Ultimatum

by Matthew Glass

  Then Benton said the United States—and a number of other developed countries—had to acknowledge responsibility for disproportionate use of resources and emissions of pollutants, including greenhouse gases, over the past fifty years. He accepted that the world felt a sense of grievance at this, and the United States had to recognize that. He and his administration did recognize it.

  It was the moment of self-deprecation, confessional, humility, that comes before an attack. In the original draft, it had been somewhat understated, and Sam had built it up. The platform needed to be strong for the assault that was coming next.

  The president launched it. His tone was serious, decisive, mind made up, the trust-me-I’m-sure-about-this tone that people loved about Straight Joe Benton.

  Other nations could no longer hide behind that historical argument. While the United States would acknowledge its past actions, other nations could not use this as a reason to act just as irresponsibly in the future. In fact, more irresponsibly. The time had come for the major emitters in the world to accept the fact that, whatever had happened in the past, they were the major emitters of the present. And that the past wouldn’t, couldn’t make the future better. Only the present could do that. And no country in the present had to do more to change its attitude, its behavior, its willingness to take responsibility, than the world’s leading emitter, which had surpassed the United States in that position fully a quarter century before.

  Here the president paused, long, meaningfully, so there could be no doubt about the message. Everyone knew who the world’s leading emitters were.

  He named them. China. Then he hammered at them, jab after jab. China must join in the Kyoto process as leaders, not spectators. They must agree to take their fair share of the pain that everyone would be called on to experience. Whatever had happened in the past, they could not expect others to take an amount of pain that was impossible to bear while they took none. They must join in the quest for a better world for all, not only for themselves. They must accept the responsibility that came with their economic size and place in the world. The time for special pleading, special consideration, special exemptions was over. The United States would expect them to act as full partners in solving a problem that affected every single human being on earth, and of which they, now, were the leading cause. When they were prepared to do that, the United States would take its fair share, fully its fair share, of the burden.

  He returned to Kyoto, to the piecemeal cuts. If the Kyoto process continued as it had over the past three decades—agreements to inadequate targets, ratifications, failure to achieve even the inadequate targets that had been agreed, more agreements, more ratifications, more failure—millions of people, hundreds of millions of people, would find their lives disrupted, blighted, even destroyed. It was too easy to sign agreements that were never going to be fulfilled. The United States could not be a party to this any longer. For one last time, it was committed to the Kyoto process, to one last round, as long as it was fast, as long as it was decisive, as long as it dealt once and for all with the problem. In his administration, the world would find an American government prepared to think the unthinkable—not one that would be party to a process that allowed the world to die a death of a thousand cuts.

  He paused. Then he ended on a threat, and Sam Levy, knowing Joe Benton, knew that he must have thought long and hard about doing it, tried every which way to find another way out of the problem.

  If this round failed, said Joe Benton, the United States couldn’t stop. The problems weren’t going away. If Kyoto, as a multilateral process, couldn’t deal with them on the world’s behalf, someone would have to take the responsibility to do it. The United States would use every peaceful means at its disposal. It would hold countries to account, it would impose penalties until cooperation was achieved. The problem had to be solved. Kyoto had one last chance to solve it.

  Benton stopped. There was silence in the hall. From his place in the wings, Sam couldn’t see the faces of the audience. It felt like the half-stunned, half-stupefied silence of an audience wondering whether it had truly heard something as momentous as it thinks it has heard. The kind of silence that can turn into repudiation or acclaim.

  Then he heard applause. It started uncertainly. It swelled. It rose higher, kept going. There must be people on their feet out there, Sam knew. He glanced at Jodie Ames, who was looking at him.

  “I hardly made a change to it,” he said.

  “Death of a thousand cuts?”

  Sam smiled. “Jodie, you know me too well.”

  The president strode off the stage.

  “Awesome speech, sir,” said Jodie.

  But there was nothing triumphalist in the president’s demeanor. Suddenly he looked tired. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  The Death of a Thousand Cuts speech, as it came to be known, got blanket coverage, positive and negative. Some commentators focused on the sense of resolve in the speech and detected an unprecedented commitment by the United States to engage as a Kyoto partner with the rest of the world. Others focused on the strident tone and predicted a resurgence of American imperialism. Some claimed to be amazed by the hypocrisy of a president who acknowledged past excesses by the United States yet apparently asked for equal sacrifices now. But everyone realized that the president had thrown down a gauntlet to the Chinese government, one which had never been thrown down before. The threat of sanctions was unmistakable.

  It was as close as anyone could remember President Benton coming to an unequivocal ultimatum. Some said it was rash, others said it wasn’t unequivocal enough. Some said China would ignore it, others said China couldn’t afford to and the crucial question, now, was how the Chinese government would respond.

