The Restless Wave
Page 33
Yes, we often have important interests involved in relations with dictatorial regimes that those regimes will try to leverage to get us to turn a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuses. We can’t let them. We have to trust that whatever interest the regime has in a relationship with us is more than a desire to buy our silence. Since 2001, we had relied on an air base in southeastern Uzbekistan, Karshi-Khanabad, or K2, to fly reconnaissance and air logistic missions, and to stage Special Forces operations. It was an important asset in our fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Islam Karimov was elected the first president of Uzbekistan in 1991 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Once elected, he showed little interest in leaving to Uzbeks the decision of whether he continued in office. He was a former Party apparatchik and a thug. He arrested opponents and put down protests with force. In 2005, his security forces fired into a crowd of protesters in the city of Andijan, killing more than a thousand. Many of the victims were buried in secret mass graves, but word about the atrocity spread to the West.
As it happened I was planning a trip to the region around the same time with Joe Lieberman, Lindsey Graham, and New Hampshire senator John Sununu. We were going to visit Uzbekistan’s neighbor, Kyrgyzstan, which had just had a color revolution of its own, the Tulip Revolution, and a new government had taken office. We were going to overfly Uzbekistan to get there. Having learned of the Andijan massacre, we decided to apply for visas and ask for a meeting with Uzbek officials to impress on them that Congress plays a role in making foreign policy, and we could use our influence to deny Uzbekistan some of the benefits of a relationship with the U.S. We were granted the visas but refused meetings with the government. Fine, we thought. We would still fly in, hold a press conference to protest the regime’s abuses, demand an international investigation of the massacre, and fly right back out before the government could react.
I didn’t know much more about Uzbekistan. I had a vague romantic notion of one of its cities, Samarkand, which I had always wanted to visit. It was on the Silk Road and featured in the title of a poem I had memorized as a child, “The Golden Road to Samarkand” by James Elroy Flecker.
For lust of knowing what should not be known,
We take the golden road to Samarkand.
But there would be no Samarkand visit on this trip. Nor ever, I regret to say. Just a ride from the airport in Tashkent, the capital, through its deserted, dreary streets in the shadow of Soviet-style cement apartment slabs to the U.S embassy, which, if memory serves, was a converted discotheque with office cubicles and a dim lighting system. There we met with a few representatives of the opposition, who seemed beleaguered but brave. Our ambassador at the time, Jon Purnell, was a talented professional, knowledgeable, self-assured, straightforward. He knew we understood the importance of retaining access to K2, but he knew, too, that we have a moral obligation to condemn atrocities and hold the guilty parties accountable. Turning a blind eye encourages more Andijans.
We held our press conference, each of us condemning the regime in lacerating language, calling for an independent investigation and adjudication, and warning that our relationship, airfield or no airfield, couldn’t continue if the regime were to commit crimes against humanity. The ambassador, who betrayed little visible discomfort at our stridency, although he wouldn’t have been the intelligent diplomat he was had he not cringed a little, dutifully seconded our sentiments nevertheless. Then we loaded into embassy cars and returned to the airport, as relieved to get out of the place as I imagine Ambassador Purnell was to see us go. We hadn’t been in the country much more than two hours.
Unfortunately, moments after our military aircraft had taken off, we’d had a bird strike, blood was all over one of the engines. We had to return to the airport. Nineteen fifties–era fire trucks raced out on the tarmac to meet us, a woman carrying an old black medical bag, a doctor I assumed, ascended the mobile staircase to treat the wounded. Fortunately, we didn’t have any. The pilots wanted maintenance engineers to check that no serious damage had been done to the engine, and assuming there wasn’t any, we would be shortly under way again. But an official from the Uzbek aviation authority informed us that we would have to file a new flight plan with her office, which was closed for the day. “What do you mean?” we asked. “You cannot leave today,” came the answer. We assumed we were being subjected to an old Soviet form of bureaucratic abuse for foreign visitors who insulted the authorities. What other inconveniences might we suffer while spending an unscheduled night in Tashkent? The pilots pled our case to no avail. Purnell, who had left the airport, was summoned back. He was all business. He told us to remain on the plane while he negotiated our release. He started firing questions at the official. Who do we have to file a flight plan with? Are they really closed? Who would we file with in an emergency? For two hours, he negotiated on our behalf until his wearied interlocutor relented and let us go. We weren’t the only people to condemn the Karimov regime. Most of the West did, including the United States government, and, as feared, Karimov reacted to the international denunciations by ordering the U.S. to vacate Karshi-Khanabad. But if the price for using the base was to ignore an atrocity of the magnitude of Andijan, which would signal to tyrants elsewhere that American values were transactional, then we were better off making other arrangements.
