On December 1, 2008, at a press conference on a cold Chicago morning, Obama made my nomination as U.N. ambassador official, while announcing the rest of his national security team.
For the last three weeks, the transition had been consumed by the full-blown economic crisis the new administration would face and by top personnel decisions. The national security transition team focused on engaging with Bush administration counterparts at the various agencies, supporting senior nominees preparing for their confirmation hearings, and considering lower level staff selections. We also readied the high-profile foreign policy choices we intended to make in the early days of the new presidency. Priorities included banning torture and codifying Obama’s determination to close Guantánamo and reform detention policy. As my focus had necessarily shifted to preparing for confirmation, selecting key staff, and getting ready to hit the ground in New York, the press conference was the first time I allowed the reality and responsibility of where I was headed next to hit me.
I had flown out to Chicago with my parents, Ian, and the kids to be there as Obama, joined by Vice President–elect Joe Biden, took to the podium to speak to the seriousness of the moment—with his signature optimism.
Obama prefaced our introductions by providing an overview of the national security challenges facing the nation, calling them “just as grave—and just as urgent—as our economic crisis.” As Obama had argued during the campaign, economic power went hand in hand with military might as foundations of our national power. Now, he stressed, “America must also be strong at home to be strong abroad.”
Sharing his vision of the complex world he was about to inherit, President-elect Obama posited, “The common thread linking these challenges is the fundamental reality that in the twenty-first century, our destiny is shared with the world’s. From our markets to our security, from our public health to our climate, we must act with the understanding that, now more than ever, we have a stake in what happens across the globe.”
Clearly outlining the mandate of the team I was joining—along with Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, Robert Gates, who would remain as secretary of defense, Eric Holder as attorney general, Janet Napolitano as secretary of homeland security, and General James Jones as national security advisor—Obama declared: “We will show the world once more that America is relentless in the defense of our people, steady in advancing our interests, and committed to the ideals that shine as a beacon to the world: democracy and justice; opportunity and unyielding hope—because American values are America’s greatest export to the world.”
Obama, introducing me next to last, called me a “close and trusted advisor,” and added that he saw the role of permanent representative of the United States to the United Nations as a crucial one. My job would be to represent the U.S. to the world at the only body that included all its 193 nation-states. “Representing” means showing up, being in charge, speaking with authority, and negotiating to advance American interests. Every word I uttered, every step I took, would be closely watched and judged, but I felt ready.
“As in previous administrations,” President-elect Obama noted, “the U.N. ambassador will serve as a member of my cabinet and an integral member of my team. Her background as a scholar, on the National Security Council, and Assistant Secretary of State will serve our nation well at the United Nations. Susan knows the global challenges we face demand global institutions that work. She shares my belief that the U.N. is an indispensable and imperfect forum. She will carry the message that our commitment to multilateral action must be coupled with a commitment to reform.”
At the press conference, each nominee gave short remarks. In mine, I repeated a line that I had used frequently, first in crafting Obama’s remarks during the campaign and later in my own speeches: “To enhance our common security, we must invest in our common humanity.” It is a statement that still reflects my view of how America should best lead in the world, even after years of testing.
In the conference room, where the nominees convened briefly with Obama and Biden before the announcement, I saw Hillary Clinton for the first time since the campaign began. I congratulated her and told her I looked forward to working with her. She was polite but a little cool, until after the event when it came time to greet my family. Then she could not have been more gracious, and I continue to prize a picture we all took together with a very small Maris posed adorably in front of Hillary, whom she already quite admired.
My next order of business was to be confirmed by the Senate as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and to get ready for the Big Leagues. Like other nominees, I was given a small team of experts to help guide and prepare me for the hearing with massive briefing books and “murder boards”—intensive mock hearings where I was peppered with tough questions that could arise. They also set up obligatory meetings in advance of the hearing with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which turned out to be uneventful. Indeed, the whole confirmation process could not have proceeded more swiftly or smoothly. Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Evan Bayh of Indiana, both of whom I had known previously, kindly agreed to introduce me to the committee.
Senator Collins began, “The people of Maine are proud of what this remarkable woman has accomplished in her distinguished career of service to our nation, and we take special pride in her strong ties to our state.” After detailing my family’s history in Maine going back to the early twentieth century, she explained that we first met “when we were both participants in a series of seminars sponsored by the Aspen Strategy Group.” Collins continued, “I was so impressed with her brilliance and nuanced insight as I listened to her discuss various foreign policy challenges. I knew at that time that she was a real star.” Finally, she concluded, “I can think of… no better messenger than Dr. Susan Rice. I am honored to present her to this distinguished committee, and I enthusiastically endorse her nomination.”
Collins’s comments were so generous that committee chairman John Kerry quipped, “What a wonderful introduction. Remind me that if I am ever in need of an introduction, I want to put in my reservation right now. It does not get better than that.” The rest of my hearing proceeded in the same vein, with Maris providing the only drama by silently frolicking and dancing in the aisle of the hearing room. Senators from both parties asked important and serious questions, but there was no rancor, and I committed no fumbles. One week later, on January 22, for the second time in my career, I was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. Three days later, I went to work at the U.N. on behalf of the American people.
Monday mornings began the same way for four and a half years.
