by Glen Johnson
Knowing what President Duterte had said, and believing him capable of all the things he would go on to say, John Kerry approached him indirectly.
After photographs in a reception hall—where the secretary politely helped the rookie president figure out where to stand, when to shake hands for photographers, and how to introduce his delegation to their counterparts—the two went into an adjacent room for a luncheon with their staffs.
Kerry began not with his talking points but personal anecdotes. The goal was to speak not from a script but from his heart without sounding patronizing. It was a delicate act.
He talked about how an uncle, William Cameron Forbes, had served as governor-general of the Philippines during its period of American colonial rule. He had lived in Malacañang Palace itself and reproduced one of its distinguishing features—its rich mahogany paneling—in the house he later lived at in Milton, Massachusetts. The secretary said the woodwork he saw in Milton gave him an appreciation for Filipino hardwoods that lingered to that day.
Kerry then recalled how he had visited Malacañang numerous times to meet with President Ferdinand Marcos as the United States sought government changes during his twenty-one-year near-dictatorial reign over the nation from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s.
He noted the first congressional amendment he got passed as a senator made future aid to the Philippines contingent on political reforms, and how he’d returned to prevent fraud after President Marcos responded by calling snap elections to extend his presidency.
“So, there is a real connection here,” the secretary said to the new president.100
As the conversation continued, we were served a tanigue fish starter, a clam soup, an entree of beef tenderloin, and coconut panna cotta for dessert. Waiters refilled the wineglasses and water glasses as the meal progressed.
President Duterte was solicitous of the United States and committed to the alliance, saying at one point, “We are safe with you; you are safe with us.”101
At other points, though, he displayed the bravado for which he was famed. He said if an ISIS member wants to die in the name of God, “give it to him. He’s not a martyr until he dies.” He said there should be no negotiating with terrorists but also no need to behead them, as they’d done to Americans held in the Middle East, or to tourists and Filipinos by rebels in the Philippines.
“One bullet is enough,” the president explained.
Only after President Duterte himself brought up the subject of extrajudicial killings did Kerry deliver his message on the topic. It had been atop his talking points, but he reserved it for his parting comment.
Again, though, the secretary tried to do so in a homespun way. He recalled that while he served as a prosecutor in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, he had led an effort to dismantle the notorious Winter Hill Gang in Somerville. Instead of going in with guns blazing, the DA’s office used a legal means, charging gang leader Howie Winter with violating a ban on pinball machines. They’d generated huge sums of cash for his gang.
This approach punished the gang in a legal way the public could support, while retaining respect for the law enforcement community.
Looking across the table at President Duterte, Kerry said that “prosecutor to prosecutor,” there was great fulfillment in trying a case before a jury.102
President Duterte would go on months later to make his disparaging comments about President Obama; but on that day in late July, the secretary of State emerged from his meeting with the new leader having avoided fireworks—but with his message delivered.
I had the chance several times to witness another facet of bilateral engagement: the times when Kerry was not the principal but sitting second chair to President Obama.
It could be disorienting to walk into a meeting room and find the secretary not at the center of the table but sitting one chair to the left or right while the president was the focal point.
On such occasions, principal became staffer and Kerry had to sit quietly while President Obama led the discussion. He waited in case he was called upon to answer a question or reinforce a point.
Otherwise, he sat silently and watched as the president personally conducted the nation’s diplomacy.
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THE SECRETARY’S VISIT TO the Philippines was part of the Obama administration’s pivot to asia.
The aim was not to abandon traditional alliances in Europe and the West but to acknowledge our own country’s history as a Pacific power. There also was exponential growth and development under way in all corners of the Far East, accelerating its global emergence.
President Obama explained his thinking in November 2011, when he outlined the strategic shift while addressing the Australian Parliament in the capital of Canberra:
As the world’s fastest-growing region—and home to more than half the global economy—the Asia Pacific is critical to achieving my highest priority, and that’s creating jobs and opportunity for the American people. . . . The United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future, by upholding core principles and in close partnership with our allies and friends.103
This commitment helped shape Kerry’s travel itinerary and led to recurring visits to the region.
The first came early in 2013, when the secretary visited Korea, China, and Japan at the end of our first trip around the world. It was important to see leaders in all three during the same trip, or at least not to miss Korea if we stopped in Japan, or vice versa. This was to avoid a slight based on their shared history.
Japan defeated China in the late-nineteenth-century fight for control over the Korean Peninsula. It then invaded China before surrendering control in 1945. Many Koreans harbor disdain for the Japanese to this day over its soldiers’ sexual abuse of “comfort women” within the peninsula during World War II.
This dark past created a wariness of the United States favoring one over another, a fear especially acute in Japan and the Republic of Korea, known colloquially as South Korea.
