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Schwartz Fellow Fred Kaplan shares his take on the conversation:
Sometimes even U.N. diplomats have an exciting week. Or, as Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations said of her time last week, a “fascinating and frustrating and, really, in the end, depressing week.”
She was speaking Monday night in a discussion at the Core Club hosted by the New America Foundation and Foreign Policy magazine. And she was, of course, speaking about the Russian-Chinese veto of a resolution sponsored by the Arab League, demanding that Syrian president Bashar al Assad step down and that his vice president negotiate a transition to democracy.
Rice said she’s convinced the two countries will wind up the losers in this contest and in the entire Middle East. Assad’s “time frame is limited,” she said, “his regime will not endure.” And the Arab League nations will remember who was on whose side. (Rice had harsher language in the immediate wake of the vote, pronouncing the United States “disgusted” by the “shameful” veto. Susan Glasser, editor of Foreign Policy and one of Rice’s interlocutors Monday night, called Rice’s speech “one of the most undiplomatic” ever delivered by a UN ambassador, “and I mean that in a very favorable way.”)
In an intriguing recount of her dread week, Rice came very close to saying, without actually saying, that a compromise seemed in the works on Thursday. Then, on Friday, the Russians announced they would present an amendment to the resolution. They introduced the amendment on Saturday. It had duller teeth than even the resolution of last November, which Assad had signed and the Russians had approved. The deal, clearly, was off.
Still, Rice dismissed the idea of a Cold War revival, ticking off the various resolutions on which the U.S. and Russia have cooperated. Of her Russian counterpart, the voluble Vitaly Churkin, she said, with an odd merriment, “We fight, we laugh, and sometimes we’re in agreement, sometimes we’re not.” Syria is a more polarizing issue than any other, she added, because of Russia’s economic and military interests and because Russia is still “finding its bearings” while “trying to adjust to a rapidly evolving region” (as if the U.S. has the place figured out).
Colum Lynch, who writes Foreign Policy’s Turtle Bay blog and was also part of the conversation, said Churkin had told him that Russia will come out of this episode with a diplomatic win because Middle Eastern leaders appreciate its loyalty to a beleaguered ally.
Rice responded that she hasn’t found any of these alleged leaders. After all, Egypt co-sponsored the Syrian resolution. Just before the vote, “throngs” of Arab ambassadors surrounded the Chinese ambassador, pleading with him not to stand with Russia. The Arab League will not back down from its pressure on Syria; nor will the United States.
Lynch asked whether the pressure can amount to much without military action. Rice was vague, saying there hasn’t been “active discussion” of military intervention “as an immediate next step” and that we prefer the crisis be settled without the use of force. We shall see.
At one point, a member of the audience noted that Hillary Clinton has said she’ll step down from her position as secretary of state after President Obama’s first term, and asked Rice about her plans. She replied that it’s entirely up to Obama. “I love my job,” she said, back in true diplomatic form. “I will do whatever I’m asked to do.”
-- Fred Kaplan
Kaplan, a Senior Schwartz Fellow at the New America
Foundation, is the “War Stories” columnist for Slate magazine
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FEATURING
U.S. AMBASSADOR SUSAN RICE
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
IN COVERSATION WITH
SUSAN GLASSER
Editor-in-Chief, Foreign Policy
PETER BERGEN
Director, National Security Studies Program
New America Foundation
COLUM LYNCH
Author of Turtle Bay blog on Foreignpolicy.com
SPEAKER BIOS:
AMBASSADOR SUSAN RICE
Ambassador Susan E. Rice serves as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations and is a member of President Obama's Cabinet. Since her unanimous confirmation by the U.S. Senate on January 22, 2009, she has served on the front lines of the President's new era of engagement, helping to repair frayed international relationships and end American isolation on a host of issues affecting international peace, security, and economic development. At the United Nations, Ambassador Rice has worked to advance U.S. interests, defend universal values, strengthen the world's common security and prosperity, and promote respect for human rights.
Under Ambassador Rice's leadership, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations has helped win the stiffest UN sanctions ever against Iran and North Korea, unprecedented action to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials, support for life-saving interventions in Libya and Cote d'Ivoire, cooperation on the referendum for independence in Southern Sudan, vital UN assistance in Afghanistan and Iraq, and initial progress on reform of the flawed UN Human Rights Council. In a world of 21st-century threats that pay no heed to borders, rebuilding a strong basis for international cooperation has helped the United States tackle its foreign policy priorities and make the American people safer.
