At War with Ourselves, page 28
The next day, Trump had an opportunity to revel in his contrarianism during his meeting with Duterte, whom most leaders in the free world viewed with unease due to the thousands of extrajudicial killings carried out under his “war on drugs.” I reminded Trump that when Duterte took office, he traveled to Beijing and stated that it was “time to say goodbye to Washington.” I recommended that Trump be tough with him on human rights abuses and warn Duterte that his apparent love for Xi and the CCP was bound to be unrequited. U.S. relations were still very strong with leaders across the Philippine government and security forces. Trump might remind Duterte, I said, of the assistance that U.S. special forces had provided in the protracted and deadly fight against Muslim separatist terrorists in the Philippine city of Marawi.
Instead, Trump praised Duterte.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders later said that “human rights came up briefly” in the bilateral meeting. What she did not say is that the topic came up in the form of Trump admiring how “strong” Duterte was in the fight against drugs and even suggesting that the United States should send apprehended drug traffickers to Duterte “because I know you’ll take care of them.”
Duterte had responded, “Yes, can do.”
They both laughed, after which Duterte said he was “a big fan of Machiavelli. When choosing between being feared and loved, I prefer being feared.”
Trump was not the first U.S. president to accommodate abusive regimes, but his praising Duterte got him nothing. Trump might have objected to a treaty ally who was happy to take U.S. military support while expressing admiration for China, who had deferred the Philippine territorial dispute with China in the West Philippine Sea, and who accepted infrastructure loans and investments that ceded massive influence to Beijing. But he did not.
Years later, Trump told an interviewer, “It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and meaner [leaders] are, the better I get along with them. You’ll explain that to me someday, okay? But maybe it’s not a bad thing. The easy ones I maybe don’t like as much or don’t get along with as much.”8
I came to see Trump’s embrace of Duterte, and his berating me in the hotel room and in “the Beast,” as connected to his struggle for self-worth. If he was accepted by strongmen like Duterte, Putin, and Xi, he might convince others, and especially himself, that he was strong. And his attempt to elicit anxiety or anger in me through derogation may have been a response to his sense of losing control—control over his life on the extended trip and, as I responded that I was happy to leave whenever he wanted, control over me.
On the long flight home, after a call to update the cabinet on the results of the trip, I reflected on the past nine months. I believed that I was getting Trump what he needed, but I realized that I was not the person to give him what he wanted. He wanted a yes-man, someone who would tell him more of what I had heard in that first Oval Office meeting in February, that his instincts were always right, combined with various other forms of flattery and affirmation.
But to give him what he wanted would have done a disservice to him and the nation. I resolved to continue getting him the best advice until my time was up.
Chapter 16
Weakness Is Provocative
TRUMP EXPRESSES ‘GREAT CONFIDENCE’ IN SAUDI REGIME ACCUSED OF POLITICAL PURGE . . . The prince recently took a number of bold and unprecedented steps at home, consolidating power by arresting 11 princes . . . LEBANON ACCUSES SAUDI ARABIA OF HOLDING ITS PM HOSTAGE . . . Hariri travelled to Riyadh on Nov. 3 before abruptly resigning in a televised statement a day later . . . Trump speaks with Erdogan about crisis in Syria . . . TRUMP TELLS TURKISH PRESIDENT U.S. WILL STOP ARMING KURDS IN SYRIA . . . Mr. Cavusoglu said Mr. Trump gave instructions to U.S. generals and his national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, that “no weapons would be issued” to the Kurdish forces . . . SYRIAN SURPRISE: HOW TRUMP’S PHONE CALL CHANGED THE WAR . . . Erdogan Says He and Trump Were on Same ‘Wavelength’ in Phone Call . . . Pakistan frees Hafiz Saeed, alleged mastermind of Mumbai attacks . . . NEW NORTH KOREAN MISSILE IS A ‘MONSTER’ . . . New missile test shows North Korea capable of hitting