A rushed awakening, shower, dress, kiss Ian and the kids goodbye, dash out the door to jump in the big armored SUV with just my briefcase and a small day bag, and speed to National Airport. For me and my Diplomatic Security (DS) agents—who protected me in both Washington and New York—the airport runs became an adrenaline-rushed game to see how close we could cut it and still make the shuttle to or from New York. Usually, I could leave home in D.C. at 7:30 a.m. and just make the eight o’clock shuttle to La Guardia. Once at the airport, we walked briskly (as heels made running inadvisable) around the security checkpoint, down the corridor, and straight onto the plane, with the gate agents variously scowling or hailing our just-in-time arrival.
Usually the last to board, with one DS agent accompanying me, I would settle into my coach seat and read my briefing materials and newspapers in preparation for the day ahead. The dash to the plane got my juices flowing and, barring a weather delay or a rare traffic impediment, we made it to New York in time for me to be in my office or the chair behind the “United States of America” plaque at the United Nations Security Council before the 10 a.m. session began.
Three days after President Obama’s inauguration, and one day after I was confirmed, on January 23, 2009, I was sworn in to office. The following Monday, when I first arrived in New York to start my tenure as U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, Ian and I began a whole new long-distance balancing act. He had recently been promoted to executive producer of the Washington, D.C.–based This Week, ABC News’s Sunday show, and the kids were well-ensconced in schools they liked—both factors that made moving the family to New York a nonstarter. In D.C., Ian had the support of my mom, who was a hands-on grandparent, and our indispensable nanny, Adela Jimenez. So, for four and a half years, I commuted, and our kids saw me mainly on the weekends. It’s difficult to assess the impact of losing that time at home. I know how hard it was for me to be removed from the daily lives of Jake and Maris and fully appreciated how much my absence placed added burdens on Ian.
By the time I arrived in New York, I had assembled a small but first-rate team to help me run the U.S. Mission. Some, like my wise and savvy chief of staff Brooke Anderson and foreign service officer Erica Barks-Ruggles, my deputy who ran our Washington office, had been colleagues and friends since the Clinton administration. Others, like my senior advisors Elizabeth Cousens, a good friend since Oxford, and Salman Ahmed, whom I had not met before the transition, were deeply experienced experts who had worked for years in and around the U.N.
My principal deputy was Ambassador Alejandro “Alex” Wolff, whom I first met in the 1990s when he was executive assistant to Secretary Albright. A deeply experienced foreign service officer with an impish grin and an accompanying mischievous streak, he had also worked as deputy under my two immediate predecessors, Zalmay Khalilzad and John Bolton. Alex knew everything and everybody at the Mission and the U.N. and helped ensure I met the right ambassadors and U.N. officials in the correct order, and that I was well-briefed on their comparative strengths and weaknesses. Alex assisted me with plotting strategy on tough issues and managed the budget, day-to-day operations, and personnel at the Mission. This freed me to represent the U.S. in the Security Council, before the press, at events and receptions, and to lead the Mission through the most consequential debates and negotiations.
President Obama came to office with a clear vision of his foreign policy principles and priorities. My primary goal as U.S. ambassador was to advance his objectives through the United Nations. First and foremost, Obama had to deal with the complex challenges he inherited, chiefly: preventing a global economic meltdown; responsibly winding down major ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and degrading Al Qaeda while bringing to justice Osama bin Laden, who remained at large.
On top of this, Obama set out to seize fresh opportunities and confront threats that would peak in coming decades. Asia, the emerging center of gravity for the global economy and geopolitical competition, is where Obama sought to rebalance U.S. resources and attention. To make the world more secure, he prioritized stemming nuclear weapons proliferation, locking down “loose” nuclear material and an arms reduction treaty with Russia, while envisioning “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” Similarly, Obama invested in combating climate change, while strengthening our cyber defenses and global health security.
At a broader level, President Obama understood upon taking office that his overarching goal must be to renew America’s global leadership. As we had agreed during our first substantive policy conversation over dinner at Tony Lake’s house in 2005, Obama viewed America’s strength and prosperity as inextricably linked to that of others; we do not live in a zero-sum world. When America cooperates and inspires, when we lift up others, we tap into common aspirations for dignity and opportunity, rather than stoke fear and disunity. That is how America best attracts others to our cause and tackles issues that matter most to Americans’ security and prosperity.
Obama was adamant that the United States cannot and should not bear the burden of global leadership alone, especially not through military means. We needed to use all elements of our national strength, not only the best military but also the top diplomats and development experts in the world. America also had to resist the temptation to overreach and overcommit, because there are limits both to our resources and to our influence, particularly our ability to solve problems within other states.
Above all, Obama emphasized that the U.S. could not lead from a position of strength abroad if we were not strong at home. Facing the Great Recession, Obama focused early on jump-starting America’s economic recovery, creating jobs, reforming Wall Street, and making health care accessible to all. Internationally, he worked to broker high-standards free trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which would boost U.S. exports and employment while providing greater protections for labor and the environment.
To confront tough global issues effectively, we would build diplomatic coalitions to work with us. That’s where the United Nations came in. The administration frequently sought U.N. Security Council authorization when it would enhance the legitimacy of our efforts and our ability to rally partners to our side. After the excesses of the “war on terrorism,” America also needed to lead by example, including by banning torture, working to close Guantánamo, and standing firmly in support of American values—democracy, universal human rights, and the rule of law.
At the same time, Obama sought to bind recalcitrant states to their U.N. obligations and international law. With Russia and China, the U.S. was prepared to cooperate when mutually beneficial—from nonproliferation to climate change and global health. Yet we were resolved to confront U.S. adversaries with strength in order to deter and defeat aggression.
