favorite hymns.’ And she went to the piano.”

During the year of her first Hoover fellowship, Condi also began work on a book about the history and development of military staffs in the United States and the Soviet Union. She continued working on the book after she returned to her teaching, but it was slow going with all of the other responsibilities on her schedule. A couple of years later that book was put on hold indefinitely. In February of 1989 she got a call from an old acquaintance, Brent Scowcroft, who convinced her to take a leave of absence from teaching and put her Soviet expertise into practice.

Scowcroft had just been named national security advisor to newly elected President George Bush, and he wanted Condi to be part of his team on the National Security Council. A moderate Republican and long-time career military man and academic, he would have an enormous influence on Condi’s development as a foreign policy specialist. They shared a passion for Soviet history, they both had academic careers teaching Soviet history, they both spoke Russian and they both held a power politics outlook on international relations.

Stepping in as national security advisor was a smooth transition for Brent because he had served in that post under President Gerald Ford. In that administration, Henry Kissinger was both national security advisor and secretary of state, and Brent was his deputy, his righthand man in national security. When Kissinger stepped down as national security advisor to devote all of his time and energy to his role as secretary of state, Brent replaced him as national security advisor.

Brent, who describes himself as someone who likes to stay out of the limelight, never gave press interviews as national security advisor. He kept eighteen-hour days in the White House, and was widely respected as a consensus builder and expert organizer. In the Ford administration, everyone understood that Kissinger made the foreign policy, and Scowcroft managed, organized, and coordinated it between various agencies and the Oval Office. In terms of recognition, Kissinger’s term as national security advisor was the most high-profile in history and Scowcroft’s the most low-key.

Despite his quiet and unassuming demeanor, Brent is a foreign policy luminary with a long career in the military and the departments of state and defense. Born in Ogden, Utah, he is a Mormon who neither smokes nor drinks. He and his wife, Marian, who have been married since 1951, have one daughter. After graduating from West Point Brent planned on a career as a pilot in the Air Force, but an accident in a defective plane ruined his chances for flying. He went on to get a master’s degree in international relations from Columbia University and returned to West Point as a professor of Russian history. He learned to speak Russian fluently and pursued more Slavic language study at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., after which he used his skills in a foreign service post at the United States embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

In the early 1960s he was an associate professor of political science at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado, where he eventually became full professor and chair of the department. His academic career progressed after he finished his Ph.D. in international relations at Columbia University, and was hired to teach military strategy and security to senior military at the National War College. His career continued to span both academia and government, with a post on the long-range planning staff at Air Force headquarters in Washington and several national security jobs at the Pentagon.

By the time he reached the rank of colonel in 1971, he was appointed one of President Nixon’s military aides and helped construct the realpolitik diplomatic stance with China that culminated in Nixon’s historic trip to China in 1972. After returning from the trip, Brent was promoted to brigadier general. He then went to Moscow as the leader of the advance team to organize Nixon’s trip to the Soviet Union in 1972.

During the Nixon years, Brent was at the center of nuclear arms policy, helping craft the SALT II treaty. He was also given the job of organizing the withdrawal of Americans from Saigon during the evacuation in April 1975.

In contrast to the Nixon/Kissinger strategy of détente, President Reagan took a more aggressive approach to the Soviet Union and Brent was not appointed to a defense or state department post. But the administration needed his military expertise, particularly on analyzing the newly developed multiple-warhead weaponry that was part of Reagan’s fast-growing arsenal. He led the Commission on Strategic Forces to analyze how this weapon could be used. His national security background was also put to use in that administration. Reagan appointed him head of the Tower Commission to investigate the National Security Council’s role in the Iran-Contra affair. In his report, Brent placed the greatest blame on Reagan’s chief of staff but also criticized the president for not keeping track of the Council members and their activities. He concluded that the structure of the National Security Council was not the problem, but the people who were serving in it.

After Brent met Condi at a dinner hosted by the Stanford political science department in 1987, he followed up with her and sat in on one of her classes. Her lecture on the MX missile convinced him that she would be a great asset to his national security team in the new Bush administration. He talked to her at length at a foreign policy strategy meeting in Aspen, Colorado, then invited her on board at the National Security Council.

As national security advisor, Brent’s job was to gather foreign policy opinions and strategies from cabinet members such as Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, Secretary of State James Baker, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell. All three were members of the National Security Council (NSC), the advisory group that discussed foreign policy issues and drafted strategies for implementing that policy.

