MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Former White House Aide and current Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Michael Gerson, talks about his experience in the administration working on the Darfur crisis as a top adviser to the President.
TRANSCRIPT:
JERRY FOWLER: My guest today is Michael Gerson. Until recently, he was assistant to the President for Policy and Strategic Planning, and before that assistant to the President for Speechwriting and Policy Advisor. Now he is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Michael, thanks for joining us.
MIKE GERSON: Glad to be with you.
JERRY FOWLER: Michael, I wanted to start first with Darfur and Sudan. You have commented several times in public that both South Sudan and Darfur got on the administration’s agenda primarily through the interest of the President himself.
MIKE GERSON: Yes, that was my experience. It did not bubble up through the State Department or other sources; it really came from the White House staff and the President’s personal interest. That is often the way it works with this type of issue, whether it is human trafficking or democracy or genocide; it is not necessarily the regional bureaus of the State Department that produce these priorities; it often comes from the National Security Council at the White House or the President’s own interest.
JERRY FOWLER: I wanted to focus in on that a little bit, specifically genocide because that is the issue we deal with—or mass atrocities—on this program. Why is it that it does not bubble up through the policy apparatus?
MIKE GERSON: There are always exceptions to this, but in my experience, many of the regional bureaus at the State Department are very interested, naturally, in the maintenance of relationships, rather than the confrontation of growing abuses. I think that is true of Democrat administrations and Republican administrations. Often the early warning system on genocide does not work very well, people down at the lower levels—intelligence people and Embassy people—see things happening, but it does not go up quickly through the system to the decision makers, and it is often a delayed response because of the way the State Department and other institutions work.
JERRY FOWLER: Are there ways that that can be changed? Structural changes that can be put into place that might bring these issues more quickly to the forefront?
MIKE GERSON: I think so. I think it would be a good idea, for example, to have someone on the White House staff at the National Security Council that is specifically charged with the issue of genocide and the prevention of mass killing. I think an interdepartmental process in which the State Department, the intelligence community and the White House meet regularly on genocide issues would be a good idea. But almost always, you need someone at the higher levels of the White House staff who is a sponsor of these ideas, who brings them up, who pushes them, and when I was there, it was encouraging that the President often played this prodding role, calling in the Deputy Secretary of State or talking to the Secretary of State on the phone and asking for updates and progress reports, and that was a personal and moral interest.
JERRY FOWLER: I have to push a little bit because I think that maybe you are being overly modest; it was also a role that you played.
MIKE GERSON: It is; it was something the President wanted me to be on and look at. It is interesting, given his background and belief—I know there are a lot of people who have problems with the President’s approach and ideology—but on a number of these moral issues—when it comes to genocide, when it comes to AIDS, when it comes to malaria, when it comes to women’s empowerment—the President was deeply and personally interested, and the administration was more active than any recent administration, and that is something that I was proud to be a part of.
JERRY FOWLER: The President is still there, so he would presumably still be pushing on Darfur, but you are gone. Has your role in that been taken by someone else?
MIKE GERSON: I think there are a couple of people in the system; Jendayi Frazer, who is over at the State Department, and really now, namely, Andrew Natsios, the President’s Special Envoy on this topic. Andrew is very committed on this set of issues and has a long history. There is an infrastructure there of people who are involved and committed. That does not make the situation easy to deal with, but I think it is near the top of the agenda.
JERRY FOWLER: You mentioned that one structural thing that could be helpful is to have a person on the National Security Council staff who has responsibility for atrocities and genocide. The first question would be is there such a person now, and if there is not, what are the political obstacles to creating that position?
MIKE GERSON: I think these things tend to be more located with people that deal with regional issues, Africa or other things. Some of it may be in the human rights and democracy area, but it is not an exact fit in either of those. This is in many ways an interesting—its own academic field, which is, how do you spot, identify the growing signs and stages of intolerance and the potential for violence, and act in ways that prevent it, rather than responding to it? This seems to me the way our policy should be headed, rather than the judicial punishment of genocide being the main approach. It should be the early prevention of mass killings and the intolerance that leads to it. That seems to me to justify someone whose job it is to focus on that, more or less, exclusively.
JERRY FOWLER: What are the obstacles to having that person in place, because it does not seem that there is someone, nor has there been someone whose job is explicitly that.