Against this backdrop, in President Obama’s view, my job and that of my team was to bridge old divides, find common ground where possible, stand tough when necessary, and forge collective solutions that would help us confront the most intractable global challenges.
It was a tall order, especially since I arrived to find (unsurprisingly) that the U.S. was not in good standing at the U.N. We had lost ground due to bruising battles over the Iraq War and the bullying style of U.S. ambassador John Bolton, my predecessor once removed, who once famously said: “The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” Under President George W. Bush, the U.S. frequently opposed progress on issues of greatest concern to the majority of U.N. member states. From indigenous rights to access to food and clean water, from climate change to women’s reproductive rights, the U.S. had been viewed as indifferent or even hostile to many issues that mattered most to developing countries.
I set out to change that. My principal initial challenge was to improve the perception of the U.S. at the U.N. by pursuing goals that served not only U.S. interests but those of most U.N. member states. In my early days, I often encountered resistance from some of the career officers at the Mission when I suggested that the U.S. should change its position on a particular issue. For instance, the U.S. had historically objected to language in U.N. General Assembly resolutions recognizing that people had a “right to food.” I understood the institutional urge to resist the creation of new “rights,” but for the new Obama administration to argue that people didn’t have an existential need to eat seemed completely nonsensical. When I pressed on why we opposed something like this, I was told, “That’s how we’ve always done it.” That answer was tantamount to waving red at a bull. We would not object to the “right to food” and, henceforth, I insisted that we would need persuasive, substantive reasons to maintain such controversial positions. “How we have always done it” would not cut it.
More broadly, under my leadership, the U.S. Mission championed human rights and the fight against global poverty. We prioritized climate change as both a genuine threat to U.S. national security and an existential concern for small island nations. We recommitted to the basic bargain of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, whereby those possessing nuclear weapons agreed to strive to eliminate them, as they concurrently stopped all others from acquiring them. The U.S. enthusiastically promoted the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, the advancement of women and protection of their reproductive rights, and finally signed the U.N. convention to support the rights of persons with disabilities.
I was especially committed to achieving progress on LGBT rights. While not a popular cause with many U.N. member states, I have long viewed this as the last major frontier in the battle for civil and human rights. With strong backing from Washington, over the course of four and a half years, I pushed the envelope as far as I could at the U.N. The U.S. joined the Core Group of countries at the U.N. committed to LGBT rights. We championed pro-LGBT resolutions at the U.N. Human Rights Council and the accreditation of the first LGBT NGOs by the U.N. We backed fair and equitable treatment of LGBT employees at the U.N. I am particularly proud that the U.S. demanded and, after some serious diplomatic combat, ultimately achieved the inclusion of LGBT persons as among those groups protected from extrajudicial killing in a landmark 2010 General Assembly resolution. On issues of human dignity and broadening economic opportunity, the battles we fought marked a clear departure from the positions of the previous administration.
In charting this new course, I had a few things working in my favor. There was tremendous international excitement and goodwill toward President Obama. People at the U.N., as around the world, had high hopes and wanted him to succeed. Secretary Clinton and senior officials at the State Department were like-minded philosophically and supportive of me, despite occasional disagreements we had over particular policy issues. I was familiar with the U.N. from my prior tenure at the NSC and the State Department during the Clinton administration. The U.N. secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, was generally favorably disposed toward the United States. And I was coming not too far on the heels of the infamous John Bolton.
At the same time, I enjoyed a high degree of latitude. President Obama made clear to his team at the White House and at the State Department that he had full confidence in my judgment and abilities. To most in Washington, New York was out of sight and out of mind, which afforded me considerable flexibility and breathing room. No one questioned me on day-to-day decisions or tactics and, if they interfered, their efforts typically failed. On big issues, such as the Middle East, Iran, and North Korea, or whether to join the Human Rights Council, I did need Washington’s blessing on our approach; and then colleagues usually accepted our recommendations.
While Obama believed deeply in the utility of multilateral action, in truth he was not as enthusiastic about the U.N. as some perceived. When announcing my nomination, President-elect Obama signaled publicly his tough love approach to the U.N., stressing: “We need the United Nations to be more effective as a venue for collective action against terror and proliferation, climate change and genocide, poverty and disease.” No romantic in any policy context, the president was rightly impatient with the sprawling and constipated U.N. bureaucracy and its capacity for waste and abuse. As ardent a proponent of U.N. reform as any of the institution’s critics, Obama viewed America’s role as to pressure and support the U.N. to become leaner, increasingly efficient, and worthy of American taxpayer dollars. As his permanent representative, I often felt that President Obama tolerated the U.N. more than he appreciated it, but he allowed me to do the necessary work to advance American interests. At the same time, Obama rightly insisted that the U.S. pay its U.N. dues in full and on time and succeeded in working with Congress to ensure our commitments were fulfilled—something that had been far more difficult in the 1990s during President Clinton’s tenure.
Throughout my time in New York, I benefited from being perceived as close to President Obama and a reliable and faithful representative of the White House. I had the advantage of being in the president’s cabinet and a member of the National Security Council Principals Committee (PC). This meant that I was not just spouting the president’s line; I was intimately involved in the decision making and fully understood the rationale behind our policies. I had an independent voice and a vote at the PC table, which I attended via secure videoconference from New York, or in person in Washington when I could.
