The Secretary (6 page)

For four years prior, the trip Book had contained the basics and sat mostly untouched
on the narrow desk in the cabin during long overseas flights, next to the communications
equipment that enabled the secretary to call the president or any world leader. Rice
had come to the State Department from the NSC, where she had devised policy. She knew
what the policy was, and she knew the talking points. She would react to her environment
and change course accordingly, but she still followed a tight script. She didn’t need
a binder.

But on the long flight to Tokyo, Clinton’s cabin kept spitting out papers with annotations,
requests for more information, questions about sites she was going to visit, and changes
to the language used in speeches she would be making the following day. Sitting on
the leather foldout couch in her cabin, a humidifier in one corner, a
National Geographic
map of the world on the wall behind, the new secretary of state had been reading
the Book cover to cover. Armed with the office supplies in their black rolling cases,
the line officers got to work. On every trip, there would be two of them—the plane
team. And at each stop an advance line officer was preparing the ground for S’s arrival.
They were among the brightest of the Foreign Service cadre and helped to keep the
wheels of the foreign policy machine spinning. But on the trips they were interchangeable.

*   *   *

When we landed at Haneda Airport at eleven that night, twenty-two hours after walking
out of our homes in Washington, Lissa the speechwriter realized her job was only just
starting. In the coming months, she would often find herself rewriting speeches till
five in the morning. When the departure for the day’s first event was only a couple
of hours away, she would give up on sleep and just go to the gym. The Book had become
a living thing. It was going to need feeding, day and night, throughout our trips.

Hillary too was only getting started, but her energy was bubbling. She loved being
back on the road. She had always enjoyed her overseas travel as First Lady; no matter
how polarizing or vilified she was at home, the rest of the world was mostly fascinated
by her and treated her with respect. As a senator, she had traveled abroad a dozen
times with colleagues like Republican senator John McCain. She had enjoyed those trips,
but now this was her show again. And she arrived in Asia not just as a former First
Lady and senator, or the wife of Bill Clinton and a woman who had reinvented herself
over the years. She now came in a new, even bigger role: as America’s chief diplomat,
the emissary of Barack Obama, the new, promising face of America. She emerged from
the plane with a wide smile and perfect hair, her eyes ever so slightly red from the
journey. Huma followed with one of her designer handbags.

*   *   *

Inside the VIP terminal, the first group of excited fans waited at the rendezvous—a
welcome committee of young athletes from the Special Olympics and Japanese women astronauts
who had all just been to the United States. The camera crews were there to beam out
the images of her arrival, and for the traveling press this was the start of a long
night. We were all on the phone, calling our editors with the news: she’s arrived,
she’s landed, she’s here!

We piled into the vans outside the VIP terminal, typing on our laptops, talking on
the phone, the motorcade sirens wailing in the background of our live interviews with
our radio and television stations. Late into the night, sitting in the filing center
set up for the traveling press in the hotel, I continued broadcasting: She’s still
here! She’s still saying the Obama administration is reaching out to Asia and the
world! In the wee hours of the morning, on the various floors of the Okura hotel,
with its dated 1960s decor, members of the State Department delegation, their work
finally done, collapsed into bed one after the other. In her suite on the tenth floor,
Hillary woke up at four thirty in the morning, feeling like she was in a vibrating
bed and someone had accidentally just dropped in some quarters.
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Just another, minor Japanese earthquake.

The dawn jolt didn’t stop Hillary from being out the door at eight in the morning
for her first event—a display of respect for Japanese history and traditions. The
Meiji Shrine, a religious Shinto shrine dedicated to Emperor Meiji, who ruled Japan
for forty-five years, until 1912, was a large, green sanctuary amid the soaring towers
and concrete blocks of Tokyo’s Shibuya business district. Clinton and her retinue
walked on foot into a forest of one hundred thousand trees toward the shrines made
of cypress and copper. The sound of the city faded. Fred, always two steps behind
Clinton, found himself walking into an oasis that mirrored his internal oasis: no
matter the traffic, noise, or danger around him and the chaos within the big Bubble,
Fred’s mind and demeanor remained focused and calm. He savored this rare moment where
his mind was at one with his environment. He and his team formed their own small,
serene bubble around the secretary and helped her glide through her day.