MIKE GERSON: Tradition, inertia, the normal bureaucratic obstacles in anything like this, and it seems to me like we have had a few years of intense, personal presidential interest, but I would also like to see some institutional changes that ensure that all future presidents have this as part of the agenda. It concerned me—and they are by no means alone in this—in the Rwandan genocide; I do not believe, from talking to the Clinton people who were deeply concerned, that there was ever a principals meeting of the National Security Council related to that issue. It never rose that high and that early, and they ended up just reacting, instead of shaping events. That was true in East Timor, and it was true in many ways when the administration was focused on the North-South agreement in Sudan while the problems in Darfur were growing, and it may well have been confronted earlier.
JERRY FOWLER: In March of 2006, the administration published its most recent version of its National Security Strategy, which is a fairly comprehensive statement as its title suggests—National Security Strategy—and it had a passage on genocide that said that it is a moral imperative that states take action to punish genocide. History teaches us sometimes others states will not act unless America does its part. How significant is the inclusion of a specific section on genocide in this document?
MIKE GERSON: I think that it is an indication that there was a significant constituency for its inclusion in the National Security Council at the White House which is a good thing. I think it reflects the fact that for Steven Hadley, that National Security Advisor, and J.D. Crouch, who is the Deputy there, that they are reflecting a level of presidential interest, but I think also a substantive concern, more broadly over the last few years, I think the administration has developed a real interest in the problem of failed and failing states for a variety of reasons; these are often circumstances that are open to mass atrocities, but they also export a lot of other problems to the world, whether it is drug trade or terrorism. There is a variety of a kind of pathologies that grow in countries with failed and divided governments, and in this new world, we are going to have to take that very seriously.
JERRY FOWLER: We have been mostly focusing on the inside aspects of responding to atrocities generally and Darfur in particular. One of the things that has arisen with regard to Darfur, which did not with regard to Rwanda and really only slightly with regard to Bosnia, is a fairly large public movement, at least in terms of these issues. There are students involved, religious groups involved, a whole range of people; how has that influenced discussions inside the White House?
MIKE GERSON: I think it has had a serious influence. It was, in fact, one of the most encouraging things of my time in government. In a deeply polarized period of American history, where there is a lot of bitterness in Washington, D.C., this was the sort of issue, particularly Darfur, where I worked at the White House with traditional human rights groups, with Evangelical groups, with African American groups, with a variety of religious organizations, and it was a genuine common ground. It was a serious, broad effort. Its leadership met with the President a couple of times and made clear that this is one of the few foreign policy issues in American life that has broken through to a broad audience. It is because of the intensity of the suffering and the innocence of the victims and the horrors that they go through; that is part of it. I think that many people who have been committed on Sudan—the North-South problem—for many, many years; so there is a group of very committed and effective people who have followed these issues for a long time.
JERRY FOWLER: What advice would you give to, whether it is students at different universities, as people out in their churches, synagogues or mosques, in terms of the most effective ways to communicate with the government, and especially with the administration?
MIKE GERSON: I think it is interesting. For example, when I was at the White House and the President would go out and do town hall meetings, we almost never got a foreign policy issue, but we almost always got a Sudan issue of some kind, which showed that people in that community were taking this seriously, this kind of complicated but compelling foreign policy issue. Eventually when people make their voices heard to their own representatives in question and answer sessions and in their own communities, it creates an atmosphere that public officials take seriously. I think that it is never wasted effort; it is actually heard and listened to. From that perspective, I think it has been quite effective. The large meeting that the Save Darfur Coalition had here in Washington got a lot of attention, and I think that it has been a breakthrough issue.
JERRY FOWLER: Turning to the efforts to protect civilians in Darfur; obviously the United States has been very involved diplomatically, working with the United Nations, with the African Union, with the European Union, with the Arab League, in short, working very multilaterally to try to bring some pressure to bear on Khartoum. Just to cut to the chase, how difficult has an effective multilateral effort been in light of Iraq?
MIKE GERSON: Let me put it this way; I do not think Iraq has necessarily helped things, but these are some of the most difficult multilateral organizations in the world to work with under the best of circumstances. The Arab League has not been helpful at every stage of this. The African Union is a relatively new organization that over the last few years has gotten its sea legs. The United Nations Security Council—because of China and Russia there—is not easy to deal with. There has been a consistent push on the part of the American government, on the part of Tony Blair of the British government, and some others, and some real victories. Actions by the Security Council which have led now to the possibility of a much larger, much more effective force being deployed in Darfur which I think is going to be vital for any type of long-term solution there. What I would say is that this is the work of multilateralism at its most difficult, even under the best circumstances, and Iraq has not made it easier.
