In late May, just before I left on a trip to Portugal, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine, I went to Assateague Island, Maryland, to announce a new initiative to protect our coral reefs and other marine treasures. We had already quadrupled funding for national marine sanctuaries. I signed an executive order to create a national protective network for our coasts, reefs, underwater forests, and other important structures, and I said we were going to permanently protect the coral reefs of the northwest Hawaiian Islands, more than 60 percent of America’s total, stretching over 1,200 miles. It was the biggest conservation step I had taken since preserving 43 million roadless acres in our national forests, and a needed one, since ocean pollution was threatening reefs the world over, including the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. I went to Portugal for the annual meeting between the United States and the European Union. Portuguese prime minister Antonio Guterres was serving as president of the European Council. He was a bright young progressive who was a member of our Third Way group, as was EU president Romano Prodi. We saw eye to eye on most things, and I enjoyed the meeting, as well as my first visit to Portugal. It was beautiful and warm, with friendly people and a fascinating history. On June 2, I went with Gerhard Schroeder to the ancient city of Aachen to receive the Charlemagne Prize. In a sunny outdoor ceremony in a public space near the medieval city hall and the old cathedral holding Charlemagne’s remains, I thanked Chancellor Schroeder and the German people for giving me an honor shared by Václav Havel and King Juan Carlos and rarely awarded to an American. I had done everything I could to help Europe become united, democratic, and secure, to expand and strengthen the transatlantic alliance, to reach out to Russia, and to end ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. It was gratifying to be recognized for it.
The next day Gerhard Schroeder hosted another of our Third Way conferences in Berlin. This time Gerhard, Jean Chrétien, and I were joined by three Latin Americans—Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, President Ricardo Lagos of Chile, and President Fernando de la Rúa of Argentina—as we outlined the kinds of progressive partnerships leaders of developed and developing countries should form. Tony Blair wasn’t there because he and Cherie, already the parents of three children, had recently brought a fourth into the world, a boy they named Leo.
I flew into Moscow for my first meeting with Vladimir Putin since his election. We agreed to destroy another thirty-four metric tons each of weapons-grade plutonium, but could not reach accord on amending the ABM Treaty to enable the United States to deploy a national missile defense system. I wasn’t too concerned about that; Putin probably wanted to wait to see how the U.S. election turned out. The Republicans had been enamored of missile defense since the Reagan era, and many of them wouldn’t hesitate to abrogate the ABM Treaty in order to deploy it. Al Gore basically agreed with me. Putin didn’t want to have to deal with this twice.
At the time, we didn’t have a missile defense system reliable enough to deploy. As Hugh Shelton had said, shooting down an incoming missile was like “a bullet hitting a bullet.” If we ever did develop a workable system, I thought that we should offer the technology to other nations and that, in so doing, we could probably persuade the Russians to amend the ABM Treaty. I wasn’t at all sure that, even if it worked, erecting a missile defense system was the best way to spend the staggering sums it would cost. We were far more likely to face attacks from terrorists having smaller nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.
Moreover, putting up a missile defense could actually expose the world to greater danger. For the foreseeable future, the system would knock out only a few missiles even if it worked. If the United States and Russia were to erect such a system, China would probably build more missiles to overcome it in order to maintain its deterrent capability. Then India would follow suit, as would Pakistan. The Europeans were convinced it was a terrible idea. But we didn’t have to deal with all those issues until we had a system that worked, and so far, we didn’t.
Before I left Moscow, Putin hosted a small dinner in the Kremlin with a jazz concert afterward, featuring Russian musicians from teenagers to an octogenarian. The finale began on a dark stage, a haunting series of tunes by my favorite living tenor saxophonist, Igor Butman. John Podesta, who loved jazz as much as I did, agreed with me that we had never heard a finer live performance. I went to Ukraine to announce America’s financial support for President Leonid Kuchma’s decision to close the final reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant by December 15. It had taken a long time, and I was glad to know that at least the problem would be resolved before I left. My last stop was an outdoor speech to a huge crowd of Ukrainians whom I urged to stay on the course of freedom and economic reform. Kiev was beautiful in the late spring sunshine, and I hoped its people could keep up the high spirits I had observed in the crowd. They still had many hurdles to clear. On June 8, I flew to Tokyo for the day to pay my respects at the memorial service of my friend Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, who had died of a stroke a few days before. The service was held in the indoor section of a soccer stadium, with a few thousand seats on the floor divided by an aisle in the middle, and several hundred more people sitting in balconies above. A stage had been constructed with a large ramp up the front and smaller ones on the side. Behind the stage was a wall covered in flowers twenty-five or thirty feet high. The flowers were beautifully arranged to show the Japanese rising sun against a pale blue sky. At the very top there was an indented space where at the beginning of the ceremony a military aide solemnly placed a box containing Obuchi’s ashes. After his colleagues and friends had paid tribute to him, several young Japanese women appeared holding trays full of white flowers. Beginning with Obuchi’s wife and children, members of the imperial family, and leaders of the government, the mourners all walked up the center ramp, bowed in respect before his ashes, and placed our flowers on a waist-high strip of wood that ran the entire length of the flowered wall. After I bowed to my friend and placed my flower, I returned to the U.S. embassy to see our ambassador, former House Speaker Tom Foley. I turned on the television to see the ceremony still in progress. Thousands of Obuchi’s fellow citizens were creating a cloud of sacred flowers against the rising sun. It was one of the most moving tributes I had ever witnessed. I stopped briefly at the reception to pay my respects to Mrs. Obuchi and Keizo’s children, one of whom was in politics her-self. Mrs. Obuchi thanked me for coming and gave me a beautiful enamel letter box that had belonged to her husband. Obuchi had been a friend to me, and to America. Our alliance was important, and he had valued it even as a young man. I wished he had had longer to serve.
Several days later, while I was participating in the Carleton College commencement exercises in Minnesota, an aide passed me a note informing me that President Hafez al-Assad had just died in Damascus, only ten weeks after our last meeting in Geneva. Although we had our disagreements, he had always been straightforward with me, and I had believed him when he said he had made a strategic choice for peace. Circumstances, miscommunication, and psychological barriers had kept it from happening, but at least we now knew what it would take for Israel and Syria to get there once both sides were ready.
As spring turned to summer, I hosted our largest state dinner ever, as more than four hundred people gathered under a tent on the South Lawn to honor King Mohammed VI of Morocco, one of whose ancestors was the first sovereign to recognize the United States shortly after our original thirteen states joined together.
The next day I corrected an old injustice, awarding the Congressional Medal of Honor to twenty-two Japanese-Americans who had volunteered to serve in Europe during World War II after their families were interned in camps. One of them was my friend and ally Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, who had lost an arm and very nearly his life in the war. A week later I nominated the first Asian-American to the cabinet: former congressman Norm Mineta of California agreed to serve for the remainder of my term as commerce secretary, replacing Bill Daley, who was leaving to become the chairman of Al Gore’s campaign.