The Secretary (28 page)

Clinton also said a few words about an important announcement that had been made farther
east, in Tokyo.

“I want to commend Prime Minister Hatoyama for making the difficult, but nevertheless
correct, decision to relocate the Futenma facility inside Okinawa,” she said.

The announcement by Yukio Hatoyama to stick to the agreement with the United States
and relocate the American base on Okinawa itself was the fruit of a year and a half
of negotiation with the Japanese. It had started on Clinton’s first trip to Asia,
in February 2009, when she had met with the Democratic Party of Japan—at the time,
the opposition party. The
Cheonan
incident and growing Chinese bluster reminded Japan of the dangers lurking in the
region. Earlier in the spring, Chinese helicopters had buzzed a Japanese destroyer,
a few hundred miles away from Okinawa, and ten Chinese warships had sailed worryingly
close to the southern tip of the Japanese archipelago. China was flexing its muscles,
and Japan was suddenly feeling rather exposed. These were all good reasons to keep
the Americans happy and close.

“As a former politician,” Hillary continued, “I know how hard Prime Minister Hatoyama’s
decision was, and I thank him for his courage and determination to fulfill his commitments.”
Hillary saw her past as a politician who had had to make difficult compromises as
one of her key assets: she empathized with her interlocutors, and they felt valued
and understood. It didn’t mean they were ready to sign away their country if she asked,
her efforts to reason with Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai would have little
impact. But such empathy did sometimes help leaders travel that last mile to make
a decision, such as now.

“This is truly the foundation for our future work as allies in the Asia Pacific region,”
Hillary added. The Obama administration was laying that foundation very quietly, block
by block.

*   *   *

After two full days in Beijing, it was time for the grand finale inside the Great
Hall of the People, just off Tiananmen Square. The two sides were keen to show that
the two days of dialogue had produced something tangible. So with some pomp, a signing
ceremony took place for a handful of memorandums of understanding on random topics
from nuclear safety to eco-partnership and infectious diseases. American officials
and their Chinese counterparts sat down at a long table, one after the other, to sign
the documents, with a floor-to-ceiling dark-blue backdrop behind them, with the words
“US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue” at the top. Standing behind them, Clinton
looked on with a slightly amused face, Geithner to her right and Vice Premier Wang
Qishan and Councilor Dai on her left. The signing done, the four top officials sat
down at the table with microphones in front of them, their faces peering from behind
big colorful bouquets atop a green tablecloth, rows of journalists facing them. It
looked just like a press conference, but this was China. There would be no questions
to China’s top officials, only statements from them. Clinton and Geithner would hold
a press conference later at their hotel.

Dai Bingguo praised the “successful conclusion” of the dialogue. What did that mean
in Chinese terms? Everybody agreed on everything? No big fights erupted? Difficult
topics were avoided? It was hard to tell from listening to Dai. He sounded like a
self-help business guru, talking about advancing cooperation to achieve results, the
spirit and principles of communication, and the need to handle sensitive issues properly.
It was all peppered with profuse use of the words “respect,” “mutual trust,” and “core
interests.”

“Only by helping each other out as passengers in this gigantic ship of the China-U.S.
relationship will we be able to move forward, braving winds and waves,” he added.

Meanwhile, China’s own, real ships had been causing waves in the high seas of the
region. There was the Japanese destroyer incident earlier in the spring; the warships
close to the southern tip; and in the South China Sea, the Chinese were making ripples
that were upsetting neighbors from Vietnam to Malaysia and the Philippines.

We woke up on Wednesday, one week into our trip, eager to go home, but we still had
to swing by Seoul. America’s best friend in the region needed some loving reassurance
after the
Cheonan
attack. Clinton went to lunch with President Lee at the Blue House, but there would
be no statements for the media, so we camped out at the Foreign Ministry waiting for
the press conference to start. An e-mail arrived about Hillary’s next trip, to Latin
America, in two weeks’ time. Philippe and his team were always busy planning trips,
during trips, after trips—it was never-ending.