The inclusion of the U.N. ambassador in the cabinet is a tradition dating back to President Eisenhower when he appointed Henry Cabot Lodge. It endured, except under President George H. W. Bush, who had served as U.N. ambassador, and later George W. Bush, who both required the U.N. ambassador to report to the secretary of state through the assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs.
It is a tricky balancing act to play the dual role of member of the cabinet and the PC, reporting to the president on the one hand, while serving (at least technically) as an instructed ambassador reporting to the secretary of state (like all other ambassadors) on the other hand. As was the custom with most of my predecessors, I had an office with a small staff in D.C. This team led by my highly capable and, if necessary, sharp-elbowed deputy, Erica Barks-Ruggles, and later by the unflappable, efficient Rexon Ryu, worked the State Department bureaucracy to ensure that the instructions I received were ones I could execute in good conscience. When, occasionally, there were significant policy differences to resolve, such as whether the U.S. should rejoin the U.N. Human Rights Council, I could escalate the argument to the secretary of state or the White House if need be. It took some time and a bit of bureaucratic boxing to restore the U.N. ambassador’s position from its subordinated role during the Bush years.
An early challenge was to establish my relationships with the other principals and, above all, with Secretary Clinton. Given the bruises of the primary season and my decision to join the Obama campaign, ours could have been a fraught, even contentious relationship. Initially, a couple of people on Clinton’s personal staff seemed intent on punishing me through selective leaks to the press about my leadership style or relationships within the State Department. But Hillary herself was always a good colleague and effective partner.
We had a standing, half-hour, one-on-one Friday morning meeting in her office at State when we were both in town. Secretary Clinton would often begin the meetings by asking, “How’s your family doing?” We would then turn to hot topics in New York and whether I needed help, which she never failed to provide, if requested. On one occasion early in the administration, I asked for her view on a leading candidate for a senior U.N. position, a person she had known previously as a high-ranking foreign official. Caustically, Clinton joked that the prospective candidate “would be the last cockroach to crawl out from underground after nuclear winter.” I was impressed.
In our weekly meetings, we would also discuss issues on the Principals Committee agenda as well as personnel matters, and compare our takes on consequential meetings. She was always down-to-earth and forthcoming, civil, and friendly. The secretary was good to me over our four years, and I always admired and appreciated her professionalism. Beyond that, she was generous personally—especially with her concern about my parents’ health challenges, how the kids were faring in my absence, and, later, how I was enduring after I came under attack for Benghazi.
One inclement Monday morning in February 2009, roads and runways in D.C. were extremely icy, and my flight to New York was canceled. By this point, I had more or less adjusted to the demands of the commute, and knew, when I stepped out of my house, that my intrepid Diplomatic Security detail would have an alternate plan to get me to my job on time.
As U.N. ambassador, the State Department assigned me a team of DS agents in New York and D.C. DS typically protects the secretary of state, visiting foreign ministers, and the U.N. ambassador, while Secret Service protects the president, vice president, their families, select White House personnel, the secretaries of treasury and homeland security, and visiting heads of state. Whether at work or at home, DS accompanied me everywhere. Doctors’ offices, kids’ schools, vacations. It could get awkward—particularly when the family was involved—to have extra people with us whether we wanted them there or not. After all, meting out discipline to a misbehaving child, getting annoyed with your spouse, or holding vigil at the hospital with a sick parent can be uncomfortable with an audience present. Yet the DS agents were always discreet, helpful, and supportive and, with time, they came to know my kids and parents well. Indeed, it became a too-frequent trauma when agents my kids loved were suddenly rotated off my detail—sometimes without the opportunity for a proper goodbye.
Even though I grew close to my agents, at the start of my tenure my lead agent in Washington proved to be a challenge. Opposed to any familiarity, old-school, from the tradition of not speaking unless spoken to, he had a distant, business-only demeanor and, as I later found out, forbade all other agents to talk to me. That wasn’t going to work for me because, if I have to let unfamiliar men (or an occasional woman) into my most personal life, I want to know who they are, where they come from, and to engage with them as normal human beings. Early on, I realized this first lead agent in Washington was not a fit for me, but in that initial month I hadn’t yet figured out how to solve the problem without breaking a lot of crockery at State.
On that February morning, when my flight was canceled, and I stepped outside, expecting to jump into the black Suburban, it was nowhere in sight. Instead, I spotted the lead agent gingerly walking down from the top of our street. When he reached me, he said, “Ma’am, because of the ice, we need to walk up to the intersection to meet the car.” I didn’t think twice about it, and we made our way to the car and off to Union Station for the nearly three-hour train ride to New York.
Later that day, my New York press team alerted me that a local Fox News crew was on my block in D.C. filming the aftermath of an accident involving Diplomatic Security. “What accident?” I asked. Alex Wolff, along with the chief of security at the U.S. Mission, kept everything matter-of-fact and to-the-point as he gave me the whole story. The Washington lead agent had instructed the DS driver that morning to pick me up in front of the house as normal. Instead of driving up from the bottom of my one-block icy street, they drove down from the top. The heavy, armored SUV lost traction and slid at some pace down the hill, crashing into a neighbor’s Mercedes. The DS lead agent failed to tell me or my neighbors and took me to the train as if nothing happened. Somehow, Fox got wind, and it was a story before either I or Ian had even heard about it.
Incredulous, I immediately wanted to know, “Are you telling me that the lead agent withheld important information from me, failed to inform the police and our neighbors, and now has implicated me in leaving the scene of a crime?” Apparently so.