all of US mainland . . . MCMASTER: ‘NOT MUCH TIME’ LEFT TO DEAL WITH NORTH KOREA . . . TRUMP RECOGNIZES JERUSALEM AS CAPITAL OF ISRAEL IN REVERSAL OF LONGTIME U.S. POLICY . . . Trump’s Jerusalem decision promises upheaval . . . Hamas calls for Palestinian uprising over Trump’s Jerusalem plan . . . TRUMP SETS OUT NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY OF ‘PRINCIPLED REALISM’ AND GLOBAL COMPETITION . . . “GEOPOLITICS ARE BACK AND THEY ARE BACK WITH A VENGEANCE,” SAYS MCMASTER . . . President Trump unveiled his new national security strategy today, emphasizing a need for strategic competitiveness among rival powers, and building strength through prosperity domestically . . . TRUMP GIVES GREEN LIGHT TO SELLING LETHAL ARMS TO UKRAINE . . . IRANIAN CITIES HIT BY ANTI-GOVERNMENT PROTESTS
SOON AFTER we returned from the Asia trip, Trump asked me to join him for lunch in the small dining room adjacent to the Oval Office. We had a wide-ranging discussion about the many changes he had made to U.S. foreign policy, with an emphasis on what would be the main theme of his National Security Strategy: the need to compete to advance and protect America’s interests. We were accelerating progress on countering China’s economic aggression, maximizing pressure on North Korea and Iran, and implementing the South Asia strategy. Trump had also approved a Russia strategy to impose costs on the Kremlin for its destabilizing actions, strengthen U.S. and allied defenses, and deter further aggression.
“Mr. President,” I said, “I think it is time to confirm your decision to provide Ukraine with defensive capabilities and, in particular, the Javelin antitank missiles. Your cabinet fully supports providing and selling those weapons to Ukraine. As you said many times, it was ridiculous for the Obama administration to give Ukrainians first-aid kits, but not give them what they needed to fight. I know Putin told you in his last phone call, ‘If you want peace, do not give Ukraine weapons,’ and I know that some people are telling you that Javelins could provoke Russia, but Putin’s history shows that what provokes him is the perception of weakness.”
I pulled out a large rectangular chart with a time line and photos. “Below this time line are events or decisions that portrayed American weakness or lack of will, and above it are subsequent acts of Russian aggression. Mounting opposition to the war in Iraq during the Bush administration in 2006 inspires cyberattacks on Estonia in 2007 and the invasion of Georgia in 2008. The 2014 invasion of Ukraine follows the Obama administration’s unenforced redline in Syria.”
“Okay, General. What do you want me to do?”
I handed him a presidential decision memo with three options. “Mr. President, initial the option you want. One: No Javelins. Two: Provide the full amount through foreign military assistance. Three: Provide half the Javelins through assistance and sell Ukraine the other half.”
He initialed option three and signed the memo instructing the departments to execute the already congressionally authorized sale and provision of Javelins. But implementation of that simple decision would prove difficult. Members of the White House staff impeded it, and the Department of Defense placed restrictions on how the Ukrainian Army could employ the systems.
I was learning how difficult it is to implement even clear presidential decisions. I would have to spend more time following up on execution.
* * *
AS THANKSGIVING approached, two holiday phone calls confirmed my assessment at the UN General Assembly that a myopic focus on the military destruction of ISIS had ceded the initiative in Syria. The first call was with President Erdoğan of Turkey at 8 a.m. on November 24, the day after Thanksgiving. As Putin had done during a phone call the previous week, Erdoğan told Trump that there was no longer justification for U.S. support to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) because ISIS had been defeated. They both lied—Putin because he wanted the United States out so Assad could regain control of northeastern Syria, and Erdoğan because he wanted to prevent the development of a Kurdish Army that might seek independence and lay claim to eastern Turkey.1 Like Putin, Erdoğan also portrayed Assad as the inevitable winner in the Syrian Civil War to garner Trump’s approval for a Turkey-Iran-Russia-brokered end of the war.
