Window Seat on the World

by Glen Johnson

  During Secretary Kerry’s first visit to China in April 2013, he met first with Foreign Minister Wang and then was granted the courtesy of a meeting with President Xi in the Great Hall of the People.

  The massive building—constructed in just ten months—sits in the center of Beijing, next to Tiananmen Square and across the street from the Forbidden City.116 The entrance to the City is famously adorned with a giant portrait of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the founding father of the People’s Republic of China.

  Following his conversation with President Xi and a walk down the front steps of the GHOP, the secretary drove to a side entrance for the Forbidden City. He pulled up in front of a pagoda and went inside to meet with the country’s number two official, Premier Li Kiqiang.

  While such high-level meetings were customary for a new US diplomat, Kerry was especially eager for this during his first trip. He wanted to ask Chinese leaders directly if they’d work with the United States to guarantee a successful outcome for the Paris climate meeting two years hence.

  A similar UN-sponsored Conference of the Parties in 2009 in Copenhagen had been branded a failure after attendees didn’t set binding limits on carbon emissions. The most they could agree on was a nonbinding statement, without target amounts.117

  Kerry, who’d been an environmental activist since the 1970s, didn’t want the same thing to happen in Paris, so he devised a plan before setting off for Beijing. His idea was to have the United States and China announce voluntary caps a year before the Paris meeting, then use the ensuing time to encourage other nations to volunteer their own emissions caps.

  The Chinese economy is primarily fueled on high-carbon electricity sources such as coal, and the exhaust from these plants creates dense smog that chokes the local population and greenhouse gases affecting the global environment.

  In February 2014, I snapped a photo of our plane on the tarmac at Beijing’s Capital International Airport, looking as if it were shrouded in fog.

  In reality, it was nearly invisible at high noon because of a blanket of smog. After we took off, the sun shone brilliantly above the haze.

  Chinese leaders often had to resort to shutting down factories to the west of Beijing if they wanted visitors downwind to enjoy clear skies. They did so for the 2008 Summer Olympics, as well as our visit to the capital in 2015 for the annual Security and Economic Dialogue meeting.

  While the Chinese people are wary of retribution for protesting their leaders, the popular groundswell over pollution prompted government officials to consider ways to clear up the environment.

  To push for the secretary’s vision, our staff organized an energy and environmental trade fair on April 13, 2013, after the meetings with President Xi and Foreign Minister Wang. The Chinese sent State Councilor Yang Jiechi, whose portfolio included the climate change negotiations, and who the secretary would later host at one of his Hometown Diplomacy events in Boston.

  We took his attendance as a sign of respect for the secretary’s initiative.

  Yang toured the exhibits with Kerry, then sat in the front row as Kerry delivered a speech about the need for US-China leadership on climate change.

  “My friends, why is this so important?” the secretary said. “China and the United States represent the world’s two biggest economies, we represent the world’s two largest consumers of energy, and we represent the two largest emitters of global greenhouse gases. So, if any two nations come to this table with an imperative for action, it is us.”118

  About eighteen months later, in November 2014, Secretary Kerry joined President Obama back in the Great Hall of the People for a meeting with President Xi.

  The two sides agreed on new carbon emission reduction targets for the United States, and a first-of-its-kind commitment by China to stop its emissions from growing by 2030.

  Both felt it was the necessary prelude for a successful Paris meeting in December 2015.

  “A climate deal between China and the United States, the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 carbon polluters, is viewed as essential to concluding a new global accord,” The New York Times would report. “Unless Beijing and Washington can resolve their differences, climate experts say, few other countries will agree to mandatory cuts in emissions, and any meaningful worldwide pact will be likely to founder.”119

  China followed up by working alongside the United States to pass the Paris agreement in 2015. And during a September 2016 visit to China for a G-20 Summit in Hangzhou, President Obama announced the United States and China would both ratify the agreement.

  “Where there is a will and there is a vision, and where countries like China and the United States are prepared to show leadership and to lead by example, it is possible for us to create a world that is more secure, more prosperous and more free than the one that was left for us,” President Obama said.120

  President Xi said China would “unwaveringly pursue sustainable development”; and Xi added, “Our response to climate change bears on the future of our people and the well-being of mankind.”121

  Through a series of bilateral engagements, China proved to be an invaluable partner as Secretary Kerry and the United States pushed to make climate change a world priority.

  It would prove to be similarly helpful in the multilateral negotiations for Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program.

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  IF THERE’S A BALLET to the bilat, the multilat is more of a line dance.

  Numerous parties converge on a single location, where they move in an orchestrated fashion. Almost always, it concludes with a group spectacle.

  It’s the dreaded “family photo”—a picture of all the participants together. The foreign ministers typically assemble in a holding room, then march out in unison and climb on risers for a group photograph by the assembled media.

  The particular spot where each minister stands can be based on a number of factors, but the United States is often positioned in the center—usually in the front row, too—and almost always next to the meeting host.