Prior to serving as U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Rice served as Senior Advisor for National Security Affairs on the Obama for America Campaign.
SUSAN GLASSER
Susan Glasser is editor in chief of Foreign Policy, the magazine of global politics, economics, and ideas. A longtime foreign correspondent and editor for the Washington Post, Glasser joined Foreign Policy in 2008 and has been spearheading the magazine's ambitious expansion in print and online at ForeignPolicy.com. During her tenure, the magazine has won numerous awards for its innovative coverage, including two National Magazine Awards, and was recently selected as a finalist for "magazine of the year" by the American Society of Magazine Editors.
Glasser spent four years as co-chief of the Post's Moscow Bureau, throughout President Vladimir Putin's first term, during which time she also traveled extensively around the countries of the former Soviet Union. Together with her husband, New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker, she wrote Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution, which was published in 2005. Glasser also covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as a correspondent for the Post, including the battle of Tora Bora.
As an editor at the Post, Glasser held a number of senior positions, including assistant managing editor for national news and editor of Outlook, the Post's weekly section of commentary and ideas. She started at the Post in 1998 as deputy national editor overseeing the Monica Lewinsky investigation and subsequent impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Prior to that, Glasser worked for eight years at Roll Call, the preeminent newspaper covering the U.S. Congress, where she rose from an intern to be the top editor.
A graduate of Harvard University, Glasser lives in Washington with Baker and their son.
PETER BERGEN
Peter Bergen is a print and television journalist, and the author of Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden ( 2001), which has been translated into 18 languages and The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of Al Qaeda's Leader (2006). Both books were named among the best non-fiction books of the year by The Washington Post, and documentaries based on the books were nominated for Emmys in 2002 and 2007. His most recent book is The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda (2011). New York Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani writes, "For readers interested in a highly informed, wide-angled, single-volume briefing on the war on terror so far, 'The Longest War' is clearly that essential book." Tom Ricks, also writing in the Times, described the book as "stunning." Holy War, Inc. and The Longest War were both New York Times bestsellers.
Mr. Bergen is CNN's national security analyst and a fellow at New York University's Center on Law & Security. He has written for many publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Rolling Stone, The National Interest, TIME, Newsweek, Washington Monthly, The Nation, Mother Jones, Washington Times, The Times (UK), The Daily Telegraph (UK), and The Guardian (UK). He is a contributing editor at The New Republic and has worked as a correspondent for National Geographic television, Discovery and CNN. In 2008 he was an adjunct lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and he worked as an adjunct professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University for several years. He has testified on Capitol Hill on a number of occasions. Mr. Bergen holds a M.A in modern history from New College, Oxford University.
As director of New America's National Security Studies Program, Mr. Bergen leads the Foundation's analysis of terrorism, counterinsurgency, South Asia’s geopolitics and other national security concerns. Mr. Bergen's personal Web site can be accessed at: www.peterbergen.com.
COLUM LYNCH
Colum Lynch has been been reporting on foreign policy and national security for the Washington Post since June 1999. As the Post's United Nations reporter, Lynch has been involved in the paper's diplomatic coverage of a broad range of crises, including conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, and Somalia, and the nuclear standoffs with Iran and North Korea. He has also played a key part in the Post's diplomatic reporting on the Iraq war, the International Criminal Court, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and U.S. counterterrorism strategy.
Lynch's enterprise reporting has explored the underside of international diplomacy. His investigations have uncovered a U.S. spying operation in Iraq, Dick Cheney's financial links to Saddam Hussein, and evidence of corruption, sexual misconduct, and other crimes in U.N. peacekeeping missions. Last year, Lynch disclosed classified documents that showed the Bush administration violated U.S. law by promoting an alleged Rwandan war criminal to serve as the second-highest ranking U.N. peacekeeper in Darfur.
Lynch has appeared frequently on the Lehrer News Hour, MSNBC, NPR radio, and the BBC. He has also moderated academic discussions on foreign policy, including a recent meeting on humanitarian intervention at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Lynch received a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1985 and a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 1987. He previously worked for the Boston Globe.
