by Kim Ghattas
“It seems that the American system is not producing fast results,” Dai said.
Clinton laughed gently.
“We can devote the next lunch to talk about the Chinese system if you want,” she said, gently suggesting that he probably wouldn’t want to open that door. Clinton had no way of knowing that in less than a year the Communist Party would be rocked by the biggest political scandal in decades when one of its rising stars, Bo Xilai, would be purged from the party and his wife detained and later convicted of murdering a British businessman. The Chinese would get a glimpse of how their rulers and their relatives, known as princelings, had amassed enormous fortunes in a country where there is no separation of powers and no independent judiciary.
But in July 2011, while others in Asia had sought assurances from Clinton that the United States would eventually get its act together and pull through, Dai acted as though Clinton needed his reassurance. Everything would be okay, he seemed to be telling her. He always used a pleasant, diplomatic tone, but there was a condescending tinge to it. Clinton gently pushed back, signaling that neither she nor president Obama needed China’s pat on the back. Perhaps Dai was trying to reassure himself.
After the 2008 financial crisis, China had boasted about its own prospering economic model, lording over others that China hadn’t taken a hit. But the possibility of American default was a very different situation, and Chinese officials got cold sweats just thinking about it. Over the years, China had bought $1 trillion worth of U.S. Treasury bills, which meant that the United States owed China $1 trillion. If you owe the bank $1 million, the bank has you by the neck. If you owe the bank $1 trillion, then you basically own the bank, and if you default on your debt, you take the bank down with you. China was trying to diversify the foreign currencies it owned, but the euro was in crisis and Japan’s economy had taken a hard hit after the March earthquake. America and China were stuck together. And the lure of the dollar and of America remained strong.
In public, the Chinese still sounded cocky, condescending of the wasteful Americans whose government was unable to get its lawmakers to behave.
“China, the largest creditor of the world’s sole superpower, has every right now to demand the United States address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China’s dollar assets,” China’s official news agency, Xinhua, said in a commentary. China also urged the United States to apply “common sense” to “cure its addiction to debts” by cutting military and social welfare expenditure.
“The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone.”
A week later, a large advertisement for Xinhua went up on the large facade of the building located at 2 Times Square: China had made it to the world’s crossroads, as Times Square was known. No Chinese company had ever had a permanent foothold on the iconic square. It was just a forty-by-sixty-foot neon sign, but even the news agency that poured such scorn over America was proud to have a presence in the Big Apple. China seemed to have confidence in its future but not in its own present. If you wanted to guarantee China’s continued growth, you had to make it in America, in its private high schools and Ivy League universities, and on Times Square.
* * *
While I watched Libya on the evening news in Beirut every day, I was also keeping an eye on events to the east, across the border in Syria. The popular uprising there had erupted in mid-March, after a group of teenage boys scribbled some graffiti on the walls of their town of Daraa, south of Damascus: the people want to overthrow the regime, the graffiti said. These words had been the rallying cry in Tahrir Square as well as on the streets of Benghazi and in Yemen. In Syria, the boys were detained, beaten, bloodied, their fingernails pulled out. Business as usual for Syria’s secret police.
Just as Mubarak and Gaddafi had insisted before him, President Bashar al-Assad had declared in January 2011 that his people loved him, that his country was different, and that there would be no uprising in Syria. In some ways, Assad was different. Those who saw the world through the prism of anti-imperialism and resistance against Israel believed Assad was one of the only remaining leaders in the region, along with Iran’s president, standing up to the West and pushing back against its hegemonic designs. But resentment against the totalitarian regime, its ruthless intelligence services and economic monopoly, had been simmering for several years already. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians were fed up with oppression for the sake of an abstract concept of someone else’s freedom, like that of the Palestinians.
Thousands of Syrians started to take to the streets in peaceful demonstrations. “Selmiyya, selmiyya,” chanted the Syrians, as Egyptians had done a few weeks before them. Syria was mostly closed off to the international media, so coverage relied on amateur footage taken with cell phones of protestors in various towns. The grainy shots were fascinating not only to watch but also to listen to because of the unguarded comments of those filming. “Look, oh my God, look, they’re coming out. They’re coming, dozens of them. God bless them. Maybe we should join them?” was the commentary on one of the videos I came across on the Internet. Just then shooting erupted, and the man holding the cell phone retreated inside and most likely didn’t join the protestors, at least not this time.
There was a raw quality to the emotion of people who were discovering their collective identity as Syrians for the first time. In a country where neighbors didn’t trust each other and family members spied on one another, reporting any dissent to the local offices of the ruling Baath Party, people were suddenly finding strength in numbers.