Scowcroft presented various NSC members’ ideas to the president and made it a priority to keep conflicts and rivalries in check to ensure a smooth-running operation. “Scowcroft and Baker placed a premium on cooperation,” wrote Condoleezza and Philip Zelikow in their book about German unification. “Bitter rivalries between the State Department and the National Security Council staff had been a standard feature of Washington politics since the 1960s,” they added, and although disagreements were part of the territory in any administration, a hallmark of Scowcroft’s style was to prevent upheaval and concentrate on cooperation. “Disputes arose but were always quickly contained,” wrote Condi and Philip.

In January 1989, Condi became director of Soviet and East European affairs at the National Security Council. “I had chosen Condi,” said Brent, “because she had extensive knowledge of Soviet history and politics, great objective balance in evaluating what was going on, and a penetrating mind with an affinity for strategy and conceptualization. She [was] . . . conversant and up to date with military affairs.” He also felt that she could hold her own when the job got rough. “She was charming and affable, but could be tough as nails when the situation required,” he said. Four months later she was upgraded to senior director for Soviet affairs and also named special assistant to the president for national security affairs. Condi’s closest associates were Philip Zelikow, manager of European policy and Dennis Ross, another Soviet specialist and director of policy planning. Condi knew Dennis from California, where he had been a professor at Berkeley. All three were accountable to Robert Blackwill, the senior director for European and Soviet affairs.

Besides the president and cabinet members mentioned above, other members of the president’s National Security Council included Brent’s deputy, Robert Gates, and Robert Hutchings, head of the Council’s Southeastern Europe and Germany departments. Others with whom Condi worked closely included Robert Zoellick in the state department and Paul Wolfowitz in the department of defense.

Condi held three major job responsibilities as part of the National Security Council staff. First, she helped coordinate the policy-making process by gathering information from those at the assistant secretary or undersecretary level. Second, she served as an aid to Brent Scowcroft, helping him decide which foreign officials to see and preparing for those visits. “We went to the meetings,” she said, “and I would write a paper for him suggesting issues he might want to raise. If an issue couldn’t be settled at my level and it had to go to the Scowcroft, Baker, Cheney, Powell level, then it was my responsibility to make sure Brent was prepared.” Her third area of responsibility was acting as the president’s “personal foreign policy staff.” In this function, she wrote briefing papers about issues to be raised at foreign policy meetings with other heads of state.

The first job she faced as one of the president’s top political minds was cracking the case of the 500-pound cake.

On the administration’s first day at work in January, the White House received a huge box with a Soviet postmark but no other identifying information. The Secret Service’s bomb squad carefully transported it to a secure area and, decked out in full bomb-proof regalia, opened it. Inside was a slightly crushed but magnificently decorated, gigantic cake. Condi was enlisted to track down who sent it. With only a postmark to go on, she launched a personal investigation and discovered that a bakers’ collective from a small Soviet town had made the cake for President Bush to congratulate him on his inauguration.

The president found this very touching, and he asked that a photo be taken of him and his family by the cake and sent to the bakers’ group. He then wanted the cake sent to a charity that could distribute and enjoy it. The photo session took several days to organize and by the time the cake was to be sent away the rats in the Secret Service warehouse had polished most of it off.

In March, Condi was given her first critical assignment—one that put her at the center of the policy-making process. The president had just received a lengthy National Security Review outlining the United States’ policy history with the Soviet Union. He had requested this report in an effort to begin formulating his own approach to Gorbachev. Brent Scowcroft thought the report was sorely lacking in both detail and ideas, and he instructed Condi to lead a National Security Council team in writing up a “think piece” that focused on Gorbachev—the policies he had already formed and the ideas he had for the future.

Up until then, Condi had written about Gorbachev, publishing articles about him in journals and book compilations and adding substance to the study of the Soviet Union. With this assignment, she had an opportunity to put her knowledge of Gorbachev and the Soviet system to work as a shaper of U.S. policy for the first time. The document that came out of her group formed the basis of the Bush administration’s policy with the Soviet Union. “Condi’s memo laid out the premises that I believed should guide the development of an overall strategy for U.S.-Soviet relations,” wrote Scowcroft, “and it evolved into a four-part approach for coping with Gorbachev.”

He described these four steps as strengthening America’s foreign policy image with a clear, confident policy agenda; ensuring that America’s allies understand the U.S. commitment to them and to arms control; taking action—including economic aid—in Eastern Europe to promote the independence launched by Gorbachev’s reforms; and working “aggressively to promote regional stability” in the world through U.S.-Soviet cooperation.

Condi’s input to this blueprint for American foreign policy included a supporting memo that discussed the turmoil within the Soviet Union. She pointed out that as Moscow’s old political structures crumbled, it was forced to look for guidance in the outside world. This opened up the possibility of an ambitious and dramatic new approach to the Soviet Union, one that involved “setting our sights literally on transforming the behavior of the Soviet Union at home and abroad,” according to Brent Scowcroft.