The Secretary

by Kim Ghattas

  Clinton was trying to say she didn’t want to bang her head against the wall on the issue of human rights with a government that wasn’t listening anyway. She found this approach counterproductive and wanted to advance the human rights agenda in new ways: by connecting with grassroots organizations, by using the Internet—anything to bypass the government. It was part of the strategy devised on the seventh floor of the Building by her team to connect American diplomacy with people around the world.

  Clinton’s statement, however, was not part of the traditional diplomatic script, and the world was not ready for her new style of diplomacy. The White House was annoyed by the criticism that her off-script comments had unleashed about the administration’s approach to human rights. Hillary’s team was somewhat taken aback. They knew her bluntness would likely displease some quarters, but they weren’t ready for the all-out onslaught. Hillary was no longer just a presidential candidate expressing her opinion on the campaign trail when she opened her mouth; now, it was America speaking. Every word was weighed, examined, parsed. People read between the lines, below them, above them; they read into commas and pauses.

  Fifty years ago, even twenty years ago, secretaries of state came out on specific, often orchestrated, occasions to make a statement or a speech or take the occasional question from a reporter. Their words were the definitive position of the United States of America. When Henry Kissinger traveled to Lusaka, Zambia, in 1976, he attacked the apartheid regime in what was then Rhodesia, today’s Zimbabwe, spelling out America’s support for racial equality and black self-determination on the continent. The New York Times reprinted his speech in full—over a whole page. No one got that kind of newspaper coverage anymore, except perhaps lifelong presidents of developing countries where the state controlled the media.

  Words now also traveled around the globe at lightning speed. Social media, cable news television, and the Internet were all accelerating the news cycle, forcing American officials, including the president, to react more frequently and swiftly in public. The secretaries of state and defense gave more press conferences and spoke in different forums, more casually. Their utterances were no longer scripted down to a comma. Yet the world’s expectations had not evolved in parallel; every word spoken had the same value and weight as ever. There should have been a discount rate for words, Jake thought.

  Hillary waved away the controversy over her comments; she was used to being excoriated. Jeffrey Bader from the NSC gave her a yellow sheet with a few scribbled points5 that she could use as an aid to make her point next time she mentioned human rights, mainly that the United States raises concerns about human rights privately and publicly and that she had done so on this trip as well. Though she rarely admitted she had been wrong, Hillary would often then try to adjust course. But this comment left a permanent stain on her record, in the eyes of the human rights community.

  * * *

  Chinese officials too were surprised. They religiously stuck to the script, especially about human rights. Say it once in private; repeat it once in private; move on. They didn’t know what to make of Clinton’s statement. How did her words fit into the bigger picture? What did this statement say about America? This was the woman who had infuriated them in 1995 at the UN conference about women’s rights in Beijing when she famously said that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights. Her hosts had dismissed her at the time, saying “some people from some countries” had made “unwarranted remarks and criticisms.” The foreign ministry added that “these people had to pay more attention to the problem within their own countries.” The Chinese government had blacked out her speech from the closed-circuit TV in the conference hall, and the only reference to her speech in the Chinese media was one line in the official People’s Daily: “American Mrs. Clinton made a speech.”

  Now, “American Mrs. Clinton” was back. She was no longer just a First Lady with a soft agenda of human rights; she was secretary of state of the United States of America, and she was coming to do business. This was also what she had been trying to telegraph to Beijing with her comment about a comprehensive relationship with China. There was a method to Hillary’s off-script comments, even though it wasn’t always immediately apparent to others and could come at a high cost.

  * * *

  SAM landed at the Beijing airport on a cold night. The day had started in South Korea and was finally coming to an end in China. In a black belted coat and red scarf, Clinton walked out of the plane and down steps lined with red lights. The ice and snow had kept away the marching bands and guard of honor, and Clinton was escorted to her waiting limousine on the tarmac by China’s assistant foreign minister.

  The non-newsworthy passengers quietly got out of the back door of the plane down the steps lined with blue lights. Jake had slept an average of two hours a night since leaving Washington six days earlier. The biting cold on the tarmac reinvigorated him briefly before he sunk into his seat on the overheated staff minibus. Jake had been to China once before, as a teenager, when his parents had packed him, his three brothers, and his sister on one of the first nonstop flights to Beijing from the United States in the spring of 1996. His parents liked to explore; Jake learned the world capitals on the globe that lived on their kitchen table.

  On the tarmac, staffers from the U.S. embassy guided us to our vehicles. “Press! This way! Press! Vans at the back of the motorcade!” Three vans were usually assigned for the traveling press corps. As we drove into the city, U.S. embassy staff handed out the usual press packs with city maps, embassy information, and a hand-sized binder booklet with the number 30 written on the cover in black, the Chinese and American flags sharing the empty space inside the zero. The People’s Republic of China and the United States had established diplomatic relations thirty years ago. The booklet contained cultural tips and useful Chinese phrases, information about tourist sites and China’s economy and legal system (“China does not have an independent judiciary. Corruption and conflicts of interests are acknowledged problems”), in addition to some peculiar extras. The booklet included a biography of the secretary and her delegation members (she was a best-selling author and resided in New York), and several unusual biographies of the Chinese officials she would be meeting. The Chinese president Hu Jintao, for example, was sixty-seven and hadn’t intended to go into politics. He had wanted to become a hydropower expert. He was a member of the dance team at his university and occasionally “danced solo at parties. He also plays tennis fairly well.”