That meant if you had a meeting, news conference, and dinner with the foreign minister in Japan, you’d better schedule the same things when you popped over to the ROK.
Our dealings with China, ironically, often focused on North Korea, not South Korea. No matter how many items there were on the bilateral agenda, a meeting between the United States and China always included a conversation about the hermit kingdom run by the Kim family and deceptively called the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”
North Korea continued to develop nuclear weapons through successive US administrations, despite attempts at negotiations to stop the program and the imposition of economic sanctions when it failed to do so.
A vow to prevent the DPRK from gaining nuclear weapons proved toothless when the country tested its first atomic bomb in 2006. The United States continued to insist North Korea denuclearize, but it shifted from preventing it from getting a nuclear weapon to stopping it from developing missile technology to deliver a nuclear warhead. When the DPRK subsequently gained that capacity, the line shifted again to preventing North Korea from developing a missile capable of reaching the United States. Once it achieved that ability, the final redline for avoiding US military action was preventing the DPRK from miniaturizing a nuclear warhead to ride on an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.
President Obama warned President-elect Donald Trump this would be his number one challenge upon assuming office, and it became a flashpoint before the new president had completed six months in office when Kim continued nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches. President Trump responded by threatening “fire and fury” against a rival he labeled “Little Rocket Man.” Tensions subsided after the two held a summit in Singapore in June 2018.
President Obama, President Trump, their predecessors, and Secretary Kerry all viewed China as crucial to stopping this chain of events.
“(China) has the greatest amount of commerce with North Korea, the greatest intersection in banking of all o
f the finances of North Korea, the greatest intersection of trade, of their fuel—all the things they really need go through China,” Kerry told CBS News during its September 2016 exit interview.104
He’d argue in a variety of venues that China risked what it most feared—an increased US military presence on its doorstep—if it didn’t stop North Korea from taking actions that left the United States with no other option.
THAAD antimissile batteries and aircraft carriers didn’t need to be around the Korean Peninsula, the secretary explained, if there wasn’t a chance the North would take a shot at the United States or a regional ally like Japan.
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THE DIFFICULTY IN MAKING this case was that China erected an almost-impenetrable facade when it came to bilateral negotiations.
First, there was the scripted nature of the meetings themselves. Everything was haggled over and then there was no yielding by the Chinese once a plan was set.
The Chinese didn’t share the US delegation’s respect for its traveling press corps, so they’d become incensed if an American reporter tried to ask unscripted questions of a Chinese official. They’d also herd reporters out of a room at the end of a camera spray by raising a gold-and-red braided rope and pulling those inside the lasso out of the door.
Once each delegation was at the table, President Xi Jinping or Foreign Minister Wang Yi would sound clichéd as they explained issues could best be resolved with “win-win” solutions. Success could be achieved only through “mutual respect,” the leaders would add, or with an all-encompassing “respect for our nation’s history.”105
The latter was used to justify everything from China’s longtime insistence that the breakaway island of Taiwan remain part of its sovereign territory, to its work during Secretary Kerry’s term to convert shoals in the South China Sea into reclaimed islands. Those man-made islands supported Chinese military airfields and ports designed for navy ships, far from the mainland and China’s internationally recognized territorial waters.
Such willful ignorance underscored for me the challenge in dealing with Communist or authoritarian leaders, including those in Russia and China.
Unlike the United States, these countries don’t have a truly independent media, so their leaders don’t often face legitimate reporters or a public that hasn’t been subjected to a state-sponsored television view of world events.
This allows them to distort reality with a straight face—and without consequence.
In an effort to keep open the lines of communication, Chinese officials would visit Washington or US officials would travel to Beijing each year for a sweeping Security and Economic Dialogue. These meetings were aimed at addressing both national security and economic issues between the two countries.
During a June 2016 visit to Washington, Chinese officials touted the achievements born from the dialogues during the Obama administration—before lapsing into language typical of these encounters.
“On some issues, perhaps, consensus still eludes us. However, talking to each other could help pave the way to finding a solution, or at least help keep our differences under control,” Foreign Minister Wang said. “Talking to each other does not create win-win all the time, but both sides will lose in a case of confrontation. Our dialogue mechanism may not be perfect, but it is an indispensable platform for the two countries to increase mutual trust, deepen cooperation, and manage differences.”106
After that meeting, Secretary Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew attended a news conference with US and Chinese reporters.
Their Chinese counterparts skipped it.
During a working lunch in Beijing six months earlier, Secretary Kerry had tried to confront Foreign Minister Wang about North Korea in general and the South China Sea in particular.
He said there was fresh and unimpeachable evidence proving that the Chinese were installing artillery pieces on four islands. That could force the United States to beef up its own military presence in Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the Philippines, and to work out a new military arrangement with Vietnam.
The secretary noted neither side wanted that, so the Chinese needed to stop with the work.