At the start of the Obama administration, Washington had reached out to Assad, as it had done with other American foes. Obama appointed an ambassador to Damascus, the first one since the Bush administration had withdrawn its representative in 2005, in the aftermath of the assassination of Rafic Hariri. Engagement wasn’t yielding many results yet, but overall the United States could live with Assad as an irritant. He had shared just enough intelligence about al-Qaeda after the attacks of 9/11 that the United States considered him mildly useful. Mostly, officials in Washington, as well as their counterparts in European capitals, hoped that by engaging Assad it could peel him away from his best friends in Tehran and convince him to make peace with Israel. Under President George H. W. Bush, Washington had engaged with Hafez al-Assad, with some success for American interests in the region. The younger Assad was in many ways more radical and more of an ideologue.
Two weeks after the Syrian uprising had started, Clinton told CBS, “What’s been happening there [in Syria] the last few weeks is deeply concerning, but there’s a difference between calling out aircraft and indiscriminately strafing and bombing your own cities and then police actions, which, frankly, have exceeded the use of force that any of us would want to see.” Syrian forces were still behaving with restraint in comparison to Libya.
“There’s a different leader in Syria now,” she added, trying to highlight the difference between Bashar al-Assad and his father, who had razed whole neighborhoods to the ground in 1982 to crush a rebellion in Hama, in the north of the country.
“Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer,” Hillary said.
One of those members of Congress was Democratic senator John Kerry, who had traveled to Damascus several times to meet with Assad. Kerry had said that the Syrian leader was a man of his word who had been “very generous with me.” He insisted that under Assad, “Syria will move; Syria will change as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the United States.”
Such was the conventional thinking in Washington, and it was hard to shake. Assad was making promises to lift the emergency laws and hold free elections and offering to hold talks with the opposition, keeping the hope for reform alive. Inside Syria itself, not everybody was taking to the streets: large swaths of the population also believed t
he younger Assad was different. With his gorgeous, British-educated wife, Asma, by his side, Assad projected the image of a modern leader and had brought a modicum of change since his accession, mostly by opening up the country’s economy cautiously and reforming the banking sector. I had reported extensively in Syria from 2000 to 2007 and heard Syrians from all walks of life express their admiration for the president and their hope that he would continue to reform. They blamed the corruption, widespread arrests of dissidents, and continued climate of fear on the old guard still surrounding the young Assad. He just needed more time, they insisted.
After the demonstrations started, the Obama administration released a crescendo of statements, at first only slowly increasing pressure, as though unable to accept that yet another dictator was falling. Assad was fast losing his legitimacy, officials said. The window was closing. The window was almost closed. He was not indispensable. His legitimacy was gone. They imposed sanctions on his coterie. Then on his generals. Then on him. Not even President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran was personally under sanctions. As the violence deployed against the protestors escalated and the death toll grew by several hundred every month, calls increased for the administration to say the magic words: “Assad must go.”
The Obama administration resisted making that statement. Obama was still eager to ensure that the United States did not look like it was encouraging the uprisings. He and his advisors wanted the people on the ground to own their revolution. Public American support was often the kiss of death. Assad, predictably, blamed a foreign plot for the unrest in his country. In Washington but also in the region, some people argued that since Arab leaders used the plot excuse anyway, whether America spoke out or not, Washington might just as well throw its weight behind the protestors. But with a war still ongoing in Libya, Obama didn’t want to say anything that could lead to demands for another intervention: you said he has to go, now take him out. The U.S. presidential election was also already a consideration.
For outsiders, it seemed simple to call for a leader to step down; once those words are uttered, however, the United States is essentially declaring it will never deal with that government again. The United States’ careful deliberations behind closed doors were seen in the region as intentional inaction, driven by a desire to see Assad prevail. Yet more proof of America’s nefarious designs and hypocrisy when it came to supporting human rights and freedom. The cost of saying nothing was rising. Finally, on August 18, Obama issued a statement.
“We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.”
When Obama made his statement, anti-Assad protestors cried victory. But statements by the United States did not necessarily have an impact on the ground. Obama had said Gaddafi should go in March, but five months later he was still holding on to power in Libya, despite a NATO bombing campaign. Now, Obama had said Assad had to leave, and the Syrian leader did not appear to be shaking in his boots. When nothing happened after an American president spoke, it made the United States look powerless.
The uprising in Syria was unlike the other revolutions in the Middle East. Tunisia had happened so fast, no one had had time to think. In Egypt, the United States had leverage because it gave money to the army and the army hadn’t shot at the protestors. The revolutionaries had been well organized, bringing millions onto the street. Libya was a fringe country in North Africa with a fringe leader no one liked. There were strategic interests involved, but mostly for the Europeans because it was their backyard. Washington was not developing a comprehensive strategic approach to the Arab Spring. It dealt with each country separately.
Assad had his hands on many destructive levers, more so perhaps than most dictators in the region. Syria was a supporter of Hezbollah in Lebanon on its eastern border, was a friend of Hamas, which had its headquarters in Damascus, and had links to the networks of insurgents in Iraq. Assad himself, as well as his relatives, who were all in positions of power, often made veiled threats. Syria, they said, had influence over groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, so they could rein them in and counsel them to stay quiet. But the obvious implication was that thanks to these groups, Syria could unleash chaos across the region. In keeping with that attitude, Assad’s cousin Rami Makhlouf, the country’s most powerful businessman and a lightning rod for dissent, had warned in an interview with the New York Times in May that if anyone dared touch the Syrian regime, no one could guarantee the stability of Israel or the region. Ironically, Assad kept his own border with Israel quiet. Not a shot had been fired since the last conflagration in 1973, and Israel was keen to keep it that way, often pressing Washington not to push Assad too hard. It was a classic case of the “the devil we know.”