That was the last I had to deal with that lead agent, so one early problem was solved. When I returned from New York that Thursday night, I deposited a case of nice wine on my neighbor’s doorstep. DS paid for repairs to their car. End of that story.
From then on, I never had anything but the best experiences with the dedicated DS agents, especially the only one, David Millet, who remained on my detail from the very start to the finish of my tenure.
Aside from travel concerns and adapting to a full-time security detail that followed me everywhere, I also had to adjust to certain challenges of living in two cities—starting with the basics of having clothing and toiletries in both places. The U.N. ambassador’s residence for sixty-plus years was on the top (forty-second) floor of the Waldorf-Astoria Towers on Park Avenue, a fifteen-minute walk or five-minute drive to the U.N. When I first moved into the residence—known at the U.S. Mission as “the WAT”—I appreciated the impressive four-bedroom apartment, huge by New York standards, with soaring views, ornate high ceilings, a chef’s kitchen, a large foyer, an expansive living room, and a dining room suitable for entertaining forty at a sit-down event.
As ambassador, I was able to give the residence my own touch by selecting beautiful works of art—thanks to the State Department’s “Art in Embassies” program and the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies, which place American artists’ work in U.S. embassies. I chose to feature the dramatic and colorful works of prominent African American artists, primarily from the New York area, such as Carrie Mae Weems, Mickalene Thomas, and Whitfield Lovell.
The massive apartment was terrific for entertaining, accommodating over two hundred at a standing reception. As a single inhabitant away from my family, however, the place could feel empty and sometimes lonely. Most Mondays through Thursdays, I stayed overnight in New York. When I did not have a dinner engagement—something I tried to limit in order to manage both my weight and sanity—I would come home to the residence and eat a solitary but healthy meal, ably prepared by the residence chef, Stanton Thomas, and served by the evening household attendant, Ana Barahona. The residence manager Dorothy Burgess was a wonderful, no-fooling woman from Barbados, who had seen some dozen U.S. ambassadors and their families come and go. The lovely staff became friends who cared generously for me and who ran the ambassador’s residence with the utmost professionalism.
With so much underused space, I gladly invited family and friends to visit. Often when I was home on weekends in D.C., administration colleagues conserved government resources by staying at the WAT apartment in comfort and security with their families—including Vice President Biden and his wife, Jill, First Lady Michelle Obama and her girls, Valerie Jarrett, Denis McDonough, Ambassador Ron Kirk, and many others. I also welcomed my USUN colleagues to stay there as needed, including after Hurricane Sandy when many staff members who lived in lower Manhattan lost power for days.
My own family visited New York on occasion, enjoying memorable gatherings at the Waldorf. In 2009, Dad came back east again for the holidays. At nearly ninety, he was in tolerable health, despite contending with high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, and atrial fibrillation, which he managed with medication. He was still sharp, mobile, and self-sufficient. That first year, Dad and Mom joined our family for Thanksgiving in New York. We saw the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, a Broadway show, and took in the sights from the Empire State Building to the USS Intrepid. It was a great time for our kids and their grandparents, one which demonstrated the benefits of the détente my parents had reached years earlier.
Beginning with my wedding, when they were compelled to collaborate on everything from the menu to music, Lois and Emmett managed to interact more civilly. By the time Jake arrived five years later, my parents had grown accustomed to engaging each other with only rare fireworks. Becoming grandparents provided the balm that truly soothed their relationship, enabling us all to enjoy their company without worrying that they would go at each other. It’s fair to say that they became friendly, if not quite friends.
For that transformation, I remain forever grateful. Over the span of almost twenty years, at the end of their lives, my parents gave us back our unitary family. Johnny’s kids and mine have happy memories of their grandparents individually and together, with only historical knowledge of their previous antagonism. And Johnny and I finally experienced the peace and joy of many wonderful family occasions spent together with our parents.
Even the warmth of family, however, could not obscure the many defects of the Waldorf apartment. If you didn’t live there, you would think it was the height of luxury. But the Waldorf-Astoria was an ancient and run-down hotel, as I would be reminded from time to time. Occasionally, I would turn on the tap in the morning and watch mud brown and foul-smelling water belch forth, precluding showering. After particularly fierce thunderstorms, because of the roof’s disrepair, sizable chunks of plaster from the ceiling would crash onto the living room floor. The window unit air conditioners could not withstand high winds, and rain could pour in when the flimsy casings blew out. Roaches were not uncommon, even massive ones of the tropical variety.
The Waldorf charged the U.S. government a fortune in monthly rent for poor maintenance, so I eventually embarked on a search to purchase my successors a less expensive yet better residence. The Washington bureaucracy and the laborious appropriations process, which does not take into consideration basic financial concepts like net present value, reflexively stymied efforts to do American taxpayers a long-term favor. Only several years later, after the Chinese bought the hotel and the security implications of their ownership sank in, did the State Department allow my successor, Samantha Power, to sign a deal to move the U.S. out of the historic Waldorf-Astoria.
One of my primary responsibilities in New York was to build relationships with other permanent representatives. With 193 U.N. member states, I could not meet formally with each one individually, but over time I came to know most of my colleagues—some very well. The most important were those we had to do frequent business with: the other four of the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council—the United Kingdom, France, China, and Russia; the other nonpermanent members of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) who rotated on and off the Council in two-year terms; and important allies like Germany, Canada, Spain, Italy, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. I also prioritized knowing the African ambassadors, some fifty-plus who often voted en bloc in the General Assembly, and the Pacific Islanders—small nations that reliably supported the U.S. even on the toughest issues.