Foreign Minister Wang replied that some of the islands had been militarized by prior occupiers. He said the weapons on them were defensive, not offensive. He branded the landscaping “China’s reclamation” in one breath and then in another challenged the secretary’s assertion the islands had been nothing more than “rocks under the sea” before the work. That claim, the foreign minister declared, “needs more scientific study.”107
Nonetheless, he said the construction reflected China’s needs in the area, and its size and might as a nation.
The two were scheduled to meet reporters after the lunch, and Chinese officials wanted to issue a joint statement, glossing over much of the maritime conversation—sure to be a focal point for US reporters traveling with Kerry.
The secretary knew he couldn’t let that happen, so he and the foreign minister had an elliptical series of conversations about how to make the language more palatable for both sides.
When Kerry offered one sentence, Wang replied, “Mr. Secretary, you’re putting words in my mouth.” The secretary replied, “I’m not; I’m trying to make you accept words that you said.”108
Another time, the foreign minister begged off a change, saying any significant alterations had to be approved by his superiors.
The haggling continued until Wang abruptly declared, “Mr. Secretary, we’re out of time.”109
During the ensuing news conference, the Chinese moderator declared: “Each journalist, please limit yourself to one question only. First, an American journalist to Secretary Kerry.”110
Secretary Kerry and his chief of staff, Jon Finer, were a pair of Ivy Leaguers who could match brainpower over any foreign policy issue.
Once, though, they got in a heated debate in the Beijing Marriott about how to best get the product flowing from a bottle of Heinz Tomato Ketchup.
This was no idle issue for the secretary, because the late husband of his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, had been Senator John Heinz—a descendant of company founder H. J. Heinz.
“Tell Heinz to get their shit together,” the secretary said to no one in particular while he banged fruitlessly on the bottle as we briefed him over breakfast.
“Hit the ‘Heinz 57’ on the side,” said Finer.
“That’s bullshit,” replied Kerry, thinking the recommendation was an old wives’ tale. But when he did, the ketchup began to pour.
A vindicated Finer said, “See, it works.”
“Shut up, Finer,” replied our country’s leading diplomat.
(Top) Mural of the Forbidden City inside the Great Hall of the People. (Middle) On the Great Wall with Treasury Secretary Lew. (Bottom) The secretary’s limousine in Beijing.
The American reporter ignored the statement and asked a three-part question: What did the United States want from China on North Korea? Was China trying to militarize the South China Sea? To Wang, why was China unwilling to more forcefully punish North Korea?
Kerry answered the two questions asked of him, but when it came time for Wang to address the question he was asked, the moderator interrupted and said, “I hope we can all abide by rules. Of course, I respect your intention to raise more than one question. Next question, Xinhua News Agency.”111
As the US reporters contemplated the dismissal, a reporter from the official press agency of the People’s Republic of China stepped into the void and addressed Wang.
“China and the United States are two major countries. What is the significance and effect of an enhanced level of strategic cooperation between China and the United States?” the reporter said.112
The softball prompted audible groans from the US side of the audience, apparently noticeable to even the foreign minister.
He replied: “Well, this is a very good question, but I guess many of your colleagues are not interested in this question. They feel this h
as little to do with them. But let me say this question has a lot to do with the welfare of the Chinese and American peoples. And to satisfy you, I will make a couple of more points on South China Sea and the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula as well.”113
Wang went on to explain that China would abide by all of the commitments related to North Korea that it had made at the United Nations, but it was even more important for both sides to get back to the negotiating table to try to resolve their differences.
Turning to the South China Sea, the foreign minister offered the same debatable argument he’d made privately to Secretary Kerry:
China has given a commitment of not engaging in so-called militarization, and we will honor that commitment. And we cannot accept the allegation that China’s words are not being matched by actions. . . . On the islands and the reefs stationed by China, we have built up quite a few civilian installations and facilities that are able to provide public service. In addition to that, there are some necessary facilities for self-defense, but the international law has given all sovereign countries the right of self-protection and self-defense. And if one equates such a right to militarization, then the South China Sea has been militarized long ago, and mind you, China was not the first party that started the militarization.114
After the news conference, I caught up with a member of our delegation who was experienced in dealing with the Chinese.
I asked how he thought the lunch and news conference went, given the officials’ intransigence when Kerry confronted them about their South China Sea policy.
A master of the analogy, our delegation member likened it to the delicate task of recovering a hostage.
“I think we drove a truck through the plate-glass window,” he said.
After a pause, he added: “Whether SEAL Team 6 can make it up to the second floor remains to be seen.”115
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FOR ALL THE GEAR-GRINDING, the United States and China had a largely cooperative relationship on two big issues: the Iranian nuclear negotiations and a series of efforts that helped produce the Paris climate change agreement.