Scoop Jackson’s opposition to Soviet tyranny and aggression, and his support for the world’s oppressed, made him as much of an irritant to Jimmy Carter’s administration as he had been to the governments of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Scoop had his convictions, he believed in America’s mission, and when it came to acting on his beliefs, he didn’t particularly give a damn which party was in power. America’s ideals came before party loyalty for him.
I’ve had disagreements with every presidential administration in office during the years I’ve served in Congress, even on occasion with the policies of President Reagan, a President I revered. I voted to override his veto of sanctions against South Africa’s apartheid government, and I opposed his deployment of Marines to Beirut. I had had more numerous and stronger objections with the policies of other administrations, but it’s fair to say that I’ve disagreed—sometimes too heatedly, and sometimes unfairly—with all of them. That’s partly because of my nature. I can be as happy in opposition to government as I am in cooperating with it, sometimes happier. I like to fight, and I like people who like to fight, even if they’re fighting with me, especially when the cause is worth fighting about.
There was much I admired about George W. Bush’s focus on democratic internationalism and his defense of oppressed peoples. But I argued strenuously against his government’s treatment of captured enemies because it violated the ideals he wanted to advance in the world. I didn’t think the Obama administration paid sufficient attention to human rights concerns, and its support for democratic movements in closed societies was too subordinate to other priorities.
I’ve been accused of being too quick to propose that the U.S. intervene militarily in other countries’ civil strife in support of embattled democratic movements. I have suggested on a few occasions limited U.S. military support for freedom fighters in civil wars that threaten vital U.S. security interests or where the regime has committed or is about to commit monstrous atrocities. I support using U.S. airpower to create safe zones in Syria, and I advocated using NATO airpower to prevent Muammar Qaddafi from slaughtering tens of thousands of Libyan rebels. More often, I’ve proposed providing material support, including, where appropriate, weapons to those fighting to liberate their country from violent oppression or foreign domination. Most often, all I’ve called for is that the government of the world’s leading democracy in its relations with oppressive regimes speak loudly, persistently, and unambiguously in support of the brave souls who protest them.
Iran’s Green Movement began in reaction to the fraudulent reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over the “reformer” Mir Hossein Mousavi in June 2009. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of
Iranians, impatient for social change and international acceptance, poured into the streets of Tehran. The United States should have been on their side from the beginning, giving them public support, lending credence to their protest that the election had been stolen, and encouraging our allies to do the same. We might have offered the kinds of clandestine communications, financial, and other nonlethal support that we have provided other democratic movements. But barring riskier policies like that, we should have at least been full-throated in our support of the protests. Yet President Obama seemed reluctant from the outset to offer more than perfunctory rhetorical support for the protesters, never once to my recollection endorsing their principal demand, a fair election. He wanted to cultivate a better relationship with the Iranian regime than had existed since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, to, I assume, bring it into the world community with a goal of moderating its behavior and securing an agreement to suspend its nuclear weapons program. Perhaps the administration didn’t believe the protests could succeed and didn’t want to jeopardize other interests by vigorously defending them. But the idea that you could make any real progress toward integrating Iran into the international system and negotiating a nuclear deal while the virulent anti-American, Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad was in office seems to me considerably more naive than to believe the Green Movement protesters could have forced real change in Iran. I didn’t expect the President to abandon his other priorities in Iran or even to threaten the regime. I did want him to protest vociferously its antidemocratic nature and its inhumanity and call on the world community to do likewise. I wanted him to identify unmistakably with the protesters in the streets, the vast majority of them young people and the future of their country.
The Green Movement was violently suppressed. Ayatollah Khamenei endorsed the bogus election results. Security forces and Ahmadinejad thugs cracked down brutally. Scores were killed, hundreds injured, and thousands arrested, including many prominent reformers. On June 20, a sniper shot and killed Neda Agha-Soltan, a twenty-six-year-old musician, as she stood on the edge of a peaceful protest. A cell phone video captured her bleeding to death on the pavement. It went instantly viral, appalling many Americans and in some quarters shaming their conscience. It shamed mine. I want America to always identify with Neda and those like her, whom the world hasn’t made cynical yet, who struggle against danger and daunting odds to claim the rights we fought a revolution to secure. I want to be in the streets with them, if only figuratively, raising our voices in support, and using our influence to encourage other governments to do the same. I want State Department and National Security Council officials to devise ways we can help them succeed, not just figure out how to take a stand without risking anything. They must be our priority, not our only priority, but a greater priority than placating the regime that persecutes them. In fairness, as the violence against the mostly peaceful protests mounted that summer, Obama’s calls for restraint by the regime became somewhat more forceful. But it was late in coming, and never as forceful as it should have been from a President with his eloquence. Secret talks that led to negotiations for a nuclear deal were under way, and I’m sure he worried they would be jeopardized by greater pressure from us on behalf of the protesters. I worry that Iranians will remember our minimal engagement in their struggle, our tepid support, and when their day of liberation comes, our negligence will not be forgotten.
