To the Secretary

by Mary Thompson-Jones

  The coup de grace arrived on September 17, when the Obama administration abandoned missile defense. It was done in rapid-fire one-hour meetings—just long enough to deliver the blow in person—first with the Poles, then the Czechs, and then at NATO headquarters. The three-member delegation consisting of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy, Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly of the Missile Defense Agency, and the State Department’s Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Affairs Ellen Tauscher delivered the news behind closed doors, answered a few questions, and left what can only be called a mess behind.

  Obama’s reticence to engage the leaders directly was best symbolized, at least in the Czech case, with a perfunctory midnight phone call to Prime Minister Jan Fischer—a fact Fischer was quick to let the Czech media know. In Poland, the September 17 announcement came on the anniversary of the day the Soviet Union had invaded Poland. Thus World War II–related anniversaries came full circle, managing to haunt the United States twice in one season.

  From any political vantage point in Central Europe, it had been a terrible summer. A departing ambassador, Victor Ashe in Warsaw, wrote an end-of-tour cable lecturing Washington on how to put relations “back on track”—a startling tone, even for an official soon to depart. The disappointed Polish reaction to the president’s missile defense policy shift did not occur in a vacuum, he argued, nor was it mainly about missile defense. Rather, he wrote, Poles felt their military (and economic) contributions in Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan were consistently underappreciated.39

  A week later, thirty-one American officials, some of whom were former ambassadors, wrote their own open letter to Obama, echoing the concerns of the original open letter writers. “Though the signatories of this bipartisan letter have varying views on the merits of your administration’s proposed missile defense architecture for Europe, we are united in our concern about the effect that even the perception of U.S. disengagement from Central Europe could have on our allies in the region.40 In response to the outcry, the administration dispatched Vice President Biden to the region in November 2009 to soothe wounded feelings and put relationships back on track.

  As a final symbolic slap to the Czech Atlanticists, the signing of the new START treaty between the United States and Russia on April 8, 2010, which reduced the number of nuclear missile launchers by half and instituted a new inspection and verification process, was held in Prague, a location that resonated with Obama as a bookend to his speech on nuclear nonproliferation a year earlier. The successful conclusion to the treaty negotiations was tightly linked to the administration’s willingness to abandon missile defense, and the choice of Prague for the signing sent a discouraging message to those Czechs who continued to see Russia as a security threat.

  The Obama administration insisted it had not abandoned missile defense but rather exchanged it for what it called a “European Phased Adaptive Approach,” which envisioned a network of radar facilities and interceptor sites in Europe, all focused on threats from Iran. This, too, met with huge opposition from the Kremlin, and in March 2013 Obama would capitulate and drop the most controversial fourth phase of the program, citing budgetary limitations and a need to shift resources to protect against a growing missile threat from North Korea.

  Secretary of State Clinton left office in February 2013. Events in Ukraine did not begin until November of that year, and the Russians did not illegally annex Crimea until March 2014. Nonetheless, as secretary of state during the now-infamous Russian reset, she must at least share responsibility for a U.S.–Russia policy that largely failed. The cables leave a damning trail of evidence, not only from Poland and the Czech Republic, but from Ukraine, Georgia, and the Baltics, showing that American diplomats on the ground were sending her plenty of information about Russian destabilization and aggression.

  As the Czech politician Alexandr Vondra had warned, the demise of missile defense left the region a different place. Atlanticists were hard to find. “Some statements from the new generation of politicians who incline to realpolitik in Prague, Bratislava, Budapest or even Warsaw have shown that even in those parts of Europe, a pro-Atlantic stance should not be taken for granted.” 41 After the Ukraine crisis in 2014, both Czech and Slovak government leaders had a tepid response, dismissing the notion of sanctions and stating that they had no desire for NATO troops on their soil (despite being NATO members) and that Obama’s belated initiative to bolster defense in Central and Eastern Europe would have to take place elsewhere.

  It’s hard to find Clinton’s footprints in anything concerning missile defense. The topic is almost absent from her memoirs. She makes the briefest of appearances in the fall of 2010 when the Obama administration turned to the ratification process of the new START accord, a treaty that was negotiated by her State Department. Her contribution centered on finding the necessary votes in the Senate, work for a skilled politician but not necessarily a diplomat.

  In some ways, Clinton’s absence as a key player in missile defense—and in the Russian reset—might burnish her credentials with Russia skeptics. Her treatment by Lavrov—not only with the reset button but in other encounters—makes her an unlikely champion for any new forays into Russian rapprochement. Her admiration for Walesa and Havel seems genuine and suggests a rapport with the region’s Atlanticists that Obama lacked. But as the embassies reported, the heyday of dissidents has waned. A new generation of European politicians has risen with no memories of pre-1989 conditions. Former secretary Albright’s iconic statement of the United States as “the indispensable nation,” first stated in 1998 as justification for military intervention in Iraq and repeated frequently since, might be contested or puzzling to a younger audience that has neither lived through World War II nor the Communist divide that separated Europe. As pro-democracy dissidents like Havel and Walesa leave the scene, Clinton might find forging partnerships with a new and younger Europe more difficult, thanks to the painful lessons the region learned on missile defense.