After the press conference, we ran to the vans and drove off to the airport to be
reunited with SAM. The stories had already been e-mailed, broadcast, and telephoned
to the world; we had a sixteen-hour-long plane ride home ahead of us. Sixteen hours
to recover from sleep deprivation. Some officials were still high on adrenaline, and
they wanted to share their views of what they thought had been a good trip. In general,
we were constantly asking officials for briefings, but sometimes we just wanted to
be left alone.

Two officials crossed the Line of Death to share with us what they had gleaned from
Chinese officials. With one of them standing in the aisle, the other sitting on an
armrest, those of us in the back rows leaned over the chairs to hear.

These types of briefings were done “on background,” meaning we could not name the
people who were speaking to us, only identify them as senior officials. The anonymity
allowed them to speak more freely by giving them a degree of plausible deniability,
if things didn’t develop as they had anticipated. There was, of course, spin: officials
wanted to shape the story to their advantage and put their version of events forward
with the facts that suited them. But they could also be very open about the content
of their talks, the goals they were aiming for, and the obstacles in the way. There
are always exceptions, but as a rule, there were no lies: if officials couldn’t share
information, they would ignore the question or work around it. Nevertheless, even
on background, the candor of comments by American officials could infuriate the countries
that were the subject of the conversation, countries like Russia, Pakistan, and China,
where information is opaque, access to officials severely controlled, and the version
of events put forward by the state often wildly divergent from the reality.

Somewhere above the Pacific Ocean, we were told that China was likely to abandon its
caution and join international condemnation of North Korea’s role in the sinking of
the
Cheonan
. The prime minister of China, Wen Jiabao, was traveling to South Korea for a summit
over the weekend, and he was expected to express regret for the loss of South Korean
lives and accept the findings of the international investigation about the
Cheonan
sinking. The officials told us the Chinese were frustrated by the erratic and irresponsible
behavior of the North Koreans. The current leadership did not have the same strong,
historical ties to Pyongyang as their predecessors did. They felt stuck with their
ally and its sick, aging leader, Kim Jong Il.

We also learned that China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, was finally going
to extend an invitation to visit Beijing to Robert Gates, the U.S. secretary of defense.
Gates had been trying to visit for a while, but the PLA, a powerhouse of its own,
weighed in heavily on the country’s domestic and foreign policy decisions. For a while,
it had expressed its discontent with Washington by refusing to welcome Gates and minimizing
military-to-military contact.

Hillary always promoted both government-to-government and people-to-people contact
around the world in her visits, but she also understood the need for displays of strength.
She looked after diplomacy and development; Gates, her ally in Obama’s cabinet, was
the implementer of defense. Together, the two secretaries formed a close team in Washington,
usually taking the same side on issues. Clinton had purposely included top officers
in her delegation to force the door open on military-to-military conversation. With
a wide grin, the officials on the plane told us that the PLA might soon have an opening
on its schedule for a Gates visit.

There was a collective eye roll from all the journalists. This background briefing
was clearly all positive spin, and we were not buying it. It was clear to us that
while the Chinese had nodded with a smile to Hillary and her team, the delegation
had really come up empty-handed on the issues that were of core interest to Washington.

But if the United States was often a reluctant world power, the Chinese barely wanted
to dip their toes, let alone dive, into the sea of world responsibilities. They weren’t
sure their big new shiny boat would actually float, and they certainly didn’t want
to lose face if it sank; they tried to stay as neutral as possible, sitting under
a formal, elaborately constructed beach umbrella on the shore. On Sunday in South
Korea, Wen offered his condolences for the families of the South Korean sailors; he
also called for restraint and warned in general about the consequences of war. But
there was no expression of regret for the incident and certainly no public condemnation
of China’s protégé. Gates would not be invited to visit Beijing for another six months.