As part of our carefully choreographed series of initial meetings for me as the brand-new U.S. ambassador, I met the permanent representative of Israel on Day One. Israel is the focus of outsize attention at the U.N.—most of it unfair and excessively negative. My responsibility, as is traditional, was to stand up for and protect Israel against attacks on its legitimacy and security. It was a role I embraced with passion and played aggressively throughout my tenure at the U.N. I loathe anti-Semitism and racism. For me, it’s personal. And too much of the anti-Israel vitriol at the U.N. stems from crass prejudice.
In my early years, my work in defense of Israel was greatly aided by having a first-rate partner in Gabriela Shalev, Israel’s first and only female U.N. ambassador. An appointee of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni (with whom I had become friends during the Bush years), Gabriela is a distinguished professor of law and a jurist. At our first meeting, she greeted me alone in her private office. In her heavy accent, Gabriela talked movingly about her love of Israel, the tragic loss of her husband in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and her two beloved children whom she raised alone. Gabriela is a strong but slight woman with close-cropped graying dark hair, powerful eyes, and a warm intensity that immediately captivated me. Old enough to be my mother, she and I became close—sharing perspectives with brutal honesty, plotting ways to serve our shared goals, and lamenting the forces that made Israel a perennial target at the U.N. and the Netanyahu policies that gave near daily fodder to Israel’s critics. To this day, Gabriela is my sister, a prized relationship forged as we fought together in the muddy trenches at the U.N.
Our battles seemed never ending. Throughout 2009, I used my constructive relationship with Ban Ki-moon, the cautious but principled and pro-American secretary-general from South Korea, to push from behind the scenes to keep the notorious Goldstone Report out of active consideration by the Security Council. The report summarized the conclusions of a U.N. fact-finding mission, which harshly condemned Israel’s actions in the recent 2008-2009 Gaza War. Had the document been formally inserted on the Security Council’s agenda for debate, Israel’s opponents would have had a field day trying to censure Israel for what South African jurist Richard Goldstone alleged were potential war crimes.
The next year, after Israel conducted a raid on a Turkish flotilla seeking to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza that turned deadly in international waters, Turkey and the Palestinians forced an emergency meeting of the UNSC. Pressure was high to strongly condemn Israel, but with Alex Wolff and our team, I managed to achieve a more measured statement that expressed “regret for the loss of life,” condemned “those acts which resulted in the loss of life,” and called for an “impartial and… transparent investigation.”
By the end of my tenure, I had fought many such defensive battles—from pulling the U.S. out of the World Conference on Racism due to its anti-Israel bent to protecting Israel in the U.N. Human Rights Council against that body’s deeply ingrained anti-Israel bias. I spearheaded efforts to prevent Palestine from being admitted prematurely to the U.N. as a full member state (a status it sought in order to bypass negotiations for a two-state solution), just as I worked to protect Israel from efforts to rebuke their nuclear program at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and led the annual losing charge in the General Assembly against a litany of anti-Israel resolutions.
Most notably, upon instructions from Washington, I cast the sole veto of the Obama administration to block a 2011 Arab- and Palestinian-sponsored resolution that would have declared Israeli settlements “illegal.” Like each prior U.S. administration for over forty years, Republican and Democratic, the Obama administration deemed Israeli settlement activity “illegitimate” and counterproductive to peace. Committed to doing our utmost to try to broker an ever-elusive Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, we viewed U.N. intervention as an unhelpful diversion that could set back efforts to press the two parties to negotiate directly and forge a two-state solution. In an effort to maintain international unity, the U.S. counterproposed a softer rebuke of settlements through a lesser legal instrument of the U.N. Security Council—a presidential statement. When the Palestinians rejected that compromise offer and insisted on bringing their resolution to a vote, the Obama administration decided to oppose it. In my White House–drafted speech explaining the U.S. position after the vote, I stressed that “Our opposition to the resolution… should… not be misunderstood to mean we support settlement activity. On the contrary, we reject in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity,” which “has undermined Israel’s security and corroded hopes for peace and stability in the region.”
Despite our extraordinary exercise of the veto in order to protect Israel and the peace process, I was surprised to find my statement criticized as harsh and gratuitous by some in the American Jewish community. The expectation that we were supposed to veto the resolution and sugarcoat U.S. opposition to settlement activity struck me as excessive, even though I agreed with the necessity to veto.
Throughout my time as U.N. ambassador, I was proud to fight hard for Israel’s legitimacy and security. Historically, many U.N. member states have displayed a distinct bias against Israel, stemming in part from their anticolonial orientation. In its worst form, this bias is tinged by noxious, barely disguised anti-Semitism. Along with racism, homophobia, and other forms of prejudice, I was determined to battle anti-Semitism wherever it surfaced in the world body.
While at the U.N. I was grateful to receive the praise and thanks of many pro-Israel groups for my strong defense of Israel. Better still, throughout my time in the Obama administration, I could always rely on one phenomenal Israeli man to be in my corner: Shimon Peres. Former prime minister and president, founding father, visionary peacemaker, and global statesman, Peres became my cherished friend. I first met him in 2009 at a luncheon in his honor in New York hosted by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. I spoke briefly at that event, as did he. At the end, he held me by my shoulders, looked deeply into my eyes with his piercing blues, and thanked me for my words and my service.