  A GREAT COMMUNICATOR FOR A NEW ERA

  Forty years ago, no one asked if Henry Kissinger was a great communicator. His job was to think strategically and to propose and carry out global initiatives. If he had something important to announce, he could simply call a press conference. No secretary of state in today’s world could replicate his secret trip to China. The public scrutiny he was able to avoid is now a critical part of the job.

  Clinton’s tenure coincided with an unprecedented era of social media, and new formats for conversation seemed to pop up every week. She proved to be an adept practitioner of all kinds of public diplomacy to reach foreign audiences—often at the end of what must have been exhausting days. The foreign policy establishment has not given nearly enough weight to this job requirement, nor enough credit to her successes. The embassy reporting cables, by contrast, come alive with an enthusiasm that would be hard to fake. Officers from around the world praised her willingness to engage and her knack for outreach.

  On a March 2009 visit to Ramallah, Clinton agreed to an interview for a Palestinian youth television show, Ali Soutik. According to the consulate, the director of the NGO that produced the program said feedback was overwhelmingly positive. “You cannot believe the phone calls we received, the emails . . . everyone is talking about the [opportunity] Mrs. Clinton has given to Palestinian youth,” the director said. The program, which normally attracts half a million viewers, was watched by 1.2 million people, including both President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad.42

  Embassies deployed a new format, called a “townterview,” in which Clinton would be interviewed onstage in front of a live, town hall–type audience, usually a mix of civil society leaders, students, NGOs, business professionals, and others. The success of the format requires that the interviewer—as well as the interviewee—engage in a conversational style that plays to the audience. For a while, these hybrid media events were new enough to create news stories of their own, producing an additional publicity bounc
e.

  Clinton tried the format in Bangkok, going onstage with two of Thailand’s leading broadcast journalists before an audience of about 250 and a television audience of some 2.4 million. “The event received overwhelmingly positive media coverage, not only for its substantive policy discussions but also due to the witty banter between Secretary Clinton and the co-hosts that created a comfortable, at-ease atmosphere that had the audience erupting in laughter throughout the Townterview.” 43

  Clinton used a variation on this theme in her first visit as secretary of state to Turkey in March 2009, agreeing to appear on Turkey’s most popular talk show Come and Join Us, hosted by four Turkish women and filmed in front of a small studio audience of students and NGO members. She won points for openness and honesty from the cohosts, and the broadcast was hailed in major Turkish newspapers as “the perfect way of practicing public diplomacy to improve the U.S. image in Turkey.” She published an article for the Turkish daily Zaman in connection with International Women’s Day, noting, “Problems today are too big and too complex to be solved without the full participation of women.” 44

  Clinton also included one of the first bloggers to join the more traditional traveling press corps on her Asian trip in 2009. Japanese blogger Nozomu Nakaoka wrote an engaging account of how he was invited.

  Last weekend, I received a telephone call from someone at the U.S. Embassy who asked me: “There has been an instruction from the Department of State to include a Japanese blogger in the press corps traveling with Secretary Clinton. You, Mr. Nakaoka, are a blogger, aren’t you? Can you join them?” I said in response, “I am a journalist and have my own blog,” and I accepted the offer, seeing it as the chance of a lifetime. I heard later on from a U.S. Embassy employee that including a Japanese blogger in the traveling press corps was the Secretary’s personal desire.45

  The cables also reveal some imperfect coordination between Clinton’s Washington staff and the embassies. On any given day, the secretary is deluged with media requests from all over the world, and deciding which, if any, interviews to grant is a strategic process. In countries where media outlets are divided strictly along government and opposition lines, such decisions inevitably are an act of taking sides.

  One day in 2009, Clinton’s State Department staffers decided she should grant an exclusive interview to Venezuela’s embattled opposition television Globovision, in which she would announce the role of Costa Rica’s Óscar Arias as mediator in the Honduran coup and call for better relations between the United States and Venezuela. However, relations between the United States and Venezuela were at such a low point that no such interview would be seen as innocent or neutral. Even before the interview hit the airwaves, the U.S. embassy in Caracas was fielding complaints. The embassy noted, with some asperity, that it had not been consulted about the interview and had just learned of it before the phones started ringing—an awkward position to be in. They nonetheless tried to soothe Venezuelan feelings without great results.

  The DCM [told the foreign minister] that Chávez had publicly expressed doubts about the true intentions of the U.S. government in Honduras, accused the United States of being behind the coup, and that Clinton was responding to a request for an interview by Globovision that allowed her to speak directly to the Venezuelan people on the issue of Honduras and our hopes for an improved dialogue with Venezuela. The foreign minister protested . . . saying that the Globovision principals were nothing more than coup plotters.46

  The interview would cause the embassy headaches for months afterward.

  THINKING SMALL

  One of the themes of Clinton’s tenure was the dilemma she articulated in her memoirs, and one that is occasionally posed in diplomatic cables: What happens when U.S. interests conflict with U.S. values? This question played out in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, where an impetuous Obama wanted to be on the right side of history and a clearly torn Clinton counseled caution. It played out in Syria, where Clinton’s instinct to arm the rebels fighting the Assad regime clashed with the White House’s hesitation. Clinton was forthright in expressing her views but loyal in supporting the president’s. A more fundamental question might be: What is the proper role for a modern secretary of state and what can be learned from Clinton’s relationship with her embassies?