  During the years Secretary Kerry took part in family photos, he and his counterparts would usually chat and stand uncomfortably for a few moments before someone inevitably made a wisecrack about the noise from the clicking camera shutters. That would trigger canned laughter and serve as the cue for everyone to disperse and resume their own schedule.

  Amid the Pivot to Asia, we spent time twice each year attending meetings of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations, or ASEAN.

  The members of this group took these meetings seriously, especially their twist on the family photo: the “ASEAN-Way” handshake.

  The organizers would arrange a normal family photo, but before letting everyone go their separate ways, the host would ask the ministers to do one more thing: cross their arms and join hands with the person on either side of them.

  Leaders ended up standing in a human chain with their arms crossed. It was as if a kindergartner had cut up a folded piece of construction paper and fanned out a string of interconnected figurines across the stage.

  I honestly think the ASEAN-Way handshake photo was the highlight for some of those attending these regional meetings. They cheered when the photographers finished their pictures.

  This twist tripped up President Trump when he attended his first ASEAN meeting in November 2017. He grimaced as he struggled to cross his arms and grab hands with his host, Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, and the person on the other side of him, Vietnamese prime minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.122

  Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, standing on the other side of Prime Minister Nguyen, didn’t even bother crossing his arms. He simply extended his right hand to the person to his right, his left hand to the person on his left.

  He had only so much patience for such theatrics.

  In most multilateral situations, the attendees would try to take advantage of the group gathering to hold side meetings of various organizations.

  So, while all diplomats might attend a plenary session o
f an ASEAN meeting, a faction of them might also break off and convene a meeting of the Lower Mekong Initiative. They might even meet as a sub-subgroup of that, convening a session of the Friends of the Lower Mekong Initiative.

  This reshuffling might be almost indecipherable if not for another hallmark of ASEAN meetings: enormous backdrops that label the group assembled. In July 2013 in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, I took a photograph of Secretary Kerry standing in front of one such banner. It read, “Press Conference, 46th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, Post-Ministerial Conferences, 20th ASEAN Regional Forum, and 3rd East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers’ Meeting.” It read like a flow chart, running from the full meeting to the regional meeting to the subregional meeting.

  The final unique facet of ASEAN meetings was their gala group dinners. They typically were held in a massive convention center, with a long table for the guests of honor and smaller tables around it for other invitees and staff. There’d also be a stage for elaborate song-and-dance shows highlighting the host country’s culture and entertainment stars.

  The trappings hinted at how important these dinners were for the hosts, making it imperative that John Kerry adhere to another of their traditions: wearing a shirt indigenous to the host country or region.

  In China, these could be Mandarin shirts. In Thailand, the shirts would be made of silk. In Southeast Asian nations such as Indonesia, everyone would dress up in a batik shirt.

  It was always a production to ensure Kerry had a shirt that both fit the occasion and fit him.

  At six-foot-four and with long arms, it wasn’t always a sure thing.

  We’d send off his measurements in advance, have the shirt delivered upon arrival to ensure it fit, and then carry it in a garment bag to the convention hall so he could slip into a side room to put it on before the dinner.

  He’d typically emerge to much fanfare and peals of staff laughter, once sashaying as if walking on a runway, another time doing a little dance-step jig.

  I memorialized each occasion by taking a “silly-shirt” photo of the secretary with the succession of Navy admirals who accompanied us on our trips for the Joint Chiefs. They’d sport big grins as Kerry stood in his special shirt and Admirals Harry Harris, Kurt Tidd, or Frank Pandolfe wore their dress uniforms.

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  WE DIDN’T JUST ATTEND multilats in Asia.

  The most famous series of them occurred across Europe, during the Iran nuclear negotiations.

  The secretary usually began a multilateral visit by paying a courtesy call on the people hosting the meeting, whether it be the foreign minister of Switzerland or Austria, the president of the European Union, or the United Nations secretary-general.

  When he got to the multilat itself, he might join in a family photo or more informal camera spray with a scrum of photographers from each of the participating countries. Then he’d get down to business with the meeting participants.

  Because so many people were in one place, each country was limited in the number of people it could have in the meeting room itself. Typically, a foreign minister and his deputy would be seated at the meeting table, with two or three of the most important or relevant staffers in chairs directly behind them.

  Those not making the cut might be ticketed for a listening room, where audio and/or video of the meeting was broadcast for staff who needed to hear the conversation in real time but couldn’t be in the actual meeting.

  The rest of us would wait in what were known as hold rooms.

  As a reporter for nearly three decades, I prided myself on my work ethic. I put in long days, worked nights and weekends routinely, and never went anywhere without my workbag. It was always packed with a laptop, all the cables and hardware I needed to file a story, plus my passport. There was never any impediment to me traveling anytime, anywhere, for whatever story might arise.

