Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy: A Memoir (26 page)

“That seems a little phony,” he replied. “Don’t you think so?”

“Well, yes, sir. I guess you have a point.”

He returned to the hotel.

• • •

The September 11 attacks took place at 3
P.M.
European time, and by 4
P.M.
the front of the embassy along Ujazdowskie Street began to be lit up by candles placed there by passersby. By late in the evening, crowds, many carrying candles and flowers, stood in front of the embassy, maintaining a vigil as the police closed two lanes of traffic of the four-lane road to allow enough room for the displays. The next morning I went out to thank them for their support. I was mobbed as people held up their private photos of New York City and held my hand as if to provide personal support to the country that had for so long symbolized their hopes and dreams. Huge crowds remained in front of the embassy for days, replacing flowers and relighting candles. Polish churches held mass after mass. Some countries are known for weddings, but Poles know how to do funerals as well.

The Polish government immediately offered to send blood to New York and anything else we might need. A few weeks later, the Polish defense minister, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, called me to his office and offered to send Polish forces for the expected attack on Afghanistan, complaining ever so slightly that he couldn’t get much attention from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Sending troops to a place like Afghanistan would be a major commitment by Poland, he told me, as if to help me try to raise some interest by the secretary of defense.

In the coming year, as the United States got ready for Iraq, Poland continued to be supportive, even as public interest in war began to wane. I worried about what invading Iraq would lead to. I believed the reports about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, but I could not see the link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, nor could anyone who understood the region.

Wolfowitz’s visit to Warsaw and focus on missile defense, as if to try to reverse what he felt were the lethargic policies of the Clinton administration toward defense of the homeland, highlighted the growing divide in Washington. As he dismissed the Polish interest in F-16s and the next-generation Joint Strike Fighter as not “transformational,” that is, as fighting the last war rather than the next (even though the real Polish interest was very much on the next set of challenges, that is, maintaining the U.S. in Europe), I could not help but think that new policy wonks in charge were more interested in repudiating the activities of their predecessors than in focusing on future threats. And even when the future threats came, in Afghanistan and Iraq, these issues too seemed more in the context of settling old scores, and in this case not just scores with Clinton as with the first Bush administration.

The run-up in 2002 to the Iraq War had me and every U.S. ambassador around the globe making the case for the undertaking. I spoke on Polish television, radio, in newspaper interviews, to international affairs groups, everywhere about the dangers of inaction. Even during the country’s years in communist captivity, Poles were world travelers with opinions about every region of the globe. While they did not dispute the concern about Iraq’s WMD, they were less convinced about our plans to replace the Saddam regime with a democracy. “You will win the war,” one journalist said to me. “But then what? That is what I worry about.” The tone was generally supportive, unlike the mood in Western Europe. And again, as in Afghanistan, Poland offered troops.

When the request came to train Free Iraqi Forces (FIF) in Poland, Polish officials were skeptical. “Where did you say you found these people?” Marek Siwiec, President Kwasniewski’s national security advisor, asked me, somewhat incredulous of the entire endeavor. But the Poles, in the interest of their relationship with the United States, pulled together a plan and a place for the training. Ultimately, the decision was made to train the FIF elsewhere.

Visitors from Washington were impressed by the Polish élan during
the preparations for war in Iraq, but in fact the Poles were interested not because they thought it was a good idea, but because they wanted to show the United States that it had good allies in Europe. “We are doing this for our relationship with you, not out of any belief that Iraq is necessarily the right thing to do.” Indeed, when President Kwasniewski visited the White House in the winter of 2003, just weeks before the invasion, his questions to the president were full of skepticism. “How will you manage the people’s needs after you take over the government?” he asked. “Food supplies? Medicine? The schools, the hospitals?”