*   *   *

The packed schedule demonstrated the combined power of America and of Hillary. A one-two
punch. Unlike most foreign ministers who travel to meet fellow foreign ministers,
an American secretary of state is rarely restricted by protocol to rank: presidents
fling open the doors of their palaces and kings grant them audiences. Clinton had
a business lunch with foreign minister Hirofumi Nakasone, but the two were old friends,
so they reminisced over a picture of the two of them meeting eighteen years ago, when
he was a member of parliament delighted to meet an up-and-coming Arkansas governor
named Bill. Hillary was also afforded the rare honor of tea with the imperial couple.
Emperor Akihito and his wife, Michiko, emerged from their cloistered palace to greet
her, and the seventy-four-year-old empress, in a cream-colored skirt suit, embraced
Hillary like an old friend. They held hands and posed for photographs. Hillary and
Bill had hosted the imperial couple at the White House in 1994 for the Clinton presidency’s
first state dinner. At the time, President Clinton had declared that the “ties that
bind our two nations have never been stronger.” And in Tokyo, at the prime minister’s
office, Clinton invited Taro Aso to be the first foreign leader to visit President
Obama in Washington.

The mood was buoyant and the ceremonies elegant. But even close friends have disagreements.
Japan had been home to ten American military bases for more than six decades. These
bases were one of the many building blocks for America’s surging world power in the
aftermath of World War II and a continued source of influence in Asia. They were both
a testament to the alliance that developed between the two countries after Japan surrendered
to the Allies and also a reminder of that same surrender. Over time, the bases grated
increasingly on the proud Japanese, who wanted to strike a more independent course
and felt America was always dictating the terms of the friendship. Incidents like
the rape of a twelve-year-old Japanese girl by three American marines in 1995 fed
the resentment and the debate about the U.S. military presence in Japan. One of the
bases in particular, the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station, was a constant source of
friction. It sat in the middle of Ginowan city on the island of Okinawa, surrounded
by stunning coral reefs. Washington and Tokyo had signed an agreement to relocate
the noisy base away from population centers. But islanders wanted it off Okinawa completely.
Sure, Japan worried about the eccentric, unpredictable leader of nearby North Korea,
was anxious about China’s rise, and fretted it might no longer be America’s best friend
in Asia. But every now and then, the Japanese people rebelled and their leaders protested.
After all, America was a superpower, and it could take a bit of poking.

Prime Minister Aso was sinking in the polls and would be defeated in the upcoming
general elections in September of that year. So although she had invited Aso to visit
Obama, Clinton broke protocol rules in a different way and sought to make contact
with the leader of the opposition, Ichiro Ozawa, from the Democratic Party of Japan.
Ozawa thought the Futenma base should be exiled to a disused airport on a distant
island at the very southern tip of the Japanese archipelago. His office said the meeting
with Clinton couldn’t be scheduled. Ozawa hemmed and hawed and kept everybody waiting,
his way of showing he didn’t kowtow to America. But he eventually agreed to a meeting.
On his way out, he offered his terse views on the U.S.-Japan relationship. “Both sides
must be on an equal footing, and one should not be subordinated to the other.”

*   *   *

Hillary also encountered resentment toward America in Indonesia, the world’s third-largest
democracy. Outside the presidential palace, protestors greeted her with placards reading
“America is a rubbish civilization” and “America is the real terrorist.”

