by Obama Barack
In a sense, Singapore remained exceptional: Most of the other ASEAN countries still struggled with varying levels of entrenched poverty, just as their commitment to democracy and the rule of law remained wildly uneven. One thing they seemed to have in common, though, was a shift in how they imagined themselves. The people I talked to—whether heads of state, businesspeople, or human rights activists—remained respectful of American power. But they no longer viewed the West as the center of the world, with their own countries inalterably cast as bit players. Instead, they considered themselves at least equal to their former colonizers, their dreams for their people no longer capped by geography or race.
As far as I was concerned, that was a good thing, an extension of America’s faith in the dignity of all people and a fulfillment of the promise we’d long made to the world: Follow our lead, liberalize your economies, and hopefully your governments and you, too, can share in our prosperity. Like Japan and South Korea, more and more ASEAN countries had taken us at our word. It was part of my job as U.S. president to make sure that they played fair—that their markets were as open to us as our markets were to them, that their continued development didn’t depend on exploiting their workers or destroying the environment. So long as they competed with us on a level playing field, I considered Southeast Asia’s progress something for America to welcome, not fear. I wonder now whether that’s what conservative critics found so objectionable about my foreign policy, why something as minor as a bow to the Japanese emperor could trigger such rage: I didn’t seem threatened, as they were, by the idea that the rest of the world was catching up to us.
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SHANGHAI—OUR FIRST stop in China—seemed like Singapore on steroids. Visually, it lived up to the hype, a sprawling, modern metropolis of twenty million cacophonous souls, every inch of it bustling with commerce, traffic, construction cranes. Huge ships and barges loaded with goods bound for the world’s markets glided up and down the Huangpu. Throngs of people strolled along the expansive river walk, stopping every so often to admire the futuristic skyscrapers that stretched in all directions and at night were as bright as the Las Vegas Strip. At an ornate banquet hall, the mayor of the city—an up-and-comer in the Communist Party who, with his tailored suit and jaunty sophistication, somehow reminded me of Dean Martin—pulled out all the stops for a luncheon between our delegation and Chinese and American business leaders, with rare delicacies and wine pairings that would suit a high-end wedding at the Ritz. Reggie Love, my ever-constant body man, was most impressed with a waitstaff made up entirely of stunning young women in flowing white gowns, as slender and tall as runway models.
“Who knew Communists looked like that,” he said, shaking his head.
The contradiction between China’s official ideology and such conspicuous displays of wealth didn’t come up when I met with several hundred college students at a town hall that same day. The Chinese authorities, wary of my usual unscripted format, had handpicked the participants from some of Shanghai’s most elite universities—and although they were courteous and enthusiastic, their questions had little of the probing, irreverent quality that I was used to hearing from youth in other countries. (“So what measures will you take to deepen this close relationship between cities of the United States and China?” was about as tough as it got.) I couldn’t decide whether party officials had prescreened all the questions or the students just knew better than to say anything that could land them in hot water.
After shaking hands and chatting with some of the students at the end of the program, I concluded that at least some of their earnest patriotism wasn’t simply for show. They were too young to have experienced the horrors of the Cultural Revolution or witnessed the crackdown in Tiananmen Square; that history wasn’t taught in school, and I doubted their parents talked about it. If some of the students chafed against the way the government blocked their access to websites, they likely experienced the full weight of China’s repressive apparatus mainly as an abstraction, as remote from their personal experience as the U.S. criminal justice system might be to middle-class, suburban white kids back home. For the entirety of their lives, China’s system had lifted them and their families along an upward trajectory, while from a distance, at least, Western democracies seemed stuck in neutral, full of civic discord and economic inefficiency.
It was tempting to think that the attitudes of these students would change over time, either because a slowdown in China’s growth rate would thwart their material expectations or because, having reached a certain measure of economic security, they would start wanting those things the GDP couldn’t measure. But that was hardly guaranteed. In fact, China’s economic success had made its brand of authoritarian capitalism a plausible alternative to Western-style liberalism in the minds of young people not just in Shanghai but across the developing world. Which of those visions they ultimately embraced would help determine the geopolitics of the next century; and I left the town hall acutely aware that winning over this new generation depended on my ability to show that America’s democratic, rights-based, pluralistic system could still deliver on the promise of a better life.
Beijing wasn’t as flashy as Shanghai, though driving from the airport we passed what seemed like twenty straight miles of newly built high-rises, as if ten Manhattans had been erected overnight. Business districts and residential areas gave way to government buildings and imposing monuments once we reached the city’s core. As usual, my meeting with President Hu Jintao was a sleepy affair: Whatever the topic, he liked to read from thick stacks of prepared remarks, pausing every so often for translations to English that seemed to have been prepared in advance and, somehow, always lasted longer than his original statement. When it was my turn to speak, he’d shuffle through his papers, looking for whatever response his aides had prepared for him. Efforts to break the monotony with personal anecdotes or the occasional joke (“Give me the name of your contractor,” I told him after learning that the massive, columned Great Hall of the People had been built in less than a year) usually resulted in a blank stare, and I was tempted more than once to suggest that we could save each other time by just exchanging papers and reading them at our leisure.