When the invasion began, Poles joined Australian, British, and American troops in the first assaults on Saddam’s forces. Polish commandos in rubber rafts attacked offshore oil facilities to prevent Saddam from blowing them up, as he had in the Persian Gulf War twelve years earlier. A day later, the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Richard Myers, called to ask if the Poles would allow him to describe the actions of their troops on that first day, but when I checked with the Polish ministry they asked that I not do so, given the shakiness of public opinion throughout Europe. The next day, however, every Polish newspaper ran the story, with photographs of Polish commandos and U.S. Special Forces standing in group portraits, both countries’ flags fluttering behind them.

I departed Poland in July 2004 for my next assignment, South Korea. Nestled between Japan and China, Korea had a historical experience not entirely dissimilar to that of Poland. It was an easier transfer to make than one would think. After only a few weeks in Washington I arrived in Seoul in August against a backdrop of a deteriorating relationship between a right-leaning U.S. administration and a left-leaning Korean administration. I set to work making sure that our public messaging emphasized the need to modernize the relationship and set it on a positive footing for the next fifty years. We needed much more “public diplomacy” than had been practiced in the past. Greater public diplomacy became the cure for why the popularity of the United States had fallen so precipitously during the time after the Iraq invasion. Even though it was the policy that needed
improvement, there was no question that our diplomats needed to do a better job of explaining and reaching out to nontraditional audiences.

Defining a new relationship required a lot of listening, which was not a problem because getting to know Koreans is to learn how expressive they can be. Younger Koreans were particularly skeptical of the special relationship with the United States because it represented something from the past rather than the future. For starters, I asked a group of online editors what they thought about the embassy website. There was a brief silence before one finally spoke up in as diplomatic a way as she could muster:

“It is not good.” The other eight guests giggled at the understatement.

“How can we improve it?” I asked.

“Make a new one,” someone else answered, politely but earnestly (but also eliciting nervous giggling). I realized we were now going to have a good time bashing the embassy website.

“What if we added an interactive feature?”

“That would help,” still another editor answered. I turned to Don Washington, our press and culture counselor, and asked him if we could do it.

“We looked into it, but because of security concerns that cost could be enormous, maybe thousands of dollars,” Don said.

Still another editor spoke up, “I could do it for five dollars. But for you, no charge!” The table roared with laughter. These young Koreans had become totally at ease sitting at a small round table at the home of the U.S. ambassador. What a fabulous assignment I had stepped into.

We fixed the website and it turned out to be easy. Our Internet guru in the embassy, a young Korean employee named Ahn Chanmo, came up with the idea to have a link to the Korean portal, Daum. We called it “Café USA.” About a week later Ahn and Jason Rebholz, a public affairs officer, came to my office for approval of my first posting to Café USA.

It was three-quarters of a page long and discussed the importance of democracy. I read it and asked, “Mr. Ahn, don’t you think this is boring?”

No answer.

“Mr. Ahn, I think this is boring. What do you think?”

“Mr. Ambassador, you are right. It is very boring. Actually, it is extremely boring.”

“Mr. Ahn, could you come around to my computer here, log onto Café U.S., and put in Korean my first posting, which I will now dictate to you in English?”

I got up and asked him to sit in my chair. He hesitated but was soon seated and typing out my message, about my first impressions of Korea. It was also boring, but at least it came directly from me and it gave the audience a sense that they were communicating with the U.S. ambassador. With that we started the first U.S. embassy Web chats. As Café USA gained an audience we began to schedule live Web conversations in a section of the embassy where we could use more than one screen to monitor the incoming calls and I could dictate my answers to Mr. Ahn as he typed my words into Korean.

When Koreans trace the legacy and lineage of their democracy, the narrative passes through the southwestern city of Kwangju. In August 1980, in response to the declaration of martial law by the military regime of General Chun Doo Hwan, antigovernment demonstrators in Kwangju had declared their city independent of the military regime. With thousands having joined the protests, the local police lost control of the situation. In response, Chun Doo Hwan ordered a paratrooper brigade to enter the city and restore governmental control. The brigade, with no training in civil disturbances, did so with predictable results.

The brigade had been originally assigned north of the Han River, where it was under U.S. command. Once south of the Han, the brigade was solely under South Korean authority. Only under actual conditions of warfare could it be ordered by the U.S. military commander, whose prerogatives extended in peacetime just to forces north of the Han River.

