Ultimatum

by Matthew Glass

“My sense is it’s one of two things. One, Wen’s happy. He’s sitting pretty. He thinks he’s got us beat, and he’s just waiting to get the call saying the president’s coming over in September. Two, alternatively, he’s still pretty happy, but he doesn’t know what to do with what he’s got.”

  “Which presupposes he wants to do more,” said Eales.

  “That’s right. If he does, he probably feels he’s won the first round, but now, having won it, he’s not sure how he gets to the second. Or even what the second round looks like. He’s probably waiting for us to show him.”

  “I can let him think he won the first round,” said Benton. “I can live with that.”

  “I disagree, sir. Letting him think he’s won anything is a bad idea.”

  Alan Ball muttered something about the stupidity of people who tried to win every battle when it might cost them the war.

  “Sorry, Al,” said Olsen. “I didn’t catch that.”

  “Larry, I don’t care how we get to the second round,” said Benton, “as long as we get there.”

  “We don’t know Wen’s even looking for a second.”

  “So what do we know?” Joe Benton’s impatience was getting the better of him. “You know, I’m giving an interview this afternoon for my first hundred days. And on this issue, I don’t think we know any more about what we’re doing than we did the day I was sworn in. We don’t have a proposal. We don’t have a negotiating partner. We don’t even know whether Wen wants to talk. That’s a hundred days gone. For nothing.”

  “With respect, sir,” said Olsen, “I think we’ve learned an enormous amount. It’s what we do with it now.”

  “Hell’s bells, Larry! If we learn this much again over the next hundred days we won’t even know what our own names are.”

  Benton shook his head in exasperation. He had spent a solid chunk of the previous afternoon rehearsing for the hundredth-day interview, with Cindy Ravic, one of Jodie Ames’s aides, playing the role of Emmy Peterson, the NewsLog interviewer who was going to be conducting the interview. Of all the questions Cindy had thrown at him, only one—in all the variants Cindy had tried—kept resonating in his mind after the rehearsal was over. What mistakes had he made? What had he learned? What would he do differently? He could answer it—it was easy enough to give an impression of thoughtfulness and humility without admitting anything specific that could be used against him. Jodie Ames had given him a half-dozen sound bites to throw in for good measure. And yet it had stuck with him, made him think, because that really was the question. If the hundred-day milestone meant anything, it was because it was a time to sit back and reflect. What had he learned? What would he do differently?

  He glanced at John Eales. “John,” he said, after Ball had left, “there’s something I think we should do.”

  ~ * ~

  Friday, April 29

  Oval Office, The White House

  John Eales tapped on his handheld, and a slide came up on the screen.

  “Our involvement in this began November fifteenth, when President Gartner invited the president and myself to see him outside D.C.”

  Eales clicked again. A new slide came up. Over the next ten minutes, he ran through every step in the chronology that had brought them to this point in the process with the Chinese government. At the end he had a numbered summary slide.

  “One,” he said, “we used Gartner’s channel. Two, we confined knowledge of the situation to a small subgroup in the administration. Three, we took off the table the offers Gartner had made in the past, including the final one that the Chinese side claimed, probably falsely, was still under consideration. Four, we demanded a proposal from the Chinese government. Five, we turned down a suggestion for a presidential visit in September. Six, when a proposal wasn’t forthcoming from the Chinese side, we threatened sanctions, although we ourselves hadn’t decided what sanctions we might impose and in fact we hadn’t made an explicit decision that we were going to follow through and actually use them. Seven, when the Chinese responded by awarding business contracts to European competitors, we made no direct response. Eight, later, as an indirect response, we spoke to Wen without having a definite program or demand in mind. Nine, as an extension of that indirect response, we sent the secretary of state to Beijing to see whether we could get a better insight into Wen’s perspective, and learned only that Wen claims not to have wanted to see the president embarrassed by the press leak about the emissions data. The thing with the leak, we don’t know where it came from, and our feeling is it probably wasn’t from the Chinese, or if it was, it was a mistake. So I’m setting that aside. Those are the nine key decisions we took. I’m not saying any of them was right or wrong, but that’s how we got to where we are.”

  Eales sat down. The slide with the nine points remained on the screen.

  “I asked John to summarize those steps,” said the president, “because I want us to question them. If we accept that where we are today is not the best place, I want us to think through each of those steps and understand where we might have acted differently, whether we should have acted differently, and what that means for what we do from now. If we made mistakes, it’s crucial that we identify them and learn from them before we go any further.”

  “Well, it’s clear,” said Olsen immediately, “We haven’t taken any action. We were okay until seven, but you can’t threaten something and then not do anything, especially if the other side comes back and does something first. After seven, we lost it.”

  The president let that stand. He waited for someone else to speak.

  “With respect, John,” said Alan Ball, ignoring Olsen’s remarks, “I think you’ve missed a point. We made a decision to go the bilateral route rather than bringing this into the open. That’s a crucial decision and it isn’t on your summary. You start from where we decide to use Gartner’s channel, but prior to that a decision was made to continue bilateral and secret negotiations.”