Later that year, Peres invited me to Israel to speak at the annual Israeli Presidential Conference, called “Facing Tomorrow.” I began my speech with a little Hebrew, “Todah rabah. Erev Tov”—thank you very much and good evening. I affirmed, “an essential truth that will never change: the United States of America remains fully and firmly committed to the peace and security of the State of Israel. That commitment spans generations and political parties. It is not negotiable. And it never will be negotiable.” After the speech, President Peres pulled me aside to counsel: “That was a great speech, very well done,” he said, “but you must pause long enough to allow the audience to exhaust its applause.” Marveling at my comparative inexperience, I hugged him and thanked him warmly for such kind wisdom from a true veteran. Lesson learned.
In the coming years, Peres and I met in Israel, Switzerland, and the U.S. He would write or call when he sensed from afar that I might need moral support. Peres, who had met every U.S. president since Kennedy, loved President Obama like a son, and saw in him so many qualities of greatness, as he often told me. He worried about Obama’s security and political fortunes and cared deeply for those of us close to him. He was generous with his incomparable wisdom and experience. Peres was warm, energetic, charming, funny, and, all told, the sexiest senior citizen I have ever known. I loved Shimon Peres like a father figure but can only imagine what a devil he might have been in his prime.
My first major test at the U.N. came from North Korea. The isolated Stalinist regime greeted President Obama with a ballistic missile launch on April 4, 2009, the day of his historic speech on nonproliferation delivered in Prague on his first overseas trip as president. North Korea has a habit of creating crises to test the reaction of new U.S. administrations. Ours came on a Saturday night, so the next morning after appearing on the Sunday shows, I dashed to New York from Washington to join the Security Council closed-door debate on how to respond. Obama had declared that fresh sanctions on North Korea were needed to build upon the regime of initial sanctions imposed in 2006 under the Bush administration. It was my job to obtain those sanctions as quickly as possible.
The task was complicated. Russia and China, which wield veto power, opposed any new sanctions resolution, fearing it would drive North Korea away from the (dormant) negotiations known as the Six Party Talks. In the UNSC, Russia and China also argued that the launch did not explicitly violate prior resolutions because it carried a satellite, not a missile. The U.S. view was that any launch using ballistic missile technology, as this launch did, was banned and must be punished. Japan and South Korea, which are directly threatened by North Korea, given their proximity, were deeply rattled and demanded their ally the U.S. achieve a strong result. Their insistence only hardened Chinese and Russian resistance.
After a week of haggling, we reached a compromise: we would adopt a presidential statement (known as a PRST), a less formal form of U.N. action than a resolution, but still a legally binding one, and use that vehicle in a novel way to impose fresh sanctions on selected North Korean companies and individuals. The statement also affirmed the U.S. position that any launch of any payload using ballistic missile technology, whether satellite or warhead, is a violation of U.N. resolutions and international law. The PRST was a clever threading of the needle that, while imperfect, was satisfactory and afforded me a dry run for the much tougher, more consequential negotiations to come.
In late May, after formally pulling out of the Six Party Talks, North Korea conducted its second nuclear test, conveniently timed to coincide with Memorial Day. I rushed up to New York yet again to attend an emergency meeting of the Council where, with little Russian or Chinese resistance, we swiftly condemned the North Korean test and agreed to work on a new sanctions resolution. Then the hard work began.
Negotiating high-stakes, high-profile resolutions under the persistent glare of the press, daily prodding from Washington to hurry up (while trying to manage their expectations), and the near hysterical anxiety of my Japanese and South Korean counterparts, made for a stressful mix. Not even six months into the job, enmeshed in intense negotiations at the U.S. Mission or small conference rooms at the U.N., I faced the toughest and most important test of my early tenure. I had to achieve a strong new sanctions resolution in the face of Chinese reluctance to hit their traditional ally with more than symbolic penalties. The Russians, ever potent opponents, traditionally joined the Chinese position on North Korea; so, the challenge was to move China while keeping our European and Asian allies on board, even as they chafed at largely being kept in the dark.
As always, my toughest customer was Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin. When I arrived at the U.N., Vitaly, who started there in 2006, was an experienced veteran and a diplomatic force of nature who variously charmed and intimidated all comers. I was charmed, on occasion, but never intimidated. The two of us fought with legendary ferocity, variously with sarcasm, humor, or just pure venom; yet we also became friends. Vitaly was ever the worthy opponent—razor-smart, a skilled communicator, equally adept as an obstructionist and a problem solver, by turns maddening and great fun. I used to joke with my staff that a victory in the Security Council never felt fully satisfactory unless it involved besting Vitaly.
He and I tangled over issues large and small, publicly and privately. Vitaly was the only U.N. ambassador ever to object to my bringing my son into the U.N.’s nonpublic sessions. From age eleven onward, Jake loved these meetings and could sit for hours mesmerized by the debates. He was always silent and well-behaved, but Vitaly couldn’t stand the idea of a child in the Security Council. He repeatedly threatened to halt the meetings and insisted on Jake’s expulsion. We nearly came to blows one day after such a session, in Jake’s presence. Vitaly yelled at me, “Do you allow your son to watch pornography?” “Of course not,” I said. He rejoined, “Then why do you let him watch Security Council debates?”
