Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy: A Memoir

by Christopher R. Hill

  Within what were presumably narrow marching orders, Wu managed to keep things going, and my respect and affection for him grew with every passing week. Our bilateral sessions at the end of the day were packed with Chinese and U.S. staff who jammed into the room to watch our repertoire as we discussed the day’s events. I played the role of the exasperated and impatient American, he the calm elder Chinese whose wisdom was tempered by concerns that things might not actually work out.

  Once at the end of a particularly long and unproductive day I said to him: “Over the years I have traveled throughout South Korea, up and down. I noticed how many monuments there are for the foreign troops who came to their aid. There is a monument for Canadians, one for Turks, Greeks, British, Australians, New Zealanders, the list goes on. But I understand if one visits North Korea one can hardly find any such monument to the Chinese, what you called the people’s volunteer army. So my question, Mr. Chairman, is this: I know why they hate us. I know why they hate the Japanese. What I cannot understand is why they hate you.”

  I glanced around the room to find the Chinese aides purposefully writing in their notebooks, several of the younger ones nodding as if to agree with the premise of what I was saying. Wu, smoking heavily that night, said nothing, took a long drag from his cigarette, and offered me one. I took it as a gesture of friendship and let him light it for me. I knew he was not going to comment, much less answer my question, but I also knew that the Chinese–North Korean relationship was far more complex than often portrayed in the Western press. That relationship, forged in another era but now a burden for China and its international aspirations, goes to the heart of what China will become in the future. As the old motivational speaker line goes, you are who your friends are. China, surely, has to outgrow this friendship, and as I looked around that room, trying not to cough on Wu’s cigarette, I felt that most people there that night understood what was running through my mind.

  The complexity that is inherent in a four-thousand-year-old civilization of some 1.3 billion people cannot be underestimated, and I knew that the Six Party Talks would not change China. And even though the talks were such a dominant feature in my life, in the lives of all the negotiating teams, the policy makers back in the capitals, the journalists covering the events, I knew that just a block away from the Diaoyutai life went on exactly as it had before those talks and would after the talks. So much of what is said about this breathless country is so true yet so incomplete. The admonishments in Western newspaper editorials that usually focus on one issue—for example, human rights, or China’s bullying of smaller neighbors in the South China Sea—usually begin and conclude with the formulation that “China must do something about something.” It is as if the issue was a transaction gone wrong that can be righted with another transaction, guided by the sage advice of an editorial conceived and written thousands of miles away in a context that is in effect millions of miles away.

  There is something in China for everybody—those who want to live life in fear can find much to be concerned about there. Every comment by every Chinese security official is a treasure trove for those with such a disposition. But similarly, those who try to look out over the sweep of history, and anticipate what may lie ahead, can see a far more nuanced picture of what China’s rise could mean for itself and the world. And as that picture comes into better focus—as it does every day—we need to establish and maintain a cooperative relationship with the Chinese and understand that we cannot change them any more than they can change us. Building part of that relationship, and reinforcing some of those patterns of cooperation, is the best my generation can do. China’s relations with North Korea go to the heart of what China is in the contemporary world. The linkage is not just about a historic fact, the Korean War. It is far deeper and goes to the questions of this civilization’s relations with neighboring states, habits that were long learned and will take a long time to break.

  Traditionally, the Diaoyutai facility has been where foreign leaders (Nixon comes to mind) are housed during visits, and since the 1950s it has been a site for conferences and negotiations. Its high walls and the extensive security presence around its perimeter suggest that what happens at the Diaoyutai stays at the Diaoyutai.

  Our delegation would usually stay at the St. Regis Hotel, in the eastern part of Beijing, about a twenty-minute drive from the conference. Every morning I would start out from my hotel room, usually greeted by Ambassador Sandy Randt for a quick discussion before we headed down the elevator and out to the waiting cars and minivans. The press, mainly Korean and Japanese, would have set up a “stakeout” near the front entrance. My predecessor, Jim Kelly, used to walk past the gaggle of some thirty reporters with a brief wave on the assumption that anything said would be parsed in their own newspapers and often shredded in the unforgiving world of Washington’s press cycle.

  I found that just walking past them was uncomfortable, but more important, it was both unnecessary and a missed opportunity. Why not tell them what we planned to do that day? Much of what we were trying to accomplish was to demonstrate that we were doing what we can to address this issue through negotiation and through cooperation with regional allies and partners, and that we were open and prepared to work with others. I started answering their questions.

  “Hi, how are you? Well, I just got off the plane from Washington and I’ve got a huge team here from Washington. We are really looking forward to these negotiations. It’s going to take a little time. It’s going to take a lot of work. But we come here in a real spirit of trying to make some real progress. As Secretary Rice said when she was here a couple of weeks ago, we’re really going to roll up our sleeves and do the best we can to make sure we achieve some progress. It’s obviously a very important negotiation, something we’re very much committed to, and I look forward to meeting all the other delegations and to working with the members of my team and see what we can do. So, I will try to brief you all from time to time and keep you all informed. As for how long this is going to take, I have no idea. I did pack a few extra shirts. I suspect some of you may have done the same. So, thank you very much. Great to see you all.”