Still, my time with Hu gave me the chance to put down a set of clear markers on U.S. priorities: managing the economic crisis and North Korea’s nuclear program; the need to peacefully resolve maritime disputes in the South China Sea; the treatment of Chinese dissidents; and our push for new sanctions against Iran. On the last item, I appealed to Chinese self-interest, warning that without meaningful diplomatic action, either we or the Israelis might be forced to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, with far worse consequences for Chinese oil supplies. As expected, Hu was noncommittal on sanctions, but judging by his shift in body language and the furious notetaking by his ministers, the seriousness of our message on Iran got his attention.
I took a similarly blunt approach on trade issues when I met the next day with Premier Wen Jiabao, who, despite the lesser title, served as China’s key economic decision maker. Unlike President Hu, Wen seemed comfortable exchanging views extemporaneously—and was straightforward in his defense of China’s trade policies. “You must understand, Mr. President, that despite what you see in Shanghai and Beijing, we’re still a developing country,” he said. “One-third of our population still lives in severe poverty…more people than in the entire United States. You can’t expect us to adopt the same policies that apply to a highly advanced economy like your own.”
He had a point: For all of his country’s remarkable progress, the average Chinese family—especially outside the major cities—still had a lower income than all but the very poorest of Americans. I tried to put myself in Wen’s shoes, having to integrate an economy that straddled the information age and feudalism while generating enough jobs to meet the demands of a population the size of North and South America combined. I would have sympathized more had I not
known that high-ranking Communist Party officials—including Wen—had a habit of steering state contracts and licenses to family members and siphoning billions into offshore accounts.
As it was, I told Wen that given the massive trade imbalances between our two countries, the United States could no longer overlook China’s currency manipulation and other unfair practices; either China started changing course or we’d have to take retaliatory measures. Hearing this, Wen tried a different tack, suggesting that I just give him a list of U.S. products we wanted China to buy more of and he’d see what he could do. (He was especially keen on including military and high-tech items that America barred from export to China for national security reasons.) I explained that we needed a structural solution, not piecemeal concessions, and in the back-and-forth between us, I felt like I was haggling over the price of chickens at a market stall rather than negotiating trade policy between the world’s two largest economies. I was reminded once again that for Wen and the rest of China’s leaders, foreign policy remained purely transactional. How much they gave and how much they got would depend not on abstract principles of international law but on their assessment of the other side’s power and leverage. Where they met no resistance, they’d keep on taking.
Our first day in Beijing ended with the obligatory state dinner, complete with a cultural program that included classic Chinese opera; a medley of performances by Tibetan, Uighur, and Mongolian dance troupes (the emcee helpfully noted that all minority groups were respected in China, which would have been news to thousands of Tibetan and Uighur political prisoners); and a rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You” by the People’s Liberation Army Orchestra in my honor. (“We know he’s your favorite,” President Hu leaned over to tell me.) After five days on the road with our clocks turned upside down, our entire crew was running on fumes; at the table next to ours, Larry Summers was fast asleep, his mouth open and his head lolling back, causing Favs to shoot out an email to the group: “It looks like SOMEONE’s in need of a second stimulus.”
Groggy but determined, everyone (including Larry) fought through their jet lag the next day to visit a nearby section of the Great Wall. The day was cold, the wind cutting, the sun a dim watermark on the gray sky, and no one said much as we trudged up the steep stone ramparts that snaked along the mountain’s spine. Sections of the Great Wall had been maintained since 200 B.C., our guide explained, although the portion where we were standing dated to the fifteenth century, an effort by the Ming dynasty to keep out Mongol and Manchu invaders. For hundreds of years, the wall had held. This prompted Reggie to ask me how the Ming dynasty finally ended.
“Internal strife,” I said. “Power struggles, corruption, peasants starving ’cause the rich got greedy or just didn’t care…”
“So, the usual,” Reggie said.
I nodded. “The usual.”
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THE PRESIDENCY CHANGES your time horizons. Rarely do your efforts bear fruit right away; the scale of most problems coming across your desk is too big for that, the factors at play too varied. You learn to measure progress in smaller steps—each of which may take months to accomplish, none of which merit much public notice—and to reconcile yourself to the knowledge that your ultimate goal, if ever achieved, may take a year or two or even a full term to realize.
Nowhere is this truer than in the conduct of foreign policy. So when, in the spring of 2010, we began to see results from some of our major diplomatic initiatives, I felt pretty encouraged. Tim Geithner reported that the Chinese had quietly started letting their currency appreciate. In April, I flew back to Prague, where Russian president Medvedev and I held a signing ceremony for the New START, which would cut the number of deployed nuclear warheads by a third on each side, with rigorous inspection mechanisms to ensure compliance.