  “Alan’s right,” said Benton. “That was our first decision.”

  Eales picked up his handheld and typed the point in at the top of the slide. There was a moment of levity as he struggled to get the points to renumber.

  “Mr. President,” said Ball, “if we’re trying to be genuinely open, if we’re going to question what we’ve done, we have to question that as well.”

  “Go ahead,” said Benton.

  Alan Ball laid out the case for looking for a solution within the Kyoto framework. It was still possible to bring the scientific data into the public domain—the leak might turn out to be a blessing in disguise, preparing the way for the release of extreme projections. Even if information about the negotiations with Chen then leaked, these could be pitched as preliminary discussions. Why not come out into the open now, releasing the data and affirming commitment to the Kyoto process? It could all be done around the meeting that had been arranged between the president and Secretary-General Nleki in New York in May.

  Larry Olsen snorted. “I wish we were living in the kind of fantasy world Alan thinks is out there.”

  “Larry, what’s your argument?” said the president sharply.

  Olsen laid it out. In essence, it hadn’t changed from the argument he had presented the first time Benton met him. It was based on the likelihood of achieving a meaningful result in a multilateral forum, compared with the ability to use a bilateral result between the two key global players to unlock the rest of the world.

  “Larry’s position is as much fantasy as mine,” said Ball. “He’s assuming you can pressure the Chinese bilaterally. Go do it! Surely you’ve got more chance pressuring them with the rest of the world lined up behind you.”

  “Go get the rest of the world lined up first,” retorted Olsen. “That’s the point. Look, Alan, in the end we both want the same thing—an agreement with everyone. We both agree China’s key to that, both as the world’s largest polluter and its largest economy. All we really differ on here is which step comes first and which comes second. Do you do the
deal with China, and believe that will make everyone else follow, or do you do the deal with everyone else, and believe China will follow?”

  “No. Don’t misrepresent what I’m saying. China wouldn’t be following. It would be part of the deal with everyone.”

  “You can’t regard China as just another country.” Olsen turned to the president. “On this issue, there are two countries everyone watches, us and them. No one’s going to move an inch unless they believe we’re both in. Now, given that we’re in, I say it’s got to be China first, and then everyone else follows. Alan’s saying it’s everyone else first, and then China follows. I say we’ve had thirty years trying the route of getting everyone to do a meaningful deal and stick to it. Hasn’t worked. What’s changed this time round?” “Our level of commitment,” said Eales.

  “True. But it’s going to take ten years to demonstrate that, ten years before anyone believes it. We don’t have ten years.”

  “Well, we’ve tried what you’re suggesting,” said Ball. “Look where that’s got us.”

  “No, we haven’t tried what I’m suggesting! That’s exactly it, Alan. We haven’t carried through.” Olsen pointed forcefully at the screen. “Step seven—sorry, it’s eight now—after step eight, we back down. The president asked why we find ourselves in the position we’re in. That’s it right there. Round one, Wen outplays us. He was smarter. He was quicker. He was prepared to act and he knew where we’d hurt. So far, we’re all talk. That’s why we are where we are, not because the strategy is wrong.”

  “Excuse me,” said Jackie Rubin. “I’d like to say something. We’re forgetting the domestic program here. Instinctively, I agree with Alan—although I agree with Larry that we haven’t carried through the game plan we started with, so it’s difficult to judge whether it could work. But even though I’m inclined to agree with Alan, if we turn around now and come out with these projections and raise the Relocation number from ten million to, say, thirty million, everything stops. Every one of our bills. People just aren’t going to know what we’re saying anymore. What are we saying? Are we saying New Foundation is enough? Is there going to be more? Is it the end or the start?”

  “We’re going to paralyze the process,” said Ben Hoffman.

  “Absolutely. Paralyze it. We agreed on that right at the start and in retrospect I think that was the right call. If anything, it’s even more true now.”

  Benton was glad Jackie had raised the point, because it was what he believed as well. He wanted to see if he would hear it from somewhere else.

  He glanced questioningly at Alan Ball.

  Ball threw up his hands. “I’m here to advise you on national security policy, Mr. President. Your domestic program is outside my remit.”

  Larry Olsen smiled.

  The president looked back at the screen. It seemed to him there was agreement in the room on the conclusion to be drawn, or at least as much agreement as he would ever get with Alan Ball and Larry Olsen sitting at the same table. “If we look at this road map, and if we accept that decision one was right—and I accept, Alan, that was a distinct decision and it’s open to question, and I know you would still question it—then the problem is we didn’t take action after step eight. Is that right? Does anyone disagree? Alan, is that correct in your view?”

  Ball nodded grudgingly. “If you believe in the bilateral approach,” he muttered. “That’s a big if.”