  “What will progress look like? What is the ticket to a success?”

  “Well, I don’t know. It’s tough to say at this point, except that we are going to work very hard and we are very committed to seeing if we can make some very serious progress here.”

  “What will progress look like? What can we expect?”

  “Well, you know I wouldn’t expect this to be the last set of negotiations. The negotiations have been in suspension really for over a year. So, we have to see where we go with these. We would like to make some measurable progress, progress that we can build on for a subsequent set of negotiations. But at this point it is hard to tell until we really sit down. The Six Party negotiations will get going sometime tomorrow night. So, thank you very much.”

  “So, what’s your plan for the next two days? Will you be meeting the North Korean delegation?”

  “Well, we will be doing a lot of consultations and begin the overall negotiations tomorrow night at some meetings. I think the foreign minister of China will get us all together tomorrow night. Then the plenary, I think, begins Tuesday morning. So we’ll be having consultations with all the parties. Thanks a lot.”

  And with that, press stakeouts began, a twice-a-day schedule, sometimes more if I happened to return to the hotel in the middle of the day. The effect was to develop relations with these mostly Japanese and South Korean press members, and to reverse the reputation of the United States in the region as a go-it-alone player, uninterested in the interests or the opinions of others.

  Meanwhile, back in Washington, I got word via Mike Green that the president wanted me to keep up the daily briefings and to be, in effect, my own spokesperson.

  Whether to be on the record or to transact in the Washington currency of “backgrounders” was really not a choice for me in Beijing. If I was going to be misquoted or some
how lost in translation, I much preferred that it be in the context of a public press conference rather than a backgrounder that would inevitably be traced to me anyway. Besides, even though there was far more self-discipline in making a public statement than in discussing sensitive issues over drinks with a reporter, in fact that which is classified is really a very small percentage of what one would have to say anyway. Certain basic rules apply: Avoid citing what the other side is saying in negotiation. They could simply deny it or say something even more difficult to live with after you have called them out on it. And don’t talk specifics and certainly don’t engage in speculation or hypothetical questions. Beyond that, there is much that can be discussed publicly without getting close to any inappropriate divulging of information.

  The press in the region and in the United States had a field day describing a new U.S. approach to dealing with the opinions of others. While some cynics explained it in terms of being overwhelmed by two simultaneous wars and the need to quiet down one area of the world (an observation not altogether inaccurate), others saw relief in a second term now dedicated to a new approach to problem solving.

  But within the extreme conservative camp in the administration, some neoconservatives, such as former Democrat Paul Wolfowitz and others, thought the United States should simply roll over and crush its critics. Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney were allies to that camp. Ultimately, neoconservatives and hard-line conservatives made common cause over their view that to negotiate with an adversary is an act of weakness and a failure of resolve. Worse yet, to make progress in such talks would be to violate the theory of the case that dictators will never give up weapons and therefore any progress must be shown to be illusory, or undermined.

  My instructions, a telegram sent to me at the start of the talks, were a case in point. The instructions essentially allowed for no leeway in achieving North Korea’s denuclearization, and included such gems as instructing me not to engage in any toasts at official functions that included North Koreans. I thought, and Secretary Rice agreed, that the image of the American negotiator sullenly sitting with hands folded while the other five delegations raised their glasses would not serve any useful purpose.

  My own view was that the negotiation was necessary if we were going to stop the plummeting of our reputation among friends and allies in the region, and that we needed to use the multilateral process to establish some patterns of cooperation. This was dismissed as diplomatic inside baseball with little relevance to the threats facing our country. Ironically, these views were a kind of mirror image of the North Korean one, to the effect that security, according to North Koreans and hard-line conservatives, must be 100 percent homegrown and can never rely on the efforts or attitudes of others.

  As the hot and humid days and weeks of July gave way to the even hotter and more humid days of August, it was clear that the process was moving, and that North Korea was under increasing pressure to join the other five countries. Every day I returned to the hotel praising the work of the Chinese in getting the conference to yes. It was praise that I honestly believed was warranted, but it was also to remind the Chinese that they were in the chair and bore the ultimate responsibility for success or failure.

  The North Koreans clearly began to feel the pressure to agree to disarm, and began instead to focus on their right to have a civil nuclear program. Needless to say, a country that had so grossly abused that right had no business expecting others to support them, but being North Korean is not to worry about what others think. With the Russians and Chinese very much supporting international structures, namely the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, the North Koreans received a surprising amount of sympathy for its “right” to have a civil nuclear program.