  The press booklets were often assembled with information provided by the host country, and this biography seemed to originate from the Communist Party’s official newspaper, the People’s Daily.

  The Chinese were perfect hosts. They viewed hospitality, ceremony, and carefully cultivated personal relationships as tools of statecraft. They treated Clinton to a crescendo of official meetings, from the foreign minister all the way up to the president. The Chinese took it all very seriously—this wasn’t just a series of pleasant get-to-know-you meetings. There were official talks to be had, inside the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, in the middle of a one-hundred-acre compound of ancient villas scattered between ginkgo trees and frozen lakes. Kissinger had stayed here in 1971 when he had established the first direct contact with Communist China in over twenty years. Before the age of Twitter and the twenty-four-hour news cycle, Kissinger had slipped out of Pakistan unnoticed, leaving reporters behind, to make his secret trip and pull off his diplomatic coup.

  If the Chinese art of feng shui is meant to reflect the flow of energies and purpose of a space, then the room where Clinton and foreign minister Yang Jiechi met showed a great deal about how the Chinese viewed their position. In a long rectangular room with small crystal chandeliers, two long tables faced each other, separated by three large potted azaleas. A small Chinese flag marked Yang’s seat at the left table; an American one marked Clinton’s on the right. Officials from both sides sat facing one another; the Chinese delegation was la
rger than the American one. The setup was decidedly strange. Diplomatic talks usually take place on either side of one wide rectangular table, not two tables, five feet apart. The Chinese seemed to want to evoke their growing sense of importance, emphasizing the gulf between them and their counterpart.

  The agenda for the talks had been set in advance, as always, and the two sides went through the script. There would be no surprises in Beijing, especially not in a first meeting. The Chinese presented their points. Clinton followed. The economy, climate change, North Korea. Yang spoke English so they were able to cover a lot of ground, without wasting any time in translation. The Chinese recited their usual “one-China principle.” Taiwan, the rebellious, separatist island that claimed the title of Republic of China, was a sensitive issue, a key interest for mainland China. Clinton assured them that this administration would continue to abide by the thirty-year-old U.S. policy toward Taiwan. Washington did not support independence for Taiwan but at the same time it did not recognize China’s claim of sovereignty over the island. The Chinese knew that Washington would maintain strong ties with Taiwan and sell them fighter jets, just as the United States knew that China would protest loudly when it happened.

  But the power balance between the United States and China had been slowly changing over the last few years, and this shift grew even more perceptible in the months preceding Obama’s inauguration. While America’s economy was grinding to a halt and the international financial system imploded, China had put on a breathtaking display of its culture and riches. The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was conceived as an expression of China’s resurgence and was broadcast to a global audience for all to see.6 China’s economy continued to grow at a clipping pace. Real estate was booming, and though the world was buying less, Chinese goods were still being flown out to the four corners of the globe. The grand old economies of the West were gutted by recession, and the Chinese saw the financial crisis of 2008 as America’s comeuppance. The Chinese had a new swagger to their step, flying around the world, their large delegations walking confidently through the lobby of the State Department, filling up rooms in meetings with officials, and confidently asserting their wishes. American officials saw the swagger and thought, I guess that’s what it looked like all these years when we walked into a room.

  Obama had been careful to minimize the China bashing that seemed an intrinsic part of American presidential campaigns, and the Chinese had noticed. They’d heard all the talk about America reaching out to foes. And then there was Clinton speaking softly about human rights. It all fed the perception that the new American administration was being overly deferential to the Chinese. They saw a picture with “decline” written all over it. But as eager as China was to show off its new ascendance on the world stage, the country’s continued growth was still linked to the United States. If the Chinese wanted to enact their plans—to push back against American hegemony and assert their authority in the Pacific—the country needed a smooth beginning with the Obama administration. They were keen to get off on the right foot with Clinton while they studied her more closely.

  Yang, the square-faced foreign minister with a large forehead and gold-rimmed glasses who sat facing Clinton across the potted azaleas, had lived through the changes in both countries. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he had been an English interpreter for Deng Xiaoping, the man who rose out of Communist Party purges and the repression of the Cultural Revolution to lead China into modernity. Deng served as China’s top leader from 1978 to the early 1990s, and his policies set his country on the path that had led to its current status as an economic superpower. Yang had risen through the ranks steadily, and at the age of fifty-seven he became China’s youngest foreign minister. He was also a graduate of the London School of Economics and had served at the Chinese embassy in Washington twice, once in the mid-1980s and then as ambassador from 2001 to 2005. Yang had walked on the streets of the American capital as the United States went from budget surplus to crippling debt.