  There are too many places where Clinton was either inactive or sidelined. Clinton has said little about global corruption, despite copious reporting from the embassies. Disarmament was President Obama’s initiative. The ongoing problem of Iraq was given to Vice President Biden. Afghanistan and Pakistan belonged, until his death, to Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke. George Mitchell was named special envoy for the Middle East. In fact, the Obama administration named an unprecedented twenty-four special envoys, special representatives, special advisors, and special coordinators for a host of global hotspots. None required Senate confirmation. They operated with staffs ranging from one to thirty, and only eleven of them reported to the secretary of state. Clinton dismissed the notion that she risked becoming marginalized by so many special envoys. “That’s not the way I saw it. Appointing people who were qualified to serve as Secretary themselves [she was thinking of Holbrook and Mitchell] enhanced my reach and the administration’s credibility.” 47

  But that assessment is too facile for State Department hands with long experience of the special envoy problem—and it is a problem. There has been extensive debate over the utility of special envoys. While they can elevate the profile of an issue and secure meetings with high-level counterparts, they come at a high price. They have trouble moving policy papers through a turf-driven bureaucracy, their mandate is often too vague, and there can be nasty disputes over confused lines of authority.48

  A 2014 U.S. Institute of Peace study on the role of special envoys, with many examples drawn from the Clinton State Department, illustrates how these individuals—especially those who are White House–appointed—can marginalize not only the secretary, but embassies. The first U.S. special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan

  made poor use of the embassies, cutting them out of both the policy and negotiating process and Washington policy debates. They were asked, in effect, to serve simply as travel and logistics support for the [office] and were often not included in meetings in the country. This lowered morale in the embassies and bifurcated reporting and analysis channels. . . . [The office] was not structured well to oversee all the projects it initiated, some of which were ill-conceived and poorly supervised.49

  The report also mentioned the stormy stints of Richard Holbrooke, whom Clinton refused to fire despite strong White House pressure, and George Mitchell, who reportedly resigned over differences on Middle East policy within the Obama administration. By failing to challenge the insertion of twenty-four special envoys into her State Department, Clinton lost chances to influence foreign policy processes or to impose her own overarching worldview across countries and issues, tacitly agreeing to the compartmentalization of foreign policy. It is hard to imagine some of her predecessors meekly agreeing to so many oft-called baronies.

  Being secretary of state is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, which leads to the second observation: Clinton tended to settle for too little and squandered her influence on the small stuff. She fought the Obama White House to get the right chief of protocol—why? She wrote in her memoir that she learned from her time as first lady that protocol is important to diplomacy. This is a misreading. Protocol chiefs work on guest lists, table seating, and VIP gifts. What’s far more important to diplomacy is policy, and she might have traded the chit for her favorite protocol officer for something more substantive.

  She found time to promote a clean cookstoves initiative, an issue she said was at the crossroads of energy, environment, economics, and public health, and certainly benefited people who used inefficient and dangerous stoves.50 Bravo, but was this the best and highest value use of her time? She stated that her key foreign policy goals were food security, global health policy, LGBT rights, and Haiti.51
That’s an interesting list but one better suited to USAID than to the State Department. She mentioned other priorities, too, such as engaging activists on social media, helping determine energy pipeline routes, limiting carbon emissions, encouraging marginalized groups to participate in politics, standing up for universal human rights, and defending common economic rules of the road, a list that speaks for itself.52

  Perhaps James Dobbins said it most diplomatically: “Circumstances have denied her opportunities for the transformative accomplishments of Dean Acheson,” secretary of state to President Truman from 1949 to 1953 and one of the architects of the postwar world.53 The Berlin Wall did not fall on her watch nor was the World Trade Center attacked. She did not bring peace to the Middle East, although she did manage to broker a ceasefire in November 2012 in Gaza between the Israelis and Hamas. Unlike Henry Kissinger, she did not orchestrate an opening to China, but she was largely responsible for the opening to Burma, which she began at the start of her tenure in early 2009. In general, she stayed within the lines and played the hand that history dealt her.

  Clinton believes firmly in the power of public-private partnerships, and therein lies both the strengths and weaknesses of her approach. Her list of foreign policy priorities, logically enough, frequently coincides with the work of the Clinton Global Initiative, established by Bill Clinton as a policy platform for an activist approach to scores of global issues, and her earlier work with Vital Voices. The proliferation of NGOs—some of which are well funded and powerful—means outside voices can influence foreign policy without the scrutiny of the electorate or the mandate of the ballot box. Unlike NGOs, the State Department is uniquely able to speak for the U.S. government, yet it will increasingly have to speak more loudly as it navigates a global landscape littered with private organizations—some of which will have agendas decidedly at odds with the policies of a U.S. administration. As vested interests clash, future secretaries of state may find their speeches pay less homage to starting more public-private partnerships and instead delineate where those partnerships end.