That, too, was a lie. Assad was weak. His military was devastated. He had control of only 42 percent of the populated area of the country and of only 8 million of the 21 million prewar population. Two hundred billion dollars in infrastructure had been destroyed, and neither Assad nor his Russian and Iranian sponsors had the money to reconstruct the country. The SDF sat atop 67 percent of Syria’s oil reserves.
Trump knew that what he was hearing were falsehoods, but Erdoğan, like Putin, had figured out how to play to Trump’s distaste for sustained military operations in the Middle East. Erdoğan described continued arms transfers to the SDF as a “waste of money.” U.S. support for the SDF was “null and void” because “ISIS was defeated.”
Trump fell for it. “You’re right, it is ‘ridiculous,’” he said. “I told General McMaster no weapons to anyone, now that it is over. I told General McMaster that to his face!”
Erdoğan and Putin seemed also to have shared their assessment that I was the principal impediment to their agendas. Erdoğan insinuated that I had delayed his phone call, telling Trump that the two of them should speak more often. Trump responded that he would give Erdoğan a personal phone number so he could reach him anytime.
Erdoğan must have judged the phone call successful. He would, no doubt, share his assessment with Putin and probably with the Iranians, too. Trump had never told me to stop the delivery of weapons. His vacillation on the call was bound to encourage Turkish action against the SDF, which would, in turn, divert the SDF from the far-from-completed mission of defeating ISIS. I believed that Trump’s eagerness to disengage might also encourage Russia and Iran to give the United States a push out the door with proxy attacks against our small force in Syria and Iraq. Trump’s ambivalence toward Syria and the Middle East generally would encourage others, such as Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, to hedge with Russia and accommodate Assad. Assad’s remaining in power would mean no resolution of a war that had killed more than 400,000 people, wounded over 1.3 million, displaced over 5 million internally, and forced 6.3 million to flee the country. Iran was perpetuating the weakness of its Arab neighbors to pursue its hegemonic goals to establish a superhighway to the Mediterranean and place a proxy Army on Israel’s border.
Putin and Erdoğan were playing Trump. If I allowed this situation to go unchallenged, I would be derelict in my duty as national security advisor. I insisted that we schedule an NSC meeting on Syria before the holiday break.
The second Thanksgiving call was with Prime Minister Saad Hariri of Lebanon later that morning. Hariri had withdrawn his resignation as prime minister, which he had announced under duress on video while visiting Saudi Arabia. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had coerced the resignation because he thought Hariri was weak in confronting Hezbollah, the organization that had assassinated Hariri’s father, Rafic Hariri, in 2005.
MBS had also ordered the detention of hundreds of Saudi royals, billionaires, and senior government officials at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh. There were reports of abuse, and many detainees had to relinquish financial assets to gain release. Saudi authorities described the monthslong operation as a crackdown on corruption, but it was primarily a way for MBS to consolidate power.
The perpetual turmoil in Lebanon and MBS’s draconian actions were consistent with Trump’s earlier description of the region as “one big mish mosh of crap.” But I hoped that Trump would also conclude that without sustained U.S. engagement, the situation in the Middle East could get worse. I delivered a message to Hariri, which I had coordinated several days earlier with the State Department and my Quint counterparts, urging him to do more to get Hezbollah back behind the buffer zone. I also asked him to tell us what we and our allies might do to help him rekindle the March 14 Alliance, the coalition of political parties and independents that he had led in 2005 after his father’s assassination during the “Cedar Revolution” that compelled Syrian forces to leave Lebanon.
