Susan E. Rice

Susan Elizabeth Rice (born November 17, 1964) is an American diplomat, policy advisor, and public official. As a member of the Democratic Party, Rice served as the 22nd director of the United States Domestic Policy Council from 2021 to 2023, as the 27th U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013, and as the 23rd U.S. national security advisor from 2013 to 2017.

Rice was born in Washington, D.C., and attended Stanford University and New College, Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar and received a D.Phil. She served on President Bill Clinton's National Security Council staff from 1993 to 1997 and was the assistant secretary of state for African affairs at the State Department from 1997 to 2001. Appointed at age 32, Rice was then the youngest person to have served as a regional assistant secretary of state. Rice's tenure saw significant changes in U.S.–Africa policy, including the passage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, support for democratic transitions in South Africa and Nigeria, and an increased U.S. focus on fighting HIV/AIDS.

A former Brookings Institution fellow, Rice served as a foreign policy advisor to Democratic presidential nominees Michael Dukakis, John Kerry, and Barack Obama. After Obama won the 2008 presidential election, Rice was nominated as ambassador to the United Nations. The Senate confirmed her by unanimous consent on January 22, 2009. During her tenure at the United Nations, Rice championed a human rights and anti-poverty agenda, elevated climate change and LGBT and women's rights as global priorities, and committed the U.S. to agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the U.N. Millennium Development Goals. She also defended Israel at the Security Council, pushed for tough sanctions against Iran and North Korea, and advocated for U.S. and NATO intervention in Libya in 2011.

Mentioned as a possible replacement for retiring United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton in 2012, Rice withdrew from consideration following controversy related to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi. President Barack Obama instead named her national security advisor in 2013, where she supported U.S. efforts on the Iran nuclear deal of 2015, the Ebola epidemic, the reopening to Cuba, and the Paris Agreement on climate change. In 2021, Rice became the director of the Domestic Policy Council in the Biden administration.

Early life and education

Rice was born in Washington D.C., to education policy scholar Lois Rice (née Dickson) (1933–2017), who helped design the federal Pell Grant subsidy system and who joined the Brookings Institution in 1992; and Emmett J. Rice (1919–2011), a Cornell University economics professor and the second black governor of the Federal Reserve System. Her maternal grandparents were Jamaican immigrants to Portland, Maine; her paternal grandparents were the descendants of enslaved Africans and from South Carolina. Her parents divorced when Rice was ten years of age. In 1978, her mother married Alfred Bradley Fitt, an attorney, who at the time was general counsel of the U. S. Congressional Budget Office.

Rice said that her parents taught her to "never use race as an excuse or advantage," and as a young girl she "dreamed of becoming the first U.S. senator from the District of Columbia".

Rice was a three-letter varsity athlete, student government president, and valedictorian at National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., a private girls' day school. She attended Stanford University, where she won a Truman Scholarship and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) with honors in history in 1986. She was also awarded a National Merit Scholarship and elected Phi Beta Kappa her junior year.

Rice attended New College, Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, where she earned a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) in 1988 and a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in 1990, both in International Relations. Her doctoral dissertation was entitled ''Commonwealth Initiative in Zimbabwe, 1979–1980: Implications for International Peacekeeping''. Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, honored her dissertation as the UK's most distinguished in international relations.Black Community Services Center Hall of Fame
." Stanford Alumni Association. During her time at Oxford, Rice was a member of the Oxford University Women's Basketball Team.

Early career

Rice served as a foreign policy aide to Michael Dukakis during his campaign in the 1988 presidential election. She was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, from 1990 to early 1992. Rice worked in McKinsey's Toronto office.

Clinton administration (1993–2001)

Rice served in the Clinton administration in various capacities: at the National Security Council (NSC) from 1993 to 1997 (as director for international organizations and peacekeeping from 1993 to 1995, and as special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs from 1995 to 1997); and as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1997 to 2001. Rice's tenure saw significant changes in U.S.-Africa policy, including the passage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, support for democratic transitions in South Africa and Nigeria, and an increased U.S. focus on fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

National Security Council

At the time of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Rice reportedly said, "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November election?" She denied the quote but acknowledged the mistakes made at the time and felt that a debt needed repaying. The inability or failure of the Clinton administration to do anything about the genocide would form her later views on possible military interventions. She said of the experience: "I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required." Later in 2012, during an interview with ''The New Republic'', Rice stated "To suggest that I'm repenting for wandaor that I'm haunted by that or that I don't sleep at night because of that or that every policy I've implemented subsequently is driven by that is garbage."

Timothy M. Carney, former U.S. ambassador to Sudan, co-authored an op-ed in 2002 claiming that in 1997 Sudan offered to turn over its intelligence on Osama bin Laden but that Rice, together with then NSC terrorism specialist Richard A. Clarke, successfully lobbied for continuing to bar U.S. officials from engaging with the Khartoum government. Similar allegations were made by '' Vanity Fair'' contributing editor David Rose and Richard Miniter, author of ''Losing Bin Laden''. The allegations against Rice were determined to be unfounded by the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 and the 9/11 Commission, which found no evidence that Sudan ever made an offer to share intelligence on bin Laden.

Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a longtime mentor and family friend to Rice, urged Clinton to appoint Rice as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in 1997. At a confirmation hearing chaired by Senator John Ashcroft, Rice, who attended the hearing along with her infant son whom she was then nursing, made a great impression on senators from both parties and "sailed through the confirmation process."