On North Korean sanctions, at this early stage in 2009, Vitaly was a little more rational than he was about Jake. When it came to North Korea, however, my most important counterpart was the Chinese ambassador. I worked closely with Zhang Yesui on my first of several extended U.S.-China bilateral negotiations over North Korea. Ambassador Zhang is a measured, thoughtful man whom I found to be straightforward and true to his word. Unlike some Chinese counterparts, Yesui had a good sense of humor, an easy manner, and an earnest desire to do business constructively without superfluous bluster or drama. We spent countless hours in closed-door negotiations, usually with a small team of advisors on either side. When we reached the critical endgame, however, sometimes it was just the two of us—a format the Chinese typically avoid with Americans, preferring the protection from Beijing that a note taker provides.
As became a pattern over the coming years, the negotiation began with me presenting an ambitious menu of proposed sanctions and demanding that China accept them. China would balk, and after days of internal negotiations in Beijing, come back with a meager counterproposal. I would dismiss their offer as wholly inadequate and press for many of the most important measures on our original list. Days later, they would counter. And so on, until either we reached an acceptable outcome that Washington believed substantially increased the pressure on North Korea or fell short. If it fell short, and I felt I could not get any more out of the negotiation in New York, I had two tactical options: erupt with the Chinese ambassador in frustration and threaten to take a U.S.-drafted resolution straight to the UNSC and dare China to veto it (something it never wants to do on North Korea); or, I could ask President Obama to call the Chinese president and press our position at the highest level. If the first move failed, the latter course usually yielded some incremental give from Beijing, often enough to get us over the finish line.
This pattern repeated itself as we negotiated three major North Korea sanctions resolutions during my tenure. Each new resolution was harder and took longer to obtain than the last, as it had to exceed the previous in how much added pain it imposed on North Korea. China is North Korea’s major trading and diplomatic partner, so each additional turn of the screw also adversely affected Chinese banking or economic interests and required difficult consensus building in Beijing.
However, this early North Korea negotiation was my most challenging. There had not been new U.N. sanctions imposed on North Korea since the first round in 2006. The Japanese and South Korean ambassadors were nervous, wanting in on the action but able to add little value. The Japanese press corps was in my face everywhere I went for two weeks, such that a DS agent had to get a bit physical with one particularly pushy camerawoman outside our office building. To make matters worse, I was not familiar with intense negotiations with the Chinese. I hadn’t yet discerned the rhythm and style of their approach and how to assess if we were close to collapse or to comity.
For nearly two weeks, sleep eluded me as I worried much of the night about whether we would get where we needed to with China, whether I would disappoint Washington and fall short in the eyes of my new team. As the deliberations with the Chinese drew out, South Korean and Japanese anxiety grew. I could feel them wondering—Is this new Obama team up to the job? Would the Americans sell us short? Can we trust them? The U.K., France, and Russia, fellow veto-wielding members of the P5, are unaccustomed to being left out of the room in any consequential negotiation. Understandably, they hated being treated as afterthoughts who could be counted on to go along with whatever the U.S. and China agreed. Still, the Europeans understood that the outcome was going to be determined by Washington and Beijing; they would grouse but only balk (perhaps publicly) if they thought we cut a weak deal. More pressure to perform.
To keep all sides on board, I met bilaterally with each of the P5, plus South Korea and Japan, and hosted occasional negotiating sessions with all those players together. On one such occasion, I invited all six of the other delegations to meet with the U.S. team in our modest main conference room at the temporary U.S. Mission, which we occupied until the completion of our new, more secure building across the street from the U.N.
In this particular conference room, there were photographs hanging on the wall of every prior U.S. ambassador, in order of their tenure—as is customary inside U.S. embassies. As the difficult discussion progressed, things started to get heated. Russian ambassador Churkin was typically stubborn and obnoxious. The Chinese were hiding behind the Russians, opposing the tough proposed sanctions on our list. And the others were adding little value in moving us forward. Sensing an opportunity to shake up the negotiation and seize the initiative, I stood up suddenly, interrupting the conversation. I moved to my right and dramatically ripped a photograph off the wall. I sat back down and banged the framed photo on the table so that it faced my colleagues as I faux-raged: “We can either do this the nice way or the hard way. It’s up to you. But we are gonna get this done.”
The photo I had selected was of John Bolton, the most widely disliked of my recent predecessors. All my colleagues at the table knew who he was, and many had had the displeasure of working with him. My stunt first silenced and then lightened the room but made a clear point: I was not playing, and we were not going to tolerate a lame outcome.
In the end, after barely two weeks, we achieved a milestone resolution, codified as 1874. It strengthened the existing arms embargo, authorized a range of financial sanctions, granted states the authority to search, seize, and dispose of suspected banned North Korean cargo, and froze the assets of targeted North Korean officials and companies. This resolution significantly increased the pressure on North Korea and laid the basis for even more impactful sanctions in years to come. Its unprecedented elements, particularly the cargo inspection and financial provisions, also established a template for subsequent strong sanctions on other countries, including Iran and Libya.
Drama, I learned, can be a useful negotiating tool, if sparingly employed. More importantly, my intimate dealings with the Chinese over the course of my U.N. years gave me critical insight into how their system operates, what their interests and fears are, and how to negotiate with them effectively. I found that pushing back relentlessly in the face of Russian obstruction and Chinese resistance was the key to success in the Security Council. Particularly as a rookie and the only woman among the P5 ambassadors, I realized that I needed to consistently show confidence and resolve and never let them see me sweat. Thus, with the counsel and support of a first-rate team at USUN, I passed my first major test as U.S. ambassador, while gaining valuable experience and confidence as a negotiator.