The United States could not solve Lebanon’s problems, but the Obama administration’s accommodation of Iran had strengthened Hezbollah and allowed the terrorist organization to turn Lebanon into a base for operations, with 150,000 rockets pointed at Israel. I wanted Trump to see that he had already begun to restore U.S. influence in the region after the Obama administration disengaged and that when he spoke about leaving the Middle East, he sounded like President Obama, undermined the gains he was making, and set back efforts to defeat jihadist terrorists, counter Iranian aggression, protect Israel, and make progress on a resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Hariri thanked me for the work that I and many others had done to gain his release and convince MBS that he, Hariri, despite his shortcomings, was the best person available to counter Hezbollah’s growing influence. There would always be crises and disappointments in the Middle East. Lebanon would be in political and economic free fall one year later, and in October 2018, a fifteen-man Saudi hit squad with close ties to MBS would murder and dismember Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
In March 2018, six months before Khashoggi’s unconscionable murder, I hosted MBS at my home for dinner. The candid conversation convinced me that the crown prince was committed to a reform agenda that included promoting women’s rights and combating extremist perversions of Islam. I was profoundly disappointed and disgusted, then, when I learned of Khashoggi’s murder, but I still believed that disengagement from the Middle East would neither arrest the region’s cascading crises nor moderate the behavior of MBS and the Saudi royal family. Indeed, years later, the Biden administration would alienate the Saudis and resurrect the Obama policy of accommodating Iran with disastrous results.
After the Thanksgiving weekend, I told Kelly that Trump’s dissonance about the Middle East and the long delay in bringing him options in Syria were dangerous. I used an analogy that I knew would resonate with the chief of staff. Like Trump, Ronald Reagan had cared little about the Middle East before confronting a war in the Levant. He sent Marines to Beirut on an ambiguous multinational peacekeeping mission while his secretaries of state and defense pursued divergent approaches to the Lebanese Civil War. Iran-sponsored terrorists attacked the Marine barracks in Beirut with a truck bomb, killing 241 Marines. After suffering the largest single-day loss of life for the Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945, the United States conducted a humiliating retreat that led to the ascendency of Hezbollah in Lebanon and encouraged a new generation of terrorists, including Osama bin Laden. Without a clear mission for U.S. forces in Syria as part of a strategy to protect and advance vital American interests in the Middle East, we were set up for another tragedy.
Mattis, doubtful of Trump’s willingness to sustain the effort in Syria, seemed eager to withdraw. Tillerson, cognizant of the role U.S. forces played not only in the defeat of ISIS but also in countering Iran, preferred a long-term effort in support of the SDF.
Finally, Kelly agreed to an NSC meeting on the last working day before the holiday break in December.
* * *
BECAUSE TRUMP would make decisions before that meeting that had implications across the region, our team endeavored to place those decisions in broader context and to highlight potential consequences. Anticipating those consequences required listening to and considering the perspectives of our friends in the region.
It was in that spirit that Mike Bell and I met with King Abdullah II of Jordan and his ambassador, Dina Kawar, at the ambassador’s residence in Washington around noon on the Monday after Thanksgiving. The king was concerned that Trump’s engagement with the Israel-Palestinian peace process was biased in favor of Israel and against the Palestinians. With over two million Palestinians living in the country, many of whom were classified as refugees, the Hashemite Kingdom would be in jeopardy if hope for a two-state solution evaporated. As custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, the king asked that the United States prevent any change to the status of the disputed city.
I would summarize the king’s concerns to Trump when I returned to the White House, but Abdullah was bound to be disappointed. By the time he and Queen Rania arrived at Quarters 13 that evening for a dinner Katie and I hosted in their honor, Trump had made the decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv.
Kushner, advisor Jason Greenblatt, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and I had first discussed the embassy move on November 15. The Jerusalem Embassy Act, which Congress passed in 1995, directed the president to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but each president since Bill Clinton had delayed the move by signing a waiver every six months. Tillerson had convinced Trump to sign the waiver in May, but when it was time to do so again in November, Kushner thought it time to make good on the president’s campaign promise to comply with the act.
As we spoke, I drafted the following objectives:
Keep the President’s campaign promise to move the Embassy.
Make progress toward a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
Prevent large-scale violence.
Limit Iranian and Hamas influence in the Palestinian territories in Gaza and the West Bank.
Keep regional states on board with the peace process and normalization of relations with Israel.