Watching from Washington in the days after our return, I thought back to the conversation
on the plane. My colleagues and I had been right; it was all wishful thinking. But
before the end of the year, I would come to understand why the American officials
had sounded so positive.

10

MEET ME IN THE SEA

The
Cheonan
crisis carried on into the summer. At the United Nations, members of the Security
Council listened to the South and North Koreans present their version of events and
the results of their investigation. South Korea and its allies wanted to send a clear,
unequivocal message to North Korea that its behavior would not be tolerated. But no
one was sure how to do that. China would veto any UN resolution condemning the DPRK.
The U.S. ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, explored different options, while Kurt
Campbell, the top man in charge of Asia at the State Department, traveled to Seoul
to discuss these options with the South Koreans. The Security Council finally compromised
and, in a presidential statement, condemned the
Cheonan
attack without naming North Korea as the perpetrator. Such statements were not resolutions;
they were not binding and carried little weight.

Hillary had been keeping tabs on the discussion while juggling other crises and traveling
twenty-one thousand miles to Latin America and Europe. Now it was time for her to
show more support for South Korea. But because the earth was round and everywhere
was always on the way to everywhere else, when we left at the end of July for South
Korea, we first made stops in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Clinton’s schedule in Islamabad was once again full of public diplomacy events. She
was plowing ahead, trying to maintain good relationships with the civilian leadership,
the military, and the people. It was important to show that the United States didn’t
reduce its relationship with Pakistan to one person, as had happened in the past with
military rulers. But it was exhausting to be Pakistan’s friend. Washington still promised
a long-term relationship, but the Pakistanis didn’t fully trust the offer. Every now
and then, Hillary would ask Vali, the Iranian American expert on Pakistan, “We gave
them all this money, why are they still screaming at us?” Or she would ask how Pakistan
would respond if the United States made a certain move or launched an initiative.
Vali never had a clear, black-and-white answer for Hillary; there were none in countries
like Pakistan, where political behavior was not always dictated by reason—or at least
not the same rationale as the West.

In Kabul, Clinton was attending an international conference to show support for Hamid
Karzai’s government. Our stops here were short and felt claustrophobic. The Bubble
shrank all the way down to the embassy compound and one outside location—the presidential
palace or the foreign ministry, both barely a five-minute drive away, in heavily armored
cars. Clinton met “real” Afghans during events held at the embassy, people the U.S.
embassy trusted enough to bring into the compound. We slept in “hooches,” a Vietnam
War–era slang word for a thatched hut, except that in Kabul they were drab trailers,
and it was always cold.

This was a country that the United States was trying to get out of; our stops seemed
to reflect that. In and out, quickly, in one piece. Afghanistan was not America’s
future; it was the past, a painful, bloodied, scarred past and a bottomless money
pit like Iraq. The military adventure in those two countries had been dragging America
down for years, morally and financially. Like so often in the past, the minute U.S.
troops set foot in a country, they started looking for the exit, perhaps understandably.
The reluctant superpower never planned to stay long, but that was exactly why it was
so hard to get out: missions were ill-prepared and ill-defined. Success, too, was
ill-defined.

“You’ll know it when you see it,” Richard Holbrooke, the envoy for Afghanistan Pakistan,
had said. But most Americans didn’t have the patience for that. They were upfront,
efficient, result-driven people who expected quick turnarounds and believed every
problem had a solution. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East, and so many
other places, time was elastic. Tomorrow meant sometime in the future. Yes could mean
no, no was sometimes yes.

Eventually, before anything was really fixed in Afghanistan or elsewhere, and sometimes
before the real problems had even started, Americans had moved on, they had other
problems to tend to. People on the ground could feel invaded, abandoned, and betrayed
all at once. They saw America as an impatient, fickle friend. It didn’t matter how
much money the United States had invested, wasted, spent; it didn’t matter how many
U.S. troops had died.