The world’s largest Muslim country, Indonesia once held the United States in high
esteem. In 2000, 75 percent of Indonesians had a positive view of America. But in
the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, the Bush administration’s war on terror
and invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq looked like a war against Islam to many Muslims
around the world. Superpowers are never universally loved, of course, but under George
W. Bush anti-Americanism only increased. By 2007, only 29 percent
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of Indonesians liked America. But like many countries around the world, Indonesia
had cheered the election of President Obama, who had spent four years of his childhood
in Jakarta. The Obama administration saw an opportunity to work with Indonesia and
reach out to the Muslim world.

Clinton was also here for a serving of alphabet soup. The State Department had its
own love affair with acronyms. This was an EAP trip—East Asia Pacific region. We had
an EAP-AS (assistant secretary) with us on the plane, but the EAP-DAS (deputy assistant
secretary) had stayed in Washington. Looking after the journalists were the overworked
officers from the PA—Public Affairs office. The new S team was absorbing all this
as quickly as it could. Now Clinton was going to visit ASEAN to sign a TAC, which
she’d never heard of before, but which would help with the United States’ accession
to the EAS.

Once again delighted shrieks greeted Hillary as she entered the Secretariat of ASEAN,
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Jakarta. She was the first American
secretary of state ever to visit the headquarters. It was a symbolic gesture of support
for an organization that had received virtually no attention from the Bush administration,
which spent as little time as possible on the seemingly inconsequential acronyms.
But this symbolism went a long way toward showing countries in the region that when
the Obama administration looked at Asia on a map, it didn’t just see China and the
Pacific Ocean. It was all thrilling to Surin Pitsuwan, the ASEAN secretary-general,
who offered Clinton effusive compliments and thirty-two perfect yellow roses. The
number stood for the thirty-two years of cooperation between the United States and
ASEAN, while the yellow symbolized a new beginning under the Obama administration.
Standing next to Clinton, Pitsuwan told her, “Your visit shows the seriousness of
the United States to end its diplomatic absenteeism in the region.”

ASEAN countries had long tried to cajole the United States into signing the Treaty
of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) a feel-good agreement with no binding obligations that
promoted peace and cooperation between its signatories. It was a necessary step if
the United States wanted to be part of the more important East Asia Summit (EAS),
a regional political and economic forum that included ASEAN and all the key Pacific
countries, from India to Australia. All countries, that is, except the United States
and Russia. Almost every day on the trip, Clinton had said the United States was not
just a transatlantic power but also a transpacific power. To prove it, she announced
that the United States would sign the treaty.

Trailing behind Clinton, across time zones, in and out of motorcades, I had a hard
time getting excited about all these treaties and diplomatic hooplas. It all sounded
tedious—death by acronyms. I would eventually come to understand the careful thinking
that had gone into this.

The Obama administration believed that power through military might alone was too
expensive and no longer sufficient to remain relevant in a world that was changing
so quickly. Rising countries, big and small alike, all wanted their say on the global
podium. These countries were testing the limits and possibilities of their power.
America had to be needed. It had to draw others close and sit at the center of a vast
diplomatic web, an essential connector. For the proponents of smart power, this was
another, essential way in which the United States could maintain its edge as a superpower
in the twenty-first century. Anne-Marie Slaughter, a Princeton University professor,
had developed much of the thinking about this edge. Clinton hired her to run the Building’s
policy planning department to develop the blueprint of this style of diplomacy. The
big multilateral organizations like the United Nations were important but also stood
as relics of a previous era. The United States was going to latch on to what was already
there and create new initiatives and treaties everywhere—a large sticky web of diplomacy.
TAC was just the beginning.
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*   *   *

From Indonesia, we retraced our steps and flew due north again for just over six hours.
This time we turned left instead of right, and on Friday morning, we woke up in snowy
Seoul. Once an American-backed dictatorship, South Korea was now a democracy and a
steadfast ally of the United States.

The highlight of this stop was the seventh event of the day—a town hall at the Ewha
Womans university. Founded in 1886 by the American Methodist Episcopal missionary
Mary Scranton, the university was the sister college of Wellesley, where Hillary had
studied.