  ~ * ~

  Thursday, September 8

  CBS Webcasting Center, New Jersey

  The interview with Andrew Laycock had been recorded that afternoon. Laycock, a Democratic member of the House Environment Committee, was strongly positive on President Benton’s stand, which had dominated commentary and analysis since the speech in San Diego two days previously. Now Eleanor Engers and Fran O’Lachlan were in the edit suite with Dave Odgers, one of the technical guys, who was helping them cut the Laycock piece down to a four-minute segment for the late-evening political review.

  Ben Lacey knocked on the door and put his head in.

  “I’m busy,” said O’Lachlan, not even looking up.

  “Fran, there’s something out here you’ll want to see.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “President Wen’s giving a speech. ChinaCom’s put out an alert to foreign news agencies. They’ve flagged he’s about to start talking about the U.S.”

  In the newsroom, a screen on the wall showed Wen speaking in front of a uniformed audience seated at long, curving desks in a huge hall. An English translation followed a few seconds behind his words.

  The journalists in the room stood around the screen in silence. One of them made way for O’Lachlan to come through.

  “Who’s he talking to?” asked O’Lachlan.

  “Some kind of army congress,” said someone.

  “And they’re streaming this live? With a translation?”

  “Apparently.”

  “We are good friends to the United States,” said the voice of the translation, a female Chinese voice in lightly accented English.

  “What time is it there?” said O’Lachlan.

  “About nine o’clock tomorrow morning. He obviously wants to hit the late night shows over here.”

  Wen was talking again in Mandarin. The translation went on. “When the United States comes to us and says, help us with . . . help us with a problem, of course we say, how can we help? When it is a problem we all share, we say, what can we do? When they came to us, we said, look at us, we have 1.6 billion people, look at you, you have three hundred fifty million. Now, who should emit more? That is what we said, and how can anyone say that was wrong? Was that not helpful? But if a man
is dying of a thousand cuts, I ask myself who gave him the first nine hundred and ninety-nine? Not who gave him the last cut, who gave him all the others? That is the person I say who bears the responsibility. I ask our friends to ask themselves that. And what if the one who gave all those cuts is that person himself. Who is the one who should save him then? Shouldn’t he be the one to start? The United States . . . The United States should understand that when friends are talking to each other . . . there is no place for threats. If we disagree ... I should warn the United States that if we disagree, then we disagree. No one will ever again dictate to China what it can and cannot do. Foreign powers that are wise will understand that and those that are not wise will discover . . . they will discover that the time is long past when foreigners can dictate to China what it will do. And if they want to test this, let them test it. If they give us one cut, we will give them a thousand back. I myself promise this.”

  Wen stopped. There was prolonged applause in the hall.

  On another screen logged into a business news site, headlines of the speech were already scrolling under the panels of data. Other headlines started coming up. In Shanghai, shares were down three percent since Wen had started speaking.

  “That’s the most belligerent thing I’ve heard from Wen in years,” murmured Fran O’Lachlan.

  He was talking again.

  “So, let us hope that our friends in the United States. . . and other parts of the world . . . will have sensible proposals and not make demands . . . demands that are the attempted imposition of a foreign will that the Chinese people will reject. Let everyone not forget that the Chinese people must have all restitution of…historical injustices and divisions. And they will have it.”

  Wen stopped. He bowed his head. The audience in the hall stood behind the desks and applauded.

  “That’s Taiwan,” said Ben Lacey. “That thing about divisions, it always means Taiwan.”

  The image on the screen cut from Wen in the hall to a commentator in a studio who began talking in Mandarin.

  The journalists began to disperse to their desks.

  “He said when they came to us,” said Eleanor Engers.

  O’Lachlan looked at her.

  “He said, when they came to us. In the speech. When they came to us.”

  “Who came to us?”

  “Us, I guess. He was talking about the United States.” Eleanor looked at Dave Odgers, the tech guy. “Dave, can we replay it?”

  “If it’s on the site.”

  In the edit suite, Odgers logged into the ChinaCom newstream that had carried the speech and downloaded it.

  Engers waited. Odgers fast-forwarded through a portion of the speech. They got to the relevant part.

  “When they came to us, we said, look—”

  “Dave, stop it...Start it again. From there.”

  “When they came to us, we said, look at us, we have 1.6 billion people, look at you, you have three hundred fifty million. Now, who should emit more? That is what we said, and how can anyone say that was wrong? Was that not helpful? But if a man is . . .”

  Engers turned to O’Lachlan and Lacey. “He says, when they came to us. It’s the past tense. He didn’t use that anywhere else.”

  Lacey shrugged. “It’s a translation. Could be wrong. You know Chinese tenses.”

  “They streamed this live with a translation,” said Engers. “This was meant to be heard outside China. Dave, can you go back and play it again?”

  Odgers played it again.

  “Can you take the translator’s voice off?” asked O’Lachlan.

  “I can try,” said Odgers. “Give me a few minutes.”

  Odgers set to work. O’Lachlan picked up a phone. “Sally? Can you come into the edit suite?”

