As I had told President Bush and Condi Rice early in 2007, the challenge of the early twenty-first century is that crises don’t come and go—they all seem to come and stay.
CHAPTER 14
At War to the Last Day
I knew I wouldn’t be able to coast through my last six months as secretary, but as I flew back to Washington, D.C., from Christmas vacation, I had no idea how hard it would be right up to the last days. The Arab revolutions beginning in January and our subsequent military operations against Libya were daunting enough. But there were still big internal fights coming over the next steps in both Iraq and Afghanistan; another budget battle looming; major issues with China, Russia, and the Middle East; getting the president’s agreement on a new chairman of the Joint Chiefs; and, conducting a daring—and dangerous—raid into Pakistan. I had no choice but to sprint to the finish line.
CHINA, RUSSIA, AND THE MIDDLE EAST
When Chinese defense minister Liang invited me in October 2010 to return to China, as I said earlier, he explicitly asked me to make the trip before President Hu Jintao’s state visit to the United States in late January. Liang’s restrained behavior at that fall meeting of Asian defense ministers in Hanoi and in our bilateral discussions there indicated that the People’s Liberation Army had been told to help set a positive atmosphere for Hu’s trip. When I arrived in Beijing on January 9 (thirty years after my first visit), it was obvious the Chinese were pulling out all the stops to make my visit a success. From closed-off roads and highways to banquet sites, I was given head-of-state treatment. They had been standoffish for three years because of our arms sales to Taiwan, but now they welcomed me warmly.
In every meeting, I emphasized the importance of strengthening the military-to-military relationship, including a strategic dialogue covering nuclear weapons, missile defense, space, and cyber affairs. An on-again, off-again relationship served no one’s interests. Sustained and reliable ties insulated from political ups and downs were, I said, essential to reduce miscommunication, misunderstanding, and miscalculation. I also warned that North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs had reached a point where the president had concluded they represented “a direct threat to the United States,” and we would react accordingly if they did not stop. I said that after thirty years of patiently enduring North Korea’s lethal provocations, public opinion in South Korea had changed with the sinking of their warship and shelling of their islands. They intended to react forcefully to such provocations in the future, and that raised the risk of escalating hostilities on the Korean peninsula. The Chinese should weigh in with North Korea to stand down. I also made clear our view that China’s continued aggressive response to operations of U.S. aircraft and ships operating in international airspace and waters in the South China Sea could lead to an incident that neither country wanted. We were within our rights, and they should back off. Of course, I couched all I said in diplomatic terms full of sweetness and light (I could do that when the occasion demanded), but they understood what I was saying.
All my interlocutors supported strengthening the military-to-military relationship in principle but were hesitant about a sustained, formal, high-level diplomatic-military strategic dialogue, arguing that there were already multiple mechanisms for such discussions. Given the sensitive agenda I had proposed, I think the PLA leaders were reluctant to sign on to a dialogue that would include Chinese civilian officials from the party and the Foreign Ministry. (It reminded me of the Soviet general in the strategic arms talks in the early 1970s who complained to the U.S. delegation head that he should stop talking about the detailed capabilities of Soviet missiles and nuclear weapons because the civilians on the Soviet side weren’t cleared for that information.) They didn’t want to dampen the atmosphere of my visit, so they didn’t reject the strategic dialogue idea; they just said they’d study it.
While each senior Chinese official was careful to frame his comments on other topics positively, they had some tough messages of their own. Liang said the military relationship had been “on again, off again” for thirty years. There had been “six ons and six offs.” The offs were due to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and to “harmful discriminating actions against China,” such as our surveillance operations. On these two issues, he said, “there is no space for compromise or discretion when it comes to our core interests.” We should make mutual respect, trust, reciprocity, and benefit the guiding principles of our military relationship, he said, and “mutual respect means accommodating our core interests.” I got the point about core interests.
I went through all the familiar points about Taiwan. On surveillance, I told him we did it near many countries worldwide, including Russia, and that the Russians did it to us, and neither country considered these activities as hostile acts. I said the United States did not consider China an enemy or Cold War–style rival, but I warned that since August 2010, PLA aircraft had on several occasions come very close to our planes—I showed him a photograph of a PLA fighter closing to within thirty feet of one of our aircraft—which raised the risk of a serious incident. We then faced the press together, and Liang was exceptionally positive. He said we had reached consensus on a number of issues; the talks had been positive, constructive, and productive; and a healthy military relationship was in both our interests. He announced that the chief of the PLA general staff—Admiral Mullen’s counterpart—would visit the United States that spring. I essentially said ditto.
The chosen “bad cop” for my visit was the foreign minister, who treated me to a long, condescending, and occasionally threatening diatribe that covered all the bases: Taiwan, surveillance, North Korea, U.S. naval deployments around Korea, and China’s need to build up its military defenses. I responded in kind.
Vice President Xi Jinping (then President Hu’s likely successor) responded to my concerns about North Korea with some candor by acknowledging that the situation had become a concern for both China and the United States and, further, that the recent escalation of tension and continued enrichment of uranium “had put the six-party talks in a grim and grave situation.” Xi said China had made every effort to mediate and to keep the United States informed of those efforts. He added that a denuclearized and stable Korean peninsula was in everyone’s interest.