Rice's Toughest Mission

By Romesh Ratnesar, Elaine Shannon

Here's what it's like to face Condoleezza Rice. When she walks into the room, she opens a slim leather notebook and pulls out a couple of 3-by-8 note cards imprinted with the words SECRETARY OF STATE and filled with half a dozen key words distilled from hours of speed readings and briefings. She will let her hosts do most of the talking while she tries to assess their bottom lines. In a negotiation, she sits archer-straight, lowers her voice and deploys a laser-like glare. "You need to do better than that," she will say. "You can't sit there and tell me that is the best you can do." If you continue to resist, she will dismiss her entourage, then go at it, mano a mano, until someone relents. Says a close Rice adviser who has witnessed her technique: "The phrase 'hammer it out' comes to mind."

Rice is not accustomed to failure. The prodigious accomplishments of her youth--she learned Beethoven at 5, finished college at 19 and earned tenure at Stanford at 26--have been followed by a glide to global prominence. Even as the Bush Administration's support has slid to historic depths, Rice's image has been relatively unsullied. She remains not just the most glamorous member of the Bush Cabinet but also its most popular, with job-approval ratings 20 points higher than her boss's. Among the top officials in the Administration, she is the only one who could reasonably expect to have a political future beyond 2008.

But none of that is of much use now. With the U.S. military tied down on two fronts and the rest of the world growing resistant to American power, the challenges for Rice are as daunting as they have been for any Secretary of State in the past three decades. After six years of tussling with others on Bush's national-security team, Rice has seen off her rivals and emerged as the principal spokesperson for Bush's foreign policy. Her reward has been to inherit responsibility for selling a failed policy in Iraq and salvaging a legacy for Bush at a time when few in the world are in the mood to help her. "Bush is severely weakened and has very little credibility or support at home or abroad," says Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations. "That is also true for his Secretary of State. So they are basically flailing around."

That's a grim assessment, since the threats to international order are bigger today than at any other time since the end of the cold war. The most immediate source of instability emanates from Iraq, where the country's civil war risks igniting a region-wide conflict. Across swaths of the greater Middle East--from Lebanon and the Palestinian territories to Afghanistan and Pakistan--armed militants are undermining the authority of U.S. allies. Anti-U.S. regimes in Iran and North Korea have accelerated their pursuit of atomic arsenals. In Africa, genocide, poverty and disease threaten the survival of millions. And in the shadows lurks the danger of al-Qaeda and its jihadist kin, who thrive on the very dislocation the U.S.'s war on terrorism was supposed to combat.

Rice also faces fierce challenges at home. In Congress, members of her own party have turned against the Iraq war and are finding it safe to criticize Rice and Bush for their handling of it. A Senate vote is likely next week on a bipartisan bill opposing Bush's plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq. Congressional Democrats have promised flurries of hearings on the war and the diplomacy surrounding it, which means Rice can expect to spend a lot more time answering her skeptics on the Hill.

This is not the messy state of affairs that Rice--the meticulously well-mannered, history-obsessed perfectionist--hoped to find herself in. If she has been more inclined than her peers to acknowledge the Administration's missteps, particularly in Iraq, she has yet to show she has the ability or will to correct them. Her accomplishments as Secretary of State have been modest, and even those have begun to fade. She pushed Bush to appoint the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, only to see him ignore the commission's call to pull back from the fight in Iraq; instead Bush plans to send more Americans there. She persuaded Bush to back European-led negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and even offer to talk directly to Tehran if it stopped enriching uranium. But she also supports the military's recent moves to beef up a presence in the Persian Gulf and target Iranian interests in Iraq. Although both Bush and Rice deny they have any hostile intent, there is anxiety in some foreign-policy circles that even as it struggles to avoid losing one war in Iraq, the Administration may provoke another one across the border in Iran.

The growing tension with Tehran illustrates the quandaries facing Rice. As America's top diplomat, she is judged by whether the U.S. can advance its interests without resorting to military force. But Rice hasn't distanced herself from the hawks in the White House, in part because Bush continues to identify with them. She has barely begun to address the damage to U.S. credibility wrought by Iraq or articulate a diplomatic strategy that might shore up U.S. influence and coax others to help contain Iraq's violence within its borders.

That may be starting to change. In conversations with her counterparts overseas--and in two interviews with TIME in the past month--Rice has sketched out a vision of a "new alignment" of forces in the Middle East, in which a "stabilizing" group of U.S. allies, like Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, could unite to contain the "destabilizing" threat posed by Iran and radical groups like Hamas and Hizballah. "There is a recognition that things are really splitting," Rice says, "with extremists on one side and what I call responsible [governments]--because they're not all reformers--on the other side."

Such talk may amount to spin for an Administration that needs silver linings. But for Bush and Rice it may also reveal a deeper philosophical shift. In recent years the Bush team has split over whether to abandon the ambition that underpinned the invasion of Iraq--to bring Western-style democracy to the Islamic world--in favor of conventional Realpolitik, in which idealism takes a backseat to stability. The most obvious signals that the U.S. is tilting back toward realism came on Rice's trip to the Middle East last month, in which she toned down calls for democracy for the Arabs and talked up her desire to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, something she and Bush have avoided for six years.