Korea’s democratic foundation grew through the 1980s, with elections
in 1987, a fast-liberalizing press, greater attention to problems of corruption, and, finally, the development of a multiparty system. It is virtually impossible to place a date or an event on when Korea’s democracy actually was born. Economic liberalization even during the military regime of Park Chung Hee in the 1960s and ’70s played a vital role in bringing Korea along the path to democracy. When I first arrived in Korea in 1985, I went to the eighth floor of the embassy to have my courtesy call with Ambassador Dixie Walker. As I sat on the couch in the waiting room area, a Korean military drill began in the street below. Helicopters appeared at eye level and soldiers rappelled down ropes to “secure” government buildings across the six-lane boulevard.

In the 1990s a cemetery was constructed where victims of what was sometimes called the “Kwangju Massacre” were buried. No U.S. ambassador had ever visited the cemetery, nor would such a visit have been welcomed.

I thought it was important to do so. Not because I believed we were culpable in any way, but because Kwangju had become the crucible of Korean democracy and we should not be seen as on the wrong side of democracy in Korea. Democracy came to Korea because of us, not in spite of us. I was determined to make this point to Koreans.

I began by asking as many Korean friends as I could what the reaction would be to such a visit. In particular I asked a Korean friend, Sohn Myong Hyun, to come to the residence on a Saturday morning and discuss it. I had known “Mike” Sohn since 1985. I had met him at an embassy reception soon after my arrival at post. At that time he was the chief of cabinet to Deputy Prime Minister Kim Mahn Je, the chief official responsible for coordinating the Korean economic ministries. He came up to me at my arrival reception, hosted by the embassy economic counselor, and had said very simply, “My name is Sohn Myong Hyun. Please call me Mike. I have to get back to my office, but I wanted to introduce myself. We will see a lot of each other.”

Nineteen years later we were still close friends.

Mike believed strongly that the United States needed to reach out to nontraditional audiences. “The wealthy classes in Korea, ‘the sorts of narrow audiences that American ambassadors had often spent a great deal of time socializing with,’ are a dime a dozen,” he explained in his excellent English. Mike explained that visiting the cemetery could indeed be the powerful symbol of a new era that I had hoped for, but that it was all in how it was done. He said that if the visit were announced ahead of time, all the anti-U.S. protest groups would descend on the place and then be joined by pro-U.S. groups. The effect would be to create controversy and could come to define my experience in Korea. He proposed that I go there alone, place ashes on the monument, and leave. No propaganda show. Just do it.

I arrived in Kwangju that day to attend the opening of a small American culture center within the local university (the rector of the university wanted to keep the announcement low-key). I then spent two hours at Kwangju’s art “Biennale” admiring modern sculpture and multimedia painting, but I was thinking about the cemetery and hoping that the secret had held. At about 5
P.M.
, accompanied by a single police car, we drove to the cemetery.

The embassy staff assistant, Matthew Cenzer, was waiting at the entrance and had told the cemetery director to expect me. When we arrived, the sun was fast setting behind the hills, and no one else was there. I took a tour of the cemetery, paid respect at the main memorial, and in the visitor book left a message: “I am here with great respect—and great sorrow—for the memory of these brave victims. May they always be remembered and may their memory inspire us all.”

Well, almost no one else was there. A “citizen reporter” from the leftist online news outlet
Ohmy Daily
had followed our car and learned of our destination by monitoring the police radio. He had a small digital camera.

The next day,
Ohmy
had the scoop, and by Saturday morning all Korea’s major dailies had
Ohmy
’s pictures of an American ambassador paying respect to the victims whose deaths are remembered by many in Korea as
part of the crucible of democracy. Many other factors had helped put the United States on the right side of history in Korea’s democratic transition, but this example of what would later be called by the much-hackneyed phrase “public diplomacy” helped. Mike Sohn told me, “I think this has helped Korea and the United States turn an important corner.”