In the context of the Rwandan, Ugandan, AFDL and Angolan invasion of Zaire (later known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1996 and overthrow of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, Rice is alleged to have said that "Anything's better than Mobutu." According to Gérard Prunier, a staffer to the Assistant Secretary said that "the only thing we have to do is look the other way," with respect to regional intervention in the conflict. ''New York Times'' correspondent Howard W. French said that according to his sources, Rice herself made the remark.

On July 7, 1998, Rice was a member of an American delegation to visit detained Nigerian president-elect Basorun Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola. During this meeting, Abiola had a fatal heart attack.

Rice supported U.S. efforts to reach both the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement in the Congo and the Lomé Peace Accord (RUF) and for bringing the war criminal Foday Sankoh into government, leading to the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1313, which blamed the RUF for the continuing conflict in the west African country. Rice played a major role in peace negotiations between Ethiopia and Eritrea during the Eritrean–Ethiopian War, leading to the Algiers Agreement in 2000 ending the conflict. For her efforts she was named a co-recipient of the White House's Samuel Nelson Drew Memorial Award for "distinguished contributions to the formation of peaceful, cooperative relationships between nations," alongside Gayle Smith and Anthony Lake.

Rice had a contentious relationship with State Department veteran Richard Holbrooke, whom she considered to be meddling on her turf and who in return felt she was rising too quickly in U.S. diplomatic ranks.

Business and think tank activities (2001–2008)

Rice was managing director and principal at Intellibridge from 2001 to 2002. From 2002 to 2009, she was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where "she focused on U.S. foreign policy, weak and failing states, the implications of global poverty, and transnational threats to security."

Michael E. O'Hanlon and Ivo Daalder, two Brookings colleagues of Rice at the time, said that Rice consistently opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq in the run-up to the war. In 2012, columnist Peter Beinart reviewed a series of NPR interviews with Rice in late 2002 and early 2003 and concluded that Rice's position on war was equivocal. For example, in a December 2002 NPR interview, Rice said, "It's clear that Iraq poses a major threat. It's clear that its weapons of mass destruction need to be dealt with forcefully, and that's the path we're on. I think the question becomes whether we can keep the diplomatic balls in the air and not drop any, even as we move forward, as we must, on the military side.... The George W. Bush administration frankly owes the American public a much fuller and more honest assessment of what the costs will be of the actual conflict, as well as the aftermath, the post-conflict reconstruction. And the costs are going to be huge." In her memoir, Rice wrote, "Long experienced with the menace of Al Qaeda, I was one of the very few scholars at Brookings to openly oppose the Iraq War. From the start, I viewed that war of choice as a dangerous diversion from the main objective of defeating Al Qaeda globally and in Afghanistan." Shortly after the war began, Rice warned that the U.S. commitment to rebuilding Iraq would likely last for many years..

During the 2004 presidential campaign, Rice served as a foreign policy adviser to John Kerry.

Rice went on leave from the Brookings Institution to serve as a senior foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign. She was one of the first high-profile foreign policy staffers to sign onto Obama's campaign, as most of her peers had supported Hillary Clinton during the presidential primaries. Rice criticized Obama's Republican opponent in the campaign, John McCain, calling his policies "reckless" and dismissing the Arizona senator's trip to Iraq as "strolling around the market in a flak jacket."

On November 5, 2008, Rice was named to the advisory board of the Obama–Biden transition.

United States ambassador to the United Nations (2009–2013)

On December 1, 2008, President-elect Obama announced that he would nominate Rice to be the United States ambassador to the United Nations, a position which he restored to cabinet level. Reportedly, Rice had wanted the post of national security advisor, which instead went to retired United States Marine Corps general James L. Jones.

At her confirmation hearing, Rice was introduced by Senator Susan Collins who said "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." Rice was confirmed by the Senate by voice vote on January 22, 2009. Rice became the second-youngest person and the first black woman to represent the U.S. at the UN.

During her tenure at the United Nations, Rice championed a human rights and anti-poverty agenda, elevated climate change and women's rights as global priorities, and committed the U.S. to agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the U.N. Millennium Development Goals. Rice led the fight to advance LGBT rights at the U.N. Human Rights Council and was recognized for her staunch defense of Israel at the Security Council. Rice won praise for leading the Security Council to impose the toughest sanctions to date on Iran and North Korea over their nuclear programs, and for reaffirming U.S. commitment to the UN and multilateralism.

Three Security Council diplomats took issue with Rice's negotiating style, calling it "rude" and overly blunt, while others attributed those criticisms to sexism. According to David Rothkopf of ''Foreign Policy'', Rice could be challenging to work with due to her "toughness"—in the mold of James Baker or Henry Kissinger—but had the asset of a close relationship with the U.S. president and proved to be an effective policymaker. Some human rights activists took issue with Rice and U.S. foreign policy generally in 2012 for working against UN statements that criticized Rwanda for supporting a rebel group in Congo known for committing atrocities.

Libyan Civil War

As the 2011 Libyan Civil War progressed, the United States and its allies offered a choice for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his aides: step down from power or face an international response. Rice offered some of the toughest rhetoric toward Gaddafi, criticizing his denials of atrocities against his own citizens as "frankly, delusional." In a closed-door Security Council meeting in April 2011, Rice reportedly stated that Gaddafi loyalists engaged in atrocities, including terrorizing the population with sexual violence, and that Gaddafi's troops has been issued Viagra. Investigations by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Doctors Without Borders contradicted Rice and stated they did not find first-hand evidence that mass rapes had occurred as Rice had claimed. Together with National Security Council figure Samantha Power, who already supported the U.S.-led military intervention in Libya, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who came to support it, the three overcame internal opposition from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, security adviser Thomas E. Donilon