And in June, with key votes from both Russia and China, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1929, imposing unprecedented new sanctions on Iran, including a ban on weapons sales, a suspension of new international financial activities by Iranian banks, and a broad mandate to bar any commerce that could help Iran expand its nuclear weapons program. It would take a couple of years for Iran to feel the full effects, but in combination with a new set of U.S. sanctions, we now had the tools we needed to bring Iran’s economy to a halt unless and until it agreed to negotiate. It also gave me a powerful rationale for counseling patience in conversations with Israelis and others who saw the nuclear issue as a handy excuse for a U.S.-Iran military confrontation.
Getting Russia and China on board had been a team effort. Hillary and Susan Rice spent countless hours cajoling, charming, and occasionally threatening their Russian and Chinese counterparts. McFaul, Burns, and Samore all provided critical strategic and technical support, helping us knock down or work around whatever objections the Russian and Chinese negotiators might present. And my relationship with Medvedev proved decisive in getting the sanctions finally in place. On the margins of each international summit I attended, he and I carved out time to work through logjams in the negotiations; as we got closer to the Security Council vote, it seemed as if we talked by phone once a week (“Our ears are getting sore,” he joked toward the end of one marathon session). Time and again, Medvedev ended up going further than either Burns or McFaul had thought possible, given Moscow’s long-standing ties to Iran and the millions that well-connected Russian arms manufacturers stood to lose once the new sanctions went into effect. On June 9, the day of the Security Council vote, Medvedev surprised us once again by announcing the cancellation of S-300 missiles sales to Iran, a reversal not only of his previous position but also of Putin’s. To offset some of Russia’s losses, we agreed to lift existing sanctions on several Russian firms that had previously sold arms to Iran; I also committed to speed up negotiations on Russia’s belated entry into the WTO. Still, by aligning with us on Iran, Medvedev showed himself willing to stake his presidency on a closer relationship with the United States—a promising sign for future collaboration on our other international priorities, I told Rahm, “so long as Putin doesn’t cut him off at the knees.”
The passage of sanctions, the signing of the New START, some movement by China on improving its trade practices: These didn’t qualify as world-changing victories. Certainly none of them merited a Nobel Prize—although had they happened eight or nine months earlier, I might have felt a little less sheepish about receiving the award. At most, these were building blocks, steps on a long and uncharted road. Could we create a nuclear-free future? Would we prevent another war in the Middle East? Was there a way to coexist peacefully with our most formidable rivals? None of us knew the answers—but for the moment, at least, it felt like we were on the path forward.
CHAPTER 21
AT DINNER ONE NIGHT, Malia asked me what I was going to do about tigers.
“What do you mean, sweetie?”
“Well, you know they’re my favorite animal, right?”
Years earlier, during our annual Christmas visit to Hawaii, my sister Maya had taken a then-four-year-old Malia to the Honolulu Zoo. It was a small but charming place, tucked into the corner of Kapi‘olani Park near Diamond Head. As a kid I’d spent hours there, climbing the banyan trees, feeding the pigeons that waddled through the grass, howling at the long-limbed gibbons high up in the bamboo rafters. Malia had been captivated by one of the tigers during the visit, and her auntie had bought her a small, stuffed version of the great cat at the gift shop. “Tiger” had fat paws, a round belly, and an inscrutable Mona Lisa smile, and he and Malia became inseparable—though by the time we got to the White House, his fur was a little worse for wear, having survived food spills, several near losses during sleepovers, multiple washings, and a brief kidnapping at the hands of a mischievous cousin.
I had a soft spot for Tiger.
“Well,” Malia continued, “I did a report about tigers for school, and they’re losin
g their habitat because people are cutting down the forests. And it’s getting worse, ’cause the planet’s getting warmer from pollution. Plus, people kill them and sell their fur and bones and stuff. So tigers are going extinct, which would be terrible. And since you’re the president, you should try to save them.”
Sasha chimed in, “You should do something, Daddy.”
I looked at Michelle, who shrugged. “You are the president,” she said.
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THE TRUTH IS, I was grateful that my young daughters weren’t shy about pointing out the responsibility of the adults around them to help preserve a healthy planet. Although I’ve lived all my life in cities, many of my best memories involve the outdoors. Some of this is just the product of my Hawaiian upbringing, where hikes through lush mountain forests or afternoons slicing through turquoise waves are a birthright, as easy as stepping out your front door—pleasures that cost nothing, belonged to no one, and were accessible to all. My time in Indonesia, running along terraced paddy fields as water buffalo glanced up with mud-covered snouts, had reinforced a love of open space; so did my travels in my twenties, a time when—thanks to a lack of attachments and a tolerance for cheap lodgings—I’d had the chance to trek through Appalachian trails, paddle a canoe down the Mississippi, and watch the sun rise over the Serengeti.