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I had many disagreements with President Obama’s policies that I argued publicly and sometimes vociferously. As I described in earlier chapters, I supported his decision to use NATO airpower in Libya, but was appalled when he quickly disengaged before Libya stabilized, rationalizing his irresolution as “leading from behind.” I was angered by his refusal to provide Ukraine with the weapons it needs to defend itself from Russia’s organized attacks on its sovereignty. And I thought his failure to make good on his threat of military action to punish the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons was a shockingly bad mistake, the biggest of his presidency, a strategic blunder that injured the security of our interests and the progress of our values throughout the Middle East and elsewhere. I never doubted the sincerity of President Obama’s conviction that the ultimate goal of his administration’s foreign policy was a safer, freer, and more just world. But he refused to make the hard calls that goal entails. I don’t know if his irresolution stemmed from indecisiveness or a reluctance to do anything that risked failure. But whatever it was, it confounded allies, encouraged enemies, and left a lot of brave people struggling to live in freedom without meaningful support from the leader of the free world. That said, it’s fair to also observe, that for all our disagreements I never doubted President Obama shared the seventy-five-year bipartisan consensus that American leadership of the free world was a moral obligation and a practical necessity. I think he tried to defer some of the responsibilities of that leadership, which weakened it. But I never believed he thought we should abandon it.
I’m not sure what to make of President Trump’s convictions. At times as a candidate and as President, he has appeared to be more than merely a realpolitik adherent. He seemed to mock the idea that America has any business at all promoting its values abroad. I don’t know if that is sincerely his view or if he believes that the global progress of democracy and the rule of law should be only a distant, notional goal of American statecraft. He threatened to deliberately kill the spouses and children of terrorists, implying that an atrocity of that magnitude would show the world America’s toughness. His lack of empathy for refugees, innocent, persecuted, desperate men, women, and children, is disturbing. The way he speaks about them is appalling, as if welfare or terrorism were the only purposes they could have in coming to our country. His reaction to unflattering news stories, calling them “fake news,” whether they’re credible or not, is copied by autocrats who want to discredit and control a free press. He has declined to distinguish the actions of our government from the crimes of despotic ones. He seems uninterested in the moral character of world leaders and their regimes. The appearance of toughness or a reality show facsimile of toughness seems to matter more than any of our values. Flattery secures his friendship, criticism his enmity. He has showered with praise some of the world’s worst tyrants. He said Putin was doing “a great job rebuilding Russia,” failing to note that the “rebuilding” has come at the expense of liberty and justice in Russia, and, in many instances, at the cost of Russian lives. He has seemed just as smitten with Xi Jinping, despite the campaign of repression Xi waged as he consolidated his vast power.
He hardly ever talks about human rights as an object of his policies. He went on a two-week, five-country trip to Asia, and never raised the subject. Not in Vietnam, where political dissidence is a crime. Not in the Philippines, where the blustering Rodrigo Duterte holds murderous notions about criminal justice. President Trump’s noticeably keen regard for Duterte feels more like an expression of genuine admiration than a realist’s recognition that the Philippines is a valuable partner in the region. I’m a longtime advocate for better relations between the U.S. and Vietnam. I believe we share common interests, and I have visited the country many times, most recently last summer. I have never once gone to Hanoi and not raised human rights issues with my hosts. They would be surprised if I didn’t or if any American on an official visit didn’t appeal for greater freedom and justice in that country. That’s what visiting American officials do. The world expects us to be concerned with the condition of humanity. We should be proud of that reputation. I’m not sure the President understands that.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson compounded that perception when he warned State Department employees not to condition relations with nations “too heavily” on their adoption of values “we’ve come to after a long history of our own.” That attitude feeds the notion that at best this administration believes human rights protests ought to be reserved for America’s adversaries and not our friends or countries where we have other interests. Such an
approach substantiates our adversaries’ complaint that our support for human rights is cynical, that we use it only as a weapon against our enemies. We meddle in their domestic affairs and turn a blind eye to bad actors whose favor we need. That discredits our moral authority wherever we invoke it.
There have been glimmers of hope that the President recognizes our values have a place in the conduct of foreign policy or that his senior national security team has managed to prevent the idea from being banished altogether by the weirder members of this administration. I’m thankful that some of the latter were eventually shown the door, self-proclaimed nationalist radicals Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka among them. Bigger misfits haven’t been seen inside a White House since William Taft got stuck in his bathtub.