Two days later, Tillerson joined us for a meeting in the Oval Office. I summarized the objectives and noted the potential for unrest in the region, a further deterioration in Israeli-Palestinian relations, and a reduction in the already dim prospects for an eventual two-state solution.
Tillerson again recommended that Trump sign the waiver because of those downside risks. Friedman argued that conventional approaches to broker peace had not worked, suggesting that actors in the region would respect Trump for doing what he had promised to do.
Instead, Trump praised Duterte.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders later said that “human rights came up briefly” in the bilateral meeting. What she did not say is that the topic came up in the form of Trump admiring how “strong” Duterte was in the fight against drugs and even suggesting that the United States should send apprehended drug traffickers to Duterte “because I know you’ll take care of them.”
Duterte had responded, “Yes, can do.”
They both laughed, after which Duterte said he was “a big fan of Machiavelli. When choosing between being feared and loved, I prefer being feared.”
Trump was not the first U.S. president to accommodate abusive regimes, but his praising Duterte got him nothing. Trump might have objected to a treaty ally who was happy to take U.S. military support while expressing admiration for China, who had deferred the Philippine territorial dispute with China in the West Philippine Sea, and who accepted infrastructure loans and investments that ceded massive influence to Beijing. But he did not.
Years later, Trump told an interviewer, “It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and meaner [leaders] are, the better I get along with them. You’ll explain that to me someday, okay? But maybe it’s not a bad thing. The easy ones I maybe don’t like as much or don’t get along with as much.”8
I came to see Trump’s embrace of Duterte, and his berating me in the hotel room and in “the Beast,” as connected to his struggle for self-worth. If he was accepted by strongmen like Duterte, Putin, and Xi, he might convince others, and especially himself, that he was strong. And his attempt to elicit anxiety or anger in me through derogation may have been a response to his sense of losing control—control over his life on the extended trip and, as I responded that I was happy to leave whenever he wanted, control over me.
On the long flight home, after a call to update the cabinet on the results of the trip, I reflected on the past nine months. I believed that I was getting Trump what he needed, but I realized that I was not the person to give him what he wanted. He wanted a yes-man, someone who would tell him more of what I had heard in that first Oval Office meeting in February, that his instincts were always right, combined with various other forms of flattery and affirmation.
But to give him what he wanted would have done a disservice to him and the nation. I resolved to continue getting him the best advice until my time was up.
Chapter 16
Weakness Is Provocative
TRUMP EXPRESSES ‘GREAT CONFIDENCE’ IN SAUDI REGIME ACCUSED OF POLITICAL PURGE . . . The prince recently took a number of bold and unprecedented steps at home, consolidating power by arresting 11 princes . . . LEBANON ACCUSES SAUDI ARABIA OF HOLDING ITS PM HOSTAGE . . . Hariri travelled to Riyadh on Nov. 3 before abruptly resigning in a televised statement a day later . . . Trump speaks with Erdogan about crisis in Syria . . . TRUMP TELLS TURKISH PRESIDENT U.S. WILL STOP ARMING KURDS IN SYRIA . . . Mr. Cavusoglu said Mr. Trump gave instructions to U.S. generals and his national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, that “no weapons would be issued” to the Kurdish forces . . . SYRIAN SURPRISE: HOW TRUMP’S PHONE CALL CHANGED THE WAR . . . Erdogan Says He and Trump Were on Same ‘Wavelength’ in Phone Call . . . Pakistan frees Hafiz Saeed, alleged mastermind of Mumbai attacks . . . NEW NORTH KOREAN MISSILE IS A ‘MONSTER’ . . . New missile test shows North Korea capable of hitting all of US mainland . . . MCMASTER: ‘NOT MUCH TIME’ LEFT TO DEAL WITH NORTH KOREA . . . TRUMP RECOGNIZES JERUSALEM AS CAPITAL OF ISRAEL IN REVERSAL OF LONGTIME U.S. POLICY . . . Trump’s Jerusalem decision promises upheaval . . . Hamas calls for Palestinian uprising over Trump’s Jerusalem plan . . . TRUMP SETS OUT NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY OF ‘PRINCIPLED REALISM’ AND GLOBAL COMPETITION . . . “GEOPOLITICS ARE BACK AND THEY ARE BACK WITH A VENGEANCE,” SAYS MCMASTER . . . President Trump unveiled his new national security strategy today, emphasizing a need for strategic competitiveness among rival powers, and building strength through prosperity domestically . . . TRUMP GIVES GREEN LIGHT TO SELLING LETHAL ARMS TO UKRAINE . . . IRANIAN CITIES HIT BY ANTI-GOVERNMENT PROTESTS
SOON AFTER we returned from the Asia trip, Trump asked me to join him for lunch in the small dining room adjacent to the Oval Office. We had a wide-ranging discussion about the many changes he had made to U.S. foreign policy, with an emphasis on what would be the main theme of his National Security Strategy: the need to compete to advance and protect America’s interests. We were accelerating progress on countering China’s economic aggression, maximizing pressure on North Korea and Iran, and implementing the South Asia strategy. Trump had also approved a Russia strategy to impose costs on the Kremlin for its destabilizing actions, strengthen U.S. and allied defenses, and deter further aggression.