But is it too late? Rice's best qualities are her optimism and self-belief, but, like Bush, she is prone to stubbornness and resists admitting mistakes. Her uneven management of the State Department has left her without a strong team to execute bold new initiatives, even if she's inclined to pursue them. If Rice disagrees with Bush's determination to hold the line in Iraq, there are no signs that she has tried to change his mind. But right now a military victory in Iraq is out of reach; at most, the U.S. is fighting not to lose. And so the fate of Bush's legacy, and perhaps even the future shape of the international system, may hinge on whether Rice can pull off some kind of diplomatic breakthrough in the 23 months she has left. "Condi has a very positive frame of mind in the way she looks at the world and, I think, the way she looks at her job," says Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, a close adviser. "She's someone who believes every problem has a resolution." But answers won't be easy to find this time.

To this point, Rice's tenure as Secretary of State has been long on procedural victories but short on substantive policy results. Her most clear-cut successes have been forging a strategic alliance with India and improving the U.S.'s tattered relationship with its European allies. "She's been a good diplomat in the true sense of the word, going around talking and listening," says Charles Grant, director of the London-based Center for European Reform. "Although America's image hasn't changed, she's blameless in that."

But Rice has been slow to recognize the extent to which the U.S.'s prestige has declined. In 2005, the convergence of elections in the Palestinian territories and Iraq and the popular uprising against Syria's presence in Lebanon spurred Rice all but to declare that Washington was guiding the march of history. In a speech at the American University in Cairo, she criticized the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for failing to liberalize and said, "For 60 years, my country pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region ... and we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people."

Less than two years later, Rice rarely speaks in such exalted tones; when she visited Egypt last month, she went out of her way to praise the U.S.'s "strategic relationship" with the Mubarak regime. Rice told TIME that she "always" raises the issue of democracy in private meetings with Arab leaders, including Mubarak. But the time for public tongue lashings is over.

Rice's new restraint reflects a broader reworking of the democracy agenda that dominated U.S. foreign policy after 9/11. Two factors have contributed to that change. The first is the reality that free elections in places like Lebanon and the Palestinian territories have handed power to fundamentalist groups like Hizballah and Hamas that have little interest in pluralistic, secular governance. Whatever the ultimate benefits of implanting democracy in the Middle East, in the short run it's more likely to damage U.S. interests than serve them.

The second cause for the shift is Iraq. The country's dissolution has reduced the U.S.'s leverage in the region, emboldened Iran and alienated the U.S.'s traditional Sunni allies. "They've been reticent to provide real support," says Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution. "They think we've created a government that is nothing but a fac,ade for a bunch of vicious Shi'i militias." Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month that the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is on "borrowed time." Rice says now that "Iraqis will have to decide whether their government is functioning. But that's not for us to decide." And yet the very fact that the U.S. would raise the possibility that a popularly elected government in Iraq might get dumped reflects an acknowledgment that elections alone won't bring stability.

So is there an overriding strategic goal beyond spreading democracy? Does the Administration have a framework for dealing with the most immediate challenges it confronts--civil war in Iraq, a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and the swelling influence of Iran? Put simply, do Bush and Rice know where they're going?

The answers aren't readily apparent. Bush's decision to send more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan means both wars will continue to consume the bulk of the U.S.'s military resources, to say nothing of the mental energies of the President's lieutenants in Washington. Although Defense Secretary Robert Gates has hinted that the increase in troop strength in Iraq may last only until the summer, the Administration rejects the idea of setting any firm limits on the U.S. commitment there. Says Rice: "This is going to happen over a period of time ... It's not as if there's a cutoff point, because that's not how it's going to unfold." And it's hard to imagine a significant decrease in U.S. troop presence in Iraq before the end of Bush's term.

That complicates the U.S.'s strategy for dealing with the country that has lately entered the Administration's rhetorical gunsights: Iran. Since the start of the year, the U.S. has ramped up its bellicosity toward Iran and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It has moved a second aircraft-carrier group to the Persian Gulf and conducted raids against Iranian targets in Iraq. But the prospect of a military confrontation causes shudders among many U.S. officials, given Tehran's capacity to retaliate against U.S. troops in Iraq and strike civilian targets around the world. Rice says that "the President absolutely believes this can be done through diplomacy"--which is a big reason that Iran has become one of her main obsessions.

A former director of Chevron whose reading includes the financial press and oil- and gas-industry journals, she has personally overseen the Administration's campaign to persuade financial institutions in Europe and the Arab world to halt the flow of capital to Iran's oil sector. The idea is that through a combination of moves--projecting military muscle, squeezing Iran's oil lifeline and securing U.N. Security Council sanctions against Tehran's nuclear industry--the U.S. can drain Ahmadinejad's popular support and force the mullahs to bend to international demands to stop enriching uranium, the first step to a nuclear bomb.