  Meanwhile, as much as I had support from Secretary Rice and from President Bush, it was clear that there was considerable unhappiness about going forward in a process that, in the eyes of the conservative wing of the Bush administration, was somehow legitimizing the North Koreans. Even on the team at the negotiation there was considerable mistrust at every stage. When the North Koreans invited my team to dinner, something I had avoided for the first two weeks but finally accepted in the third, I could get only a couple of the members to attend with me. When at one point Joe DeTrani and Jim Foster stayed behind at the talks for some side discussions with the North Koreans, other members on the delegation found out and had the bus return them to the site so they could join and make sure Joe and Jim were not somehow making concessions.

  As Holbrooke had done at Dayton, I tried to insist on seeing all written reports sent back to Washington, but emails from mobile devices and cell phones had evolved considerably in the intervening ten years since Dayton and even Rambouillet. Thus I suspect I saw only the reports sent through official telegram channels while the real messages were sent via email.

  The talks were grueling and tempers flared at times as fatigue took its toll on everyone. I had little flexibility on the North Korean insistence on receiving light water reactors as compensation for dismantling the weapons program, but this supposed stubbornness on my part simply masked the hypocrisy of other delegations who wanted to see the provision put in the agreement for the agreement’s sake, but had no intention of ever paying for such a project. China, in particular, was very focused on the bottom line for any assistance programs and had absolutely no intention of providing light water reactors. Nonetheless they thought nothing of pressuring me. At one point Wu threatened to take my supposed intransigence to the press. I responded with a line I had always wanted to use in a negotiation: “Make my day!” After a little pause for the interpreter to figure out what I was saying, Wu and I got back on track.

  Negotiations in the field are often double-tracked with discussions at the foreign minister level, and this one was no exception. Secretary Rice, taking advantage of the short overlap in working days between two parts of the world twelve time zones removed from each other, was frequently on the telephone with her counterparts, especially Korean foreign minister Ban Ki-moon, who helped Song and me keep the U.S.–South Korean position solid. Song and I often took long walks on the Diaoyutai grounds. At one point we looked up and realized that Korean reporters standing just outside the fence, without, we hoped, any lip readers, were filming our whole discussion.

  We thought there would be opportunities for some forms of recreation, but just as in Dayton, nobody wanted to run the risk of a press story back home suggesting we were having a great time. So we continued discussions and drafting sessions, and a lot of waiting around, deep into the night.

  Efforts to get off the Diaoyutai campus were rare, due mainly to the fact that the Japanese and South Korean journalists were prepared to follow us paparazzi-style, whether we went to a restaurant in the evening or did mundane chores like shopping for toothpaste and shaving cream. On one occasion, Edgar took me to a Chinese indoor market to buy some socks, among other things I needed. He would not let me buy anything at the sticker price and so began bargaining in his fluent Chinese while I nervously looked around to make sure there was no Japanese film crew capturing the event. Finally, with the merchant simply wanting to give away the socks for free, having been already sufficiently compensated by the opportunity to listen to Edgard’s Chinese, we ran out just as a South Korean television crew arrived at the front of the market on the busy city sidewalk, having found us. I nonetheless gave a brief interview:

  “Why are you here.”

  “I was shopping.”

  “What did you buy?”

  “Personal items.”

  “Will you meet the North Koreans?”

  “Not here. Sorry. I have to go. . . .”

  • • •

  September 19, 2005, came amid expectations that we had finally reached a deal. Washington had agreed to a formulation that skirted but did not slam the door on a light water reactor. We agreed “to discuss the subject of the provision of a light water reactor at an appropriate time.”

  I thought i
t was a judicious turn of phrase, apparently created by Steve Hadley, who, unlike the vice president and some others, was trying to support President Bush in making progress.

  But as we got ready for the announcement, Secretary Rice called me to say there was another problem.

  I sighed audibly as I took out my pen, the Joint Statement less than an hour from being announced to the world.

  “Chris, in the second paragraph of section two, could you take out the reference to North Korea and the United States living in ‘peaceful coexistence.’ Several of us don’t like it. It’s an old Cold War term.”

  Dreading the prospect of reopening the text with only minutes to go, I asked what the problem was substantively.

  “It’s a Cold War line. The Soviets used to use it all the time in our agreements. We need to take it out.”

  “Um, Madam Secretary, that line has been there in the text for weeks now. Uh, I’m standing here looking over at the main room, where television cameras are being set up right now. Do you have any thoughts on what we could put in its place?”

  “Doesn’t matter. You just need to take it out.” I suspected someone was pushing her on this and decided not to be my usual pain-in-the-neck self.

  “Well,” I said, thinking about the meaning of the phrase—hideous Cold War relic that it may be, “instead of peaceful coexistence, could I change it to ‘exist peacefully together’?”