“Mr. President,” I said, “I think it is time to confirm your decision to provide Ukraine with defensive capabilities and, in particular, the Javelin antitank missiles. Your cabinet fully supports providing and selling those weapons to Ukraine. As you said many times, it was ridiculous for the Obama administration to give Ukrainians first-aid kits, but not give them what they needed to fight. I know Putin told you in his last phone call, ‘If you want peace, do not give Ukraine weapons,’ and I know that some people are telling you that Javelins could provoke Russia, but Putin’s history shows that what provokes him is the perception of weakness.”
I pulled out a large rectangular chart with a time line and photos. “Below this time line are events or decisions that portrayed American weakness or lack of will, and above it are subsequent acts of Russian aggression. Mounting opposition to the war in Iraq during the Bush administration in 2006 inspires cyberattacks on Estonia in 2007 and the invasion of Georgia in 2008. The 2014 invasion of Ukraine follows the Obama administration’s unenforced redline in Syria.”
“Okay, General. What do you want me to do?”
I handed him a presidential decision memo with three options. “Mr. President, initial the option you want. One: No Javelins. Two: Provide the full amount through foreign military assistance. Three: Provide half the Javelins through assistance and sell Ukraine the other half.”
He initialed option three and signed the memo instructing the departments to execute the already congressionally authorized sale and provision of Javelins. But implementation of that simple decision would prove difficult. Members of the White House staff impeded it, and the Department of Defense placed restrictions on how the Ukrainian Army could employ the systems.
I was learning how difficult it is to implement even clear presidential decisions. I would have to spend more time following up on execution.
* * *
AS THANKSGIVING approached, two holiday phone calls confirmed my assessment at the UN General Assembly that a myopic focus on the military destruction of ISIS had ceded the initiative in Syria. The first call was with President Erdoğan of Turkey at 8 a.m. on November 24, the day after Thanksgiving. As Putin had done during a phone call the previous week, Erdoğan told Trump that there was no longer justification for U.S. support to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) because ISIS had been defeated. They both lied—Putin because he wanted the United States out so Assad could regain control of northeastern Syria, and Erdoğan because he wanted to prevent the development of a Kurdish Army that might seek independence and lay claim to eastern Turkey.1 Like Putin, Erdoğan also portrayed Assad as the inevitable winner in the Syrian Civil War to garner Trump’s approval for a Turkey-Iran-Russia-brokered end of the war.
That, too, was a lie. Assad was weak. His military was devastated. He had control of only 42 percent of the populated area of the country and of only 8 million of the 21 million prewar population. Two hundred billion dollars in infrastructure had been destroyed, and neither Assad nor his Russian and Iranian sponsors had the money to reconstruct the country. The SDF sat atop 67 percent of Syria’s oil reserves.