"The point here is to get the Iranians to change their behavior, to get them to change their strategy, to get them to negotiate in good faith on their nuclear program," Rice says. "I've heard people say, 'Well, you're escalating.' Well, this is responding, really, to a series of Iranian moves that are dangerous for American interests and dangerous for the international system."

Whether Rice can steer the U.S. away from a military confrontation with Tehran is one of the two big challenges that will define the final years of her tenure--and the legacy she leaves for her successor. The other is even more daunting: making peace in the Middle East. Those who have spoken to her say her determination to seek a comprehensive settlement between Israel and the Palestinians is real. A senior Arab official says that on her trip to the region last month, Rice pledged to help set up a Palestinian state by the end of Bush's term. According to this same official, Bush phoned the Kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia to tell them Rice was coming with a commitment to solve the Palestinian issue. "There is a shift. There is no doubt about that," says an Arab official. "But how deep, how strong this effort is going to be--it's too early to tell." The first test will come later this month, when Rice plans to convene a summit in Jerusalem between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Rice's chances for success aren't great. Olmert's job-approval ratings are even more dismal than Bush's, and Abbas is struggling to prevent clashes among rival factions from escalating into civil war. And then there's the trouble with Rice herself. She did herself few favors in Arab eyes by failing to restrain Israel's bombing campaign against Lebanon last summer. Her refusal to negotiate with Syria baffles diplomats in the region, who believe the U.S. is missing an opportunity to peel Damascus away from its alliance with Iran. And Rice's relationship with Abbas, in particular, is frosty. A senior Palestine Liberation Organization official who has sat in on meetings between the two says, "She acts like a school headmistress, telling her student in a commanding tone to do this or don't do that."

As a student of history, Rice is grimly aware of how many diplomatic reputations have sunk in the morass of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. But if the U.S. intends to contain the twin threats it faces in the Middle East--an ethnic implosion in Iraq and a nuclear Iran--it needs help from the rest of the neighborhood, which will be easier to secure if Rice can make headway on the Palestinian issue. "Even if the prospects for a deal are very low, getting the process going is helpful throughout the region," says a U.S. foreign-policy veteran. "It gives breathing space to moderate Arab governments, and it isolates the radicals in those countries. For the past four years, we've been doing the opposite."

The most optimistic diplomats, including Rice, hope that U.S. engagement on Palestine could lead to other areas of cooperation among "moderate" Middle East forces, all of whom have an interest in checking the influence of Shi'ite Iran and subduing radical Sunni groups aligned with al-Qaeda. If that happens, the U.S. may be able to build a security arrangement that could limit some of the damage done by the misadventure in Iraq. "What [the Bush team] may be stumbling toward is grand strategy by accident, that includes diplomacy, economic muscle, military force and all of your capacity to lead other countries," says a former U.S. ambassador. But can an unpopular, lame-duck President, and a team with such a record of ineptitude, pull it off? "It is still going to be a very bumpy road," he says.

At least some of the doubts trace back to Rice herself. At 52, she is no longer the ascending star she was at the start of the Bush presidency. Rice's influence with Bush is considerable, thanks to their personal bond and the departure of her rival, Donald Rumsfeld; but few believe she will ever usurp Vice President Dick Cheney's policymaking supremacy. Her associates say she is serious about retreating from public life at the end of Bush's term. For someone so devoted to regimen--up at 4:45 a.m. when she is in Washington, she works out, eats breakfast and is at her desk by 6:30--she has struggled to impose discipline on the State Department. She went for months last year without a No. 2, before naming John Negroponte to the job last month. One of her most trusted advisers, Philip Zelikow, left in early January. Many in the foreign-policy community believe her team is thin and uncreative. "She has a weak bench," says a G.O.P. congressional aide. "And she can't be everywhere."

That points to the larger dilemma for Rice. For all her ambition, she is caught in a second-term Administration whose political capital is dwindling. A rise in the body count in Iraq or more overt provocations toward Iran could bring the White House into open confrontation with a hostile Congress intent on restraining Bush's range of movement. And Rice's decision to redouble her efforts in the Middle East means she will be less able to attend to other issues on which U.S. leadership could produce success--such as stopping genocide in Africa or fighting poverty in the developing world or tackling global climate change. Without sustained attention to those problems from America's top diplomat, the world won't make much progress toward finding solutions.

So what can Rice do? If she hopes to be remembered in the same breath as the Secretaries of State she most admires--George Marshall, Dean Acheson, George Shultz--Rice will have to shed her famous equipoise, risk failure in the Middle East and begin to deal with the world as it is, rather than how the Administration wishes it to be. Restoring U.S. prestige will involve the kind of trade-offs between interests and ideals that she and Bush have so far been reluctant to make--but that are the stock-in-trade of successful U.S. diplomacy. Given the limited time available for the task ahead, it's admirable that Rice still exudes optimism. Asked whether this is an interesting time to be Secretary of State, she laughs. "No better moment," she says. Now she needs to seize it.

With reporting by Michael Duffy/Washington, Jamil Hamad/Ramallah, Scott MacLeod/Cairo, Catherine Mayer/London