  “Agreed. Let’s set that aside.” Benton paused. “So what’s it going to take? If Wen genuinely opposes this, what kind of action will bring him into line? Here’s what I don’t understand. How can he be against this? How can he honestly not want to do a deal on this? Maybe we went out too belligerent, and he figured he had to do something to show we’re not in charge, but now he’s done that. How can he not want to do a deal now?”

  “Maybe he does,” said Jackie Rubin.

  “He hasn’t shown it. He’s just sitting back. This isn’t a zero sum game. It’s not we win, they lose. If we don’t do something, this is a disaster for everyone. How can the leader of any country who understands that not want to do a deal?” The president glanced in the direction of Oliver Wu. “I know what you’re going to say, Dr. Wu. It’s China, China continues, and the pain they can take outlasts anything we can take, so they’ll let the pain begin and then we’ll be the ones who fold. But is that still true? I may not be a China expert, but I question that. They have a middle class, they have an economy, this isn’t the China of Deng Xiaoping coming off the back of the Cultural Revolution. You told me yourself they have a serious problem with a democracy movement and an environmental movement, both of which pose threats to the party hegemony, and don’t tell me the kind of pain we’re talking about isn’t going to make that worse. Now, I can’t see how any kind of leader isn’t going to say, let’s deal with this in an orderly fashion. Let’s get to grips with it. That’s the best way we have of securing ourselves.”

  “Not if the solution causes instability,” said Olsen.

  “Well, maybe it does cause a little instability.”

  “And if it does,” said Olsen, “it does it now. Whereas the issues we’re talking about don’t do it for maybe twenty years. And in the meantime, if we resist—I’m talking as the Chinese side here, on the extreme side, Ding for example—if we resist and the big bad Americans try to force a solution, we’re seen as the victim and we’re standing up for our rights and we use the nationalist argument to strengthen our hold, as the party, and to create a context in which we can clamp down on those elements that are destabilizing us. Mr. President, we’ve been through this.”

  “But we don’t know.”

  “No, we don’t know. There’s always stuff you don’t know. That’s the nature of the game.”

  The president closed his eyes. “I cannot believe a leader would do that. I can’t believe he’d be prepared to do so much damage to his own people.” He looked up. Olsen was watching him skeptically. The others were watching him as well. “Am I being naive?”

  Olsen threw back his hands, as if it wasn’t for him to answer.

  “Alan?”

  Ball shrugged.

  He looked at Wu.

  “That’s not a word I’d really use . . .”

  “To my face you mean.” Benton smiled ruefully. “Huh?”

  “I don’t know. I’m . . . sorry, sir.”

  There was silence. Benton understood that no one else around the table, at least not the foreign policy experts, shared his incredulity.

  “It seems to me there are two possibilities here,” said John Eales. “One is that Wen doesn’t understand what we’re dealing with, or what he was being offered by Gartner, or he doesn’t believe it. Possibly he hasn’t even had it presented to him properly, since we’ve got no idea what Chen actually said to him. And the other possibility is, he does understand it and, yes, he’s doing what Larry says he’s doing, and might even end up using it as an instrument to deal with domestic political problems.”

  “Or he does know, and he does want to do a deal, but he’s constrained,” said Wu. “With respect, Mr. Eales, that’s a third possibility. He may not have the power on this we think he has.”

  “Then if we take some kind of action, that just makes it worse for him, doesn’t it?”

  “Not necessarily,” said Wu. “It might empower him by discrediting the people who are constraining him.”

  “This is just great!” Benton shook his head in frustration. He thought American politics was complex, and it was. He was constrained on all sides, and nothing significant got through Congress without its share of pork barreling. With all the legislation he was sending to the Hill, he was up to here in that stuff. But at least he understood it. It even had a kind of transparency. But this . . . this was surreal. This was straight out of Kafka. “There must be an alternative to confrontation,” he said.

  Olsen shrugged. “There is if we back down.”

  “I’m not backing down. The United States can’t do the c
uts in emissions for the whole world, and no one else will join us if China doesn’t. So China has to do it, that’s a given. But I’m not prepared at this stage to do something that creates an irreversible step that puts us in confrontation. Now, we agree it’s possible that President Wen doesn’t know all the facts, or that he doesn’t understand the implications. I’m not saying that’s definite. I’m not saying he isn’t using this for domestic purposes or that he’s not constrained. But I’m saying we don’t know that. It’s possible that he doesn’t know everything we think he knows. We just don’t know enough.”

  Olsen watched the president skeptically.

  “We don’t know, objectively, what Chen told him,” said Eales. “That’s a fact, Larry.”

  “Chen’s Wen’s man.”

  “But we don’t know what he told him.”

  “Before I take another step,” said Benton, “I need to be sure, exactly, what Wen’s been told. I’m not going to escalate on the basis of a false premise.” Benton looked directly at Olsen. “This isn’t prevarication, Larry. I’m just not going to be irresponsible.”