Trump knew that what he was hearing were falsehoods, but Erdoğan, like Putin, had figured out how to play to Trump’s distaste for sustained military operations in the Middle East. Erdoğan described continued arms transfers to the SDF as a “waste of money.” U.S. support for the SDF was “null and void” because “ISIS was defeated.”
Trump fell for it. “You’re right, it is ‘ridiculous,’” he said. “I told General McMaster no weapons to anyone, now that it is over. I told General McMaster that to his face!”
Erdoğan and Putin seemed also to have shared their assessment that I was the principal impediment to their agendas. Erdoğan insinuated that I had delayed his phone call, telling Trump that the two of them should speak more often. Trump responded that he would give Erdoğan a personal phone number so he could reach him anytime.
Erdoğan must have judged the phone call successful. He would, no doubt, share his assessment with Putin and probably with the Iranians, too. Trump had never told me to stop the delivery of weapons. His vacillation on the call was bound to encourage Turkish action against the SDF, which would, in turn, divert the SDF from the far-from-completed mission of defeating ISIS. I believed that Trump’s eagerness to disengage might also encourage Russia and Iran to give the United States a push out the door with proxy attacks against our small force in Syria and Iraq. Trump’s ambivalence toward Syria and the Middle East generally would encourage others, such as Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, to hedge with Russia and accommodate Assad. Assad’s remaining in power would mean no resolution of a war that had killed more than 400,000 people, wounded over 1.3 million, displaced over 5 million internally, and forced 6.3 million to flee the country. Iran was perpetuating the weakness of its Arab neighbors to pursue its hegemonic goals to establish a superhighway to the Mediterranean and place a proxy Army on Israel’s border.
Putin and Erdoğan were playing Trump. If I allowed this situation to go unchallenged, I would be derelict in my duty as national security advisor. I insisted that we schedule an NSC meeting on Syria before the holiday break.
The second Thanksgiving call was with Prime Minister Saad Hariri of Lebanon later that morning. Hariri had withdrawn his resignation as prime minister, which he had announced under duress on video while visiting Saudi Arabia. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had coerced the resignation because he thought Hariri was weak in confronting Hezbollah, the organization that had assassinated Hariri’s father, Rafic Hariri, in 2005.
MBS had also ordered the detention of hundreds of Saudi royals, billionaires, and senior government officials at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh. There were reports of abuse, and many detainees had to relinquish financial assets to gain release. Saudi authorities described the monthslong operation as a crackdown on corruption, but it was primarily a way for MBS to consolidate power.
The perpetual turmoil in Lebanon and MBS’s draconian actions were consistent with Trump’s earlier description of the region as “one big mish mosh of crap.” But I hoped that Trump would also conclude that without sustained U.S. engagement, the situation in the Middle East could get worse. I delivered a message to Hariri, which I had coordinated several days earlier with the State Department and my Quint counterparts, urging him to do more to get Hezbollah back behind the buffer zone. I also asked him to tell us what we and our allies might do to help him rekindle the March 14 Alliance, the coalition of political parties and independents that he had led in 2005 after his father’s assassination during the “Cedar Revolution” that compelled Syrian forces to leave Lebanon.
The United States could not solve Lebanon’s problems, but the Obama administration’s accommodation of Iran had strengthened Hezbollah and allowed the terrorist organization to turn Lebanon into a base for operations, with 150,000 rockets pointed at Israel. I wanted Trump to see that he had already begun to restore U.S. influence in the region after the Obama administration disengaged and that when he spoke about leaving the Middle East, he sounded like President Obama, undermined the gains he was making, and set back efforts to defeat jihadist terrorists, counter Iranian aggression, protect Israel, and make progress on a resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Hariri thanked me for the work that I and many others had done to gain his release and convince MBS that he, Hariri, despite his shortcomings, was the best person available to counter Hezbollah’s growing influence. There would always be crises and disappointments in the Middle East. Lebanon would be in political and economic free fall one year later, and in October 2018, a fifteen-man Saudi hit squad with close ties to MBS would murder and dismember Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
In March 2018, six months before Khashoggi’s unconscionable murder, I hosted MBS at my home for dinner. The candid conversation convinced me that the crown prince was committed to a reform agenda that included promoting women’s rights and combating extremist perversions of Islam. I was profoundly disappointed and disgusted, then, when I learned of Khashoggi’s murder, but I still believed that disengagement from the Middle East would neither arrest the region’s cascading crises nor moderate the behavior of MBS and the Saudi royal family. Indeed, years later, the Biden administration would alienate the Saudis and resurrect the Obama policy of accommodating Iran with disastrous results.