The biggest problem was Syria’s alliance with Iran. Tehran wasn’t going to let Assad fall without putting up a fight for him. The United States constantly worried about Tehran gaining influence and political clout in the region, and when the protests had erupted in Bahrain, American fear of Iran had come at great cost to the protestors. Now the problem was reversed. The end of Assad in Syria could deal a strategic blow to Tehran but American officials worried that, if they pushed to make it happen, the United States could suddenly find itself at war with Iran.
* * *
Back in Washington, Jake was keeping an eye on events in Libya. His BlackBerry rang.
“Hi, Jake! What’s going on in the world?” asked the voice on the other line. It was the secretary. He was always ready for that question. In his pocket he kept a scribbled list of the top issues and developments of the day, just for these phone calls. Hillary checked in every evening during the week, no matter how often they spoke during the day or in the office. Jake kept a low profile, he was a behind-the-scenes operator, but Hillary’s longtime aides remarked that she had rarely relied on someone as much as she relied on Jake. His debate skills helped her refine tactical points, his knowledge of policy nuances allowed her to hone her arguments, and his pocket list of hot spots assisted her in visualizing the big picture, the trends that were shaping the world—her specialty. Hillary excelled with details, but she was even better at long-term plotting, strategic patience.
Hillary had been criticized by U.S. pundits for spreading herself too thin at the start of her tenure. Why was she talking about women and not getting down in the weeds on the Middle East peace process? Why was she touring Africa and not shuttling between Pakistan and Afghanistan herself to close the deal? Why was she revamping the way the Building operated when nuclear talks with North Korea were stalled? Hillary believed that it was no longer possible to devote all your attention to one hot spot or one issue, ignoring the others. All the issues and all the countries were increasingly connected, and if she wanted to help solve any of the problems, she had to connect all the dots. She also didn’t want to invest all her energy in a losing venture, like Middle East peace. Besides, Hillary just didn’t know how to focus on one task. It was a quality and a flaw. She always wanted to do it all, and then she wanted to do some more. But her overarching concern was that America had to change the way it did business around the world if it wanted to remain a relevant leader in the twenty-first century, not only tackling traditional diplomatic concerns but empowering people to solve their own problems. Hillary deployed an army of special envoys, from human rights to women’s rights to climate change to youth issues, to help the United States reach out to civil society around the world, harness the power of new technology, and modernize the way the United States handled diplomacy. The State Department had become the world’s leading foreign ministry in using social media, with 150 full-time social media employees working across twenty-five different offices and nine hundred diplomats at U.S. missions around the world using it in their day-to-day diplomacy, from Twitter to YouTube and Facebook. Victoria Nuland, the department’s new spokesperson, didn’t just brief from the podium but also on Twitter,
taking questions from around the world. Jake didn’t just discuss the administration’s foreign policy priorities at think tanks in Washington but also on live Internet broadcasts where journalists from the four corners of the world could send in their questions. The State Department also set up programs for mobile banking in Africa, tip lines in Mexico to fight drug cartels, text message donation programs to raise money for Haiti. America was expanding its reach and redefining its role, though no one could guarantee that this new approach would deliver in the longer term. Smart power on the part of America seemed too avant-garde for a world that still judged power in a very traditional way, and still expected the United States to be a bully.
* * *
The economic crisis continued to grow in Europe: Greece had cheated in its national accounting books and was now heavily in debt. Italy, Spain, and Portugal were all on the verge of a crisis as well. Europe was facing its own decline. I traveled around the continent asking various officials what they thought of the theory of American decline.
“American decline?” asked one senior French official with a laugh. “There is no such thing. It’s a joke.” Italians were adamant that America wasn’t in decline. Italy was, but America? No.
Decline, apparently, was highly relative. The Old Continent had often looked at America with condescension, a legacy of anti-Americanism that predated George W. Bush, the Iraq War, and freedom fries. In 1947, just two years after the end of World War II, the French writer Simone de Beauvoir traveled across the United States and recorded her impressions of the world’s new superpower. Her writings contained much disdain. A very proud, patriotic French friend of mine had often scoffed at Uncle Sam’s arrogance and dismissed Americans as incompetent bullies who had no understanding of how the rest of the world worked. Now he was telling me how worried he was about American decline. It would be a terrible thing for Europe, the world, the Middle East, where he now lived. I reminded him of his previous statements about America, and he confessed that his words were partly driven by envy—America was bigger, better. It was the world power that France had once been, and he was loathe to admit that France now played only a cameo role on the world stage.