  Clinton’s own swagger and persona helped to mellow the often stilted diplomatic exchanges with Chinese officials. Dai Bingguo, the energetic smiling state councilor who was China’s top foreign policy official, outranking Yang, hosted Clinton to lunch. Dai looked much younger than his sixty-eight years and told Clinton she looked younger and more beautiful than on television. Hillary blushed. “Well, we will get along very well,” she said, a hint of flirtatiousness in her voice. Soon they were talking about their children, and Dai was showing her pictures of his grandchildren.

  Later that evening, Yang hosted Clinton at a magnificent dinner at the Diaoyutai. Ten Chinese and ten American officials sat around two large tables. Waiters delivered food simultaneously to each diner in an elegant dance. Hors d’oeuvres of “prawn ball with Thai sauce” and “laver and fish ball” arrived on the table in an elaborate dry-ice presentation as a dense foglike vapor rose from the plates.

  Throughout the visit, Clinton charmed her impassive hosts with her knowledge of Chinese proverbs. “When you are in a common boat, you need to cross the river peacefully together” was her way of saying that China and the United States had to work together to prop up the world economy. Premier Wen Jiabao reciprocated with his own proverb, also from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. “Progress together, hand in hand.” This proverb diplomacy would become a constant in Clinton’s exchange with China.

  Unlike in democracies like Japan or South Korea, public diplomacy events in tightly controlled Communist China made the country’s officials nervous, and they tried to manage Clinton’s schedule as much as they could, so she tried to find ways to deliver her message. She gave a web-chat interview hosted by the government-controlled China Daily newspaper and went beyond just answering the questions, weaving her message about cooperation into the answers. Ten million Chinese later accessed the interview. She told women’s rights activists meeting with her inside the U.S. embassy that change only comes when people stand up and say, “I am not going to be quiet.” On Sunday, before leaving, she attended a service at a state-approved church in Beijing. But none of Clinton’s actions alarmed the Chinese: this was not the same shrill woman who had issued her rallying cry about human rights and women’s rights all those years ago. She was not going to harangue them at every instance. And she was also no Condoleezza Rice, who could be gracious and warm in public and then shockingly tough and curt in private. Handling Clinton and America would be easy. It would take the Chinese more than a year to realize how wrong their reading had been.

  * * *

  By the end of the seven-day trip, Jake, Huma, and the others around Hillary felt the trip had been a resounding success. Asia had weathered fifteen speeches, eleven media interviews, six town halls and round tables, and seven press conferences, and Hillary had started to find her voice as secretary of state. It was time to go home, to go to sleep. Almost.

  SAM couldn’t fly more than nine hours without refueling; Washington and even Alaska were too far for a direct flight home. So after three hours in the air, the secretary was back in Japan, at the Yokota Air Base for an hour-long pit stop. Instead of staying on the plane, Clinton walked into a hangar where more than three hundred soldiers and their families were eagerly waiting to shake hands and take pictures with her. She looked tired, but a pink scarf lifted her complexion. Ever the politician, Hillary tapped into the energy of the crowd.

  Bedraggled and exhausted, a few of the senior officials had lumbered out of the plane to stretch their legs before the next seven-hour flight. They stood in the back of the hangar to shelter from the freezing cold outside and watched the show.

  “If every one of her trips is going to be run like a campaign stop, we’re all going to fall apart,” one of them complained.

  The Asia whirlwind became the template for every trip Clinton took in her four years as secretary of state.

  3

  FROM WASHINGTON TO BEIRUT

  There were, naturally, trips that were exceptions to the Hillary templ
ate, where protocol and pomp had no place—war-ravaged countries where tanks were part of the urban landscape, where America was a sworn enemy for many, where marines got blown up. Countries where the arrival of an American secretary of state was kept tightly concealed until landing, and Fred had final approval on the secretary’s minute movements.

  One spring evening in April, the State Department sent out an e-mail for wide distribution to all journalists around town with guidance for the next day’s schedule.

  Friday, April 24, 2009

  SECRETARY OF STATE CLINTON: NO PUBLIC APPOINTMENTS

  THERE WILL BE A DAILY PRESS BRIEFING: At approximately 12:30 p.m. with Robert A. Wood

  But that morning, SAM was waiting at Andrews Air Force Base to take us overseas. The State Department traveling press corps had received another e-mail, a couple of days earlier, with a heading in screaming capitals.

  STRICTLY EMBARGOED—NOT FOR BROADCAST—FOR PLANNING PURPOSES ONLY.

  The secretary was going on the road again. We were given our destination and told to prepare in secret. The unspoken rule was that we couldn’t share our plans with anyone except with an editor or two at our organizations to help with setting up what was needed for coverage of her visit once we arrived at our destination. Gaps in the schedules of the president and vice president, the secretary of defense and secretary of state always sent Washington buzzing with speculation. Gaps could mean a surprise visit to an undisclosed location. Only a handful of countries fit into that category. Journalists traveling with American officials always respected the embargo. On this particular Friday, no one thought much of the fact that Clinton had no appointments. After all, everyone was entitled to a quiet end of the week once in a while.