After the Thanksgiving weekend, I told Kelly that Trump’s dissonance about the Middle East and the long delay in bringing him options in Syria were dangerous. I used an analogy that I knew would resonate with the chief of staff. Like Trump, Ronald Reagan had cared little about the Middle East before confronting a war in the Levant. He sent Marines to Beirut on an ambiguous multinational peacekeeping mission while his secretaries of state and defense pursued divergent approaches to the Lebanese Civil War. Iran-sponsored terrorists attacked the Marine barracks in Beirut with a truck bomb, killing 241 Marines. After suffering the largest single-day loss of life for the Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945, the United States conducted a humiliating retreat that led to the ascendency of Hezbollah in Lebanon and encouraged a new generation of terrorists, including Osama bin Laden. Without a clear mission for U.S. forces in Syria as part of a strategy to protect and advance vital American interests in the Middle East, we were set up for another tragedy.
Mattis, doubtful of Trump’s willingness to sustain the effort in Syria, seemed eager to withdraw. Tillerson, cognizant of the role U.S. forces played not only in the defeat of ISIS but also in countering Iran, preferred a long-term effort in support of the SDF.
Finally, Kelly agreed to an NSC meeting on the last working day before the holiday break in December.
* * *
BECAUSE TRUMP would make decisions before that meeting that had implications across the region, our team endeavored to place those decisions in broader context and to highlight potential consequences. Anticipating those consequences required listening to and considering the perspectives of our friends in the region.
It was in that spirit that Mike Bell and I met with King Abdullah II of Jordan and his ambassador, Dina Kawar, at the ambassador’s residence in Washington around noon on the Monday after Thanksgiving. The king was concerned that Trump’s engagement with the Israel-Palestinian peace process was biased in favor of Israel and against the Palestinians. With over two million Palestinians living in the country, many of whom were classified as refugees, the Hashemite Kingdom would be in jeopardy if hope for a two-state solution evaporated. As custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, the king asked that the United States prevent any change to the status of the disputed city.
I would summarize the king’s concerns to Trump when I returned to the White House, but Abdullah was bound to be disappointed. By the time he and Queen Rania arrived at Quarters 13 that evening for a dinner Katie and I hosted in their honor, Trump had made the decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv.
Kushner, advisor Jason Greenblatt, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and I had first discussed the embassy move on November 15. The Jerusalem Embassy Act, which Congress passed in 1995, directed the president to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but each president since Bill Clinton had delayed the move by signing a waiver every six months. Tillerson had convinced Trump to sign the waiver in May, but when it was time to do so again in November, Kushner thought it time to make good on the president’s campaign promise to comply with the act.
As we spoke, I drafted the following objectives:
Keep the President’s campaign promise to move the Embassy.
Make progress toward a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
Prevent large-scale violence.
Limit Iranian and Hamas influence in the Palestinian territories in Gaza and the West Bank.
Keep regional states on board with the peace process and normalization of relations with Israel.
Two days later, Tillerson joined us for a meeting in the Oval Office. I summarized the objectives and noted the potential for unrest in the region, a further deterioration in Israeli-Palestinian relations, and a reduction in the already dim prospects for an eventual two-state solution.
Tillerson again recommended that Trump sign the waiver because of those downside risks. Friedman argued that conventional approaches to broker peace had not worked, suggesting that actors in the region would respect Trump for doing what he had promised to do.