  For those reasons, it was a huge adjustment when I became a government staffer and had to learn how to waste the prodigious amounts of idle time we spent waiting for the secretary to emerge from his meetings.

  One colleague, speechwriter Andrew Imbrie, did the smart thing: he read virtually every minute he wasn’t busy drafting the secretary’s next set of remarks. Over four years, he could have earned a master’s in literature, but he did it one better: he finished off his PhD.

  Others had an innate ability to fall asleep no matter the time or place. In truth, sleep often came easy to the jet-lagged.

  I’d often spend most of the time editing and filing the photos I just snapped, using my journalism training to speed this chronicle of the secretary’s activities back to the State Department. The staff there would post the images on various social media platforms.

  Nonetheless, there were still many hours when I’d be left staring at my shoes. I felt I didn’t have the solitude or clear conscience to read, since my duties as traveling photographer meant I always had to be ready for a parting photo. Since no one was ever sure when a meeting would end, I was never sure when I’d get the call.

  If I didn’t look down at my shoes, often I’d look up at what my colleague Steve Krupin and I came to affectionately call “Ridiculous Hold Rooms.”

  I underwent my State Department indoctrination with Krupin, who’d worked for President Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012 before coming over to Foggy Bottom to be John Kerry’s original chief speechwriter. We met at the Harry S Truman Building in late January 2013, when we both arrived for our security briefing prior to our swearing-in.

  The Diplomatic Security Service had a briefer who was right out of a James Bond movie, referred to by the first initial of his first name, followed by his full last name.

  “H. Wallen” spent several hours running over the procedures used at State and the mandatory training we were to receive before he made us sign a series of forms acknowledging our need to keep state secrets and the federal penalties we faced if we broke our agreements.

  When Krupin and I walked out of Main State afterward, we looked at each other silently for a moment before simultaneously saying, “Holy shit.”

  The gravity of what we were about to begin hit us at that moment.

  We came up with the term “Ridiculous Hold Rooms” not long after the first day of business during our first trip abroad, when we accompanied Secretary Kerry to No. 10 Downing Street in London so he could meet with British prime minister David Cameron.

  We first walked through the iconic glossy black door on the front of No. 10, the home and office of the United Kingdom’s leader. Then we were asked to wait in a second-floor library, which we were told was Margaret Thatcher’s favorite room while she served as “PM.”

  That was evident when we looked up and saw the Iron Lady’s formal government portrait hanging over the fireplace.

  It was February 25, 2013, and we were not even a month into our new jobs. The house staff served us warm pastries and tea in china emblazoned with the crest of Queen Elizabeth II. The caged bookcases ringing the room contained volumes of Burke’s Peerage and a collection of books entitled Parliamentary Debates: Commons.

  When we looked out the window, we saw the prime minister’s private backyard, outfitted with his children’s swing set. And just outside the hold room’s door was No. 10’s bright yellow winding staircase, lined with signed black-and-white photos of prime ministers, including Winston Churchill.

  Krupin and I looked at each other and could only laugh in disbelief at our good fortune.

  During ensuing stops in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, we looked around—jaws agape—while waiting in rooms with elaborate marble floors, forty-foot ceilings, and gold leaf furniture.

  They were, quite simply, ridiculous. Thus, their label.

  As we waited in one or another Ridiculous Hold Room, the secretary would be at work in a meeting room. In multilateral gatherings, efficiency was not always the norm.

  The host or Kerry would often make opening remarks, and then others at the table would join in the co
nversation. That meant patiently going from person to person, so everyone could have their say.

  While everyone was supposed to adhere to a time limit, it was rarely enforced. And if the topic of conversation was particularly sensitive, everyone might get a second chance to speak.

  The challenge for the multilat was to build consensus, so all the talking actually produced a resolution.

  The secretary was this consensus builder not only during the Iran nuclear negotiations but also during his multiparty talks in Afghanistan. He also was as he built a sixty-plus nation counter-ISIS coalition, and multinational support for the Paris climate change and Kigali HFC agreements. In addition, he had the vision to tap and work with Special Envoy Bernard Aronson to broker a long-awaited peace settlement between the Colombian government and the country’s notoriously fractious FARC rebel group.

  John Kerry was often indispensable—a label a prominent foreign minister once attached to him—because he had the patience to let myriad people vent their frustrations and the prestige to coax them, sometimes one by one, into an agreement.

  Bilaterally or multilaterally, he was the linchpin to US diplomatic engagement for four years.

  5

  ISRAEL

  ONE OF THE MOST common questions people asked about my four years working for the State Department was “How many frequent-flier miles did you earn?”

  Zero.

  While I worked for the most-traveled secretary in history and racked up about 1.35 million miles myself flying with him, all were on government aircraft.

  The US Air Force doesn’t award miles or have a frequent-flier program. If it did, I’d have been a Titanium member.

  The rare chance to earn miles came when I flew home from overseas on a commercial airline. That happened a handful of times when my father was sick or when I wanted to attend a family event.