  Sally Lu came in. A few minutes later, Odgers had taken most of the translator’s voice off the file. He played it. He turned up the volume to make Wen’s voice louder.

  “It’s past tense,” said Sally.

  “They came?”

  “They came, we said. That’s what the grammar’s saying. Its distinctly past.”

  “It’s probably a mistake,” said Lacey.

  “Wen’s mistake?” Engers shook her head. “Wen wouldn’t make a mistake like that.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I think what Eleanor’s saying,” said O’Lachlan, “is that despite everything President Benton said in San Diego about being committed to Kyoto, President Wen would like us to know that we’ve been talking to them.”

  ~ * ~

  Saturday, September 10

  Oval Office, The White House

  If there was any doubt about what President Wen had intended to say, the official translation of the speech removed it. Benton knew that Wen was trying to put him under pressure, but he didn’t know if Wen realized just how much pressure he had created. The Chinese president probably had no idea what it was to be on the receiving end of a free press in full cry or what impact it could have on the political process in a democratic country.

  It was in full cry now. The memory of the Miami scenario in March was dragged up, and suddenly everyone was making the connection between it and the discussions that had apparently been taking place with China. Benton’s legislative program was clearly going to stop cold, and if the major budget bills hadn’t passed before the August recess the country would have been facing a government shutdown at the end of September. The markets were in turmoil, falling on rumors of a rift between the world’s two great economic powers, rising on speculation that an agreement between them was in prospect. The right-wing press was going wild with conspiracy theories about a Democratic plot to sell out the United States to China. Every Republican pressure group from the NRA to the Sisters of the Stars and Stripes was going wild. A bunch of right-wing lawyers were talking about launching a suit against anyone in the administration who could be shown to have engaged in covert negotiations with the Chinese government. The mood was so crazy that some mainstream journalists were actually taking that seriously. John Eales had the results of snap polling. Mistrust of the president was back on the agenda.

  Kay Wilson, Don Bales, Cee Amadi, and a dozen other key legislators had been in the Oval Office or on the phone to tell Joe Benton about the confusion and sheer bewilderment in Democratic ranks. Within the next week there would almost certainly be a Republican move to launch a Senate inquiry. Kay Wilson wasn’t sure enough Democrats would stand firm to block it.

  Bob Colvin and Henry Schulz, chair of the Federal Reserve, were communicating heavily to try to calm the markets. Their message was that, as far as they were aware, nothing had changed in the U.S. or global economies as a result of President Wen’s speech. At the White House, Jodie Ames’s line was that the administration didn’t provide commentary on remarks made by other leaders. If people wanted to ask President Wen what he meant, they should go talk to President Wen. But they didn’t want to ask President Wen what he meant. They wanted to ask President Benton what he had been doing. Had there been negotiations with the Chinese over cuts in carbon emissions or had there not? When? Where? How deep were the cuts? How far had the talks got? What did this mean for Kyoto? In the press briefing room, Adam Gehrig took a battering that made his first outings back in January look like a walk in the park. His stonewalling only convinced his interrogators that there was more to be told.

  Congressional leaders and other respected Democratic figures, privately and publicly, were calling for the president to respond. Benton’s staff was divided. Some wanted an immediate statement, others thought a statement would just whip up the storm. Benton himself knew that he had to speak. With every day that passed, he felt that his silence became less comprehensible to the country. Yet still he held back, despite the temptation to come out quickly and say something. He had to do better than that. He had to do more than merely provide an explanation of what had happened. That would hand the initiative back to his critics. He had to say what was going to happen next, outline a pl
an and put momentum behind it. That was what he was trying to figure out. Eales, Rubin and Hoffman were working round the clock with their teams and other officials to put options together for the actions he might need to take.

  In the midst of all this, other key members of the administration had to be brought up to speed with what had been happening. Benton felt a certain degree of discomfort at confessing a covert operation of this importance from which he had chosen to exclude them. In the case of Angela Chavez, the feeling went beyond discomfort. As he outlined the full extent of the negotiations, he saw at firsthand her personal sense of betrayal. His assurance that her role in driving New Foundation had been invaluable didn’t assuage her hurt. He had promised Angela Chavez that she would be an active part of the administration. Joe Benton knew what she must be thinking now. Week after week, while all of this had been happening, he had sat at their private Wednesday lunches, face to face with her, and hadn’t said a word. He didn’t know whether their relationship could ever recover. He met with other officials who now needed to know. Bob Colvin and Henry Schulz. Jay MacMahon, his defense secretary. Alan Ball briefed Lou Berkowitz, the director of National Intelligence, Stuart Cohen, CIA director, and Paul Enderlich, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The president also made time to see Andrea Powers. Andrea had been supportive of his Thousand Cuts speech, she only wished he had told her about it beforehand. She too felt Kyoto 4 had to be different from the three treaties that had preceded it. After the speech she had told him that she felt it positioned her to go in and make that happen.