JERRY FOWLER: In just a second, I want to talk about getting a force on the ground and the challenges that remain, but before we do that, I want to focus in particularly on China. I think you referred to it as one of Khartoum’s “heat shields,” and it is generally agreed that they provide a lot of diplomatic cover. First, as a general matter, how high on the United States agenda with China has Darfur been?
MIKE GERSON: I think it has been raised in significant settings; the President has raised it himself with the Chinese. I think they know that we are concerned. I think they were actually in this last round at the United Nations, a little more cooperative than they have been, from what I am told by our people at the United Nations. My general view of the Chinese is that they have been very difficult, but that they are open to pressure. They do not like to be isolated in international settings, so there is a possibility of progress there. There is a much broader question about China’s role in Africa as a whole that I think is going to get a significant amount of attention over the next few years. Are they going to act as the best friend of the irresponsible? As the main supporter of irresponsible regimes, like Sudan, the regime in Khartoum, or like Zimbabwe, where they are seeking geopolitical advantage by essentially cozying up with some of the worst regimes in the world? I think that if they were exposed in international settings, I think that they would see that there is a downside to that policy which is a very oil and resource driven foreign policy.
JERRY FOWLER: When you say exposed, do you mean exposed by other governments or by organizations?
MIKE GERSON: I think it would be useful, although difficult, for other governments to be engaged in that, but I think it a very useful thing for NGOs and advocacy organizations to point out that the Chinese have a fundamental choice in Sudan and across Africa: whether they are going to feed corruption and encourage tyranny and befriend the worst regimes in the world, or whether they are going to be part of a solution there, and I think public attention increases the cost to them when they do irresponsible things.
JERRY FOWLER: In the next 18 months, of course, we are going to hear more and more talk about the 2008 Olympics which will be held in Beijing. Some people are thinking that presents an advocacy opportunity to draw attention to these kinds of things.
MIKE GERSON: It could be; that could be a strategy. This is something they want to go well, they do not want controversy to surround; I am not sure that is the best way, but it is one possible way.
JERRY FOWLER: As we are nearing the end of our time, I wanted to talk a little bit about getting an effective civilian protection force on the ground. As you mentioned, the Security Council authorized a force at the end of August, and Khartoum has been very resistant. There have been a couple of iterations about what the force would look like, going from a United Nations force to a hybrid force, and I am not even exactly sure where the formulations are now, but it all seems to be kind of stuck, and Andrew Natsios, in his most recent trip to Khartoum talked in terms of a “Plan B” if progress is not made on this. I am just wondering, from your contacts with the administration, what is your sense of what “Plan B” or “Plan C” is? Is there such a plan, and how long until it is deployed?
MIKE GERSON: Let me step back one step. I think the most important, immediate priority is to test the regime in Khartoum aggressively to see if they are really going to cooperate or not. They have made some hedging agreement for broader deployment of a light United Nations force into Darfur, and eventually a heavier force, but in order to test that the United Nations is going to have to speed up its own schedule and get some resources on the ground with the help of the United States and others and test whether Khartoum is serious or not about cooperating with them eventually, with an African Union/United Nations hybrid force, a force that would really be under both flags. That seems to me the immediate priority, but that has to be tested fairly quickly because it is in Khartoum’s interest to delay it, and delay it, and delay it. The question then becomes, if the test comes and they prove to be uncooperative—I hate to punt on this, but there is a very active process going on over at the White House to determine what the next stages are, and some of those would be individual sanctions against people in the regime; I think some of those would be expanded economic pressures. Then I think some people are also considering what the more coercive options might be, particularly if things really break down in Darfur and the government was to allow attacks on the camps or other things. How would we intervene in that circumstance? The reality here is that I think they are looking at a range of options, but I think the immediate desire is to see if Khartoum is serious about allowing this much larger hybrid African Union/United Nations force. That is probably the next step.
JERRY FOWLER: Is the United Nations prepared to make such a test?
MIKE GERSON: Right now, it looks like they are pulling things together rather slowly. They have to get countries to donate troops and equipment. A United Nations operation is never an easy or quick one, but I do think that they do require an extra push here to try to get some serious resources on the ground quickly in order to test what the real situation is.
JERRY FOWLER: My guest has been Michael Gerson, formerly a top aide to President Bush and now a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Michael, thanks for taking the time to be with us.
MIKE GERSON: Happy to be with you.
