Ultimatum (38 page)

So would Benton. If they did get to the point of launching sanctions against China, Russian support would be crucial, and it didn’t take a foreign policy expert to figure it out. The Russian republic supplied a third of China’s oil needs and close to eighty percent of its gas.

Benton glanced at Alan Ball. His face was grim.

“All right,” said the president, “we’re getting way ahead of ourselves. This isn’t about getting Russia to apply sanctions. Let’s get back to Wen. Where are we, Larry? Summary. What have we learned, where do we stand?”

“The key thing, Mr. President, is like I said, it’s personal with Wen. He’s taking charge of the issue.”

“And his view is?”

“That’s harder to judge. When I hinted to Ding that we needed to work together better, there was nothing back.”

“So what are you saying, Larry?” asked Eales.

“My sense is it’s one of two things. One, Wen’s happy. He’s sitting pretty. He thinks he’s got us beat, and he’s just waiting to get the call saying the president’s coming over in September. Two, alternatively, he’s still pretty happy, but he doesn’t know what to do with what he’s got.”

“Which presupposes he wants to do more,” said Eales.

“That’s right. If he does, he probably feels he’s won the first round, but now, having won it, he’s not sure how he gets to the second. Or even what the second round looks like. He’s probably waiting for us to show him.”

“I can let him think he won the first round,” said Benton. “I can live with that.”

“I disagree, sir. Letting him think he’s won anything is a bad idea.”

Alan Ball muttered something about the stupidity of people who tried to win every battle when it might cost them the war.

“Sorry, Al,” said Olsen. “I didn’t catch that.”

“Larry, I don’t care how we get to the second round,” said Benton, “as long as we get there.”

“We don’t know Wen’s even looking for a second.”

“So what
do
we know?” Joe Benton’s impatience was getting the better of him. “You know, I’m giving an interview this afternoon for my first hundred days. And on this issue, I don’t think we know any more about what we’re doing than we did the day I was sworn in. We don’t have a proposal. We don’t have a negotiating partner. We don’t even know whether Wen wants to talk. That’s a
hundred
days gone. For nothing.”

“With respect, sir,” said Olsen, “I think we’ve learned an enormous amount. It’s what we do with it now.”

“Hell’s bells, Larry! If we learn this much again over the next hundred days we won’t even know what our own names are.”

Benton shook his head in exasperation. He had spent a solid chunk of the previous afternoon rehearsing for the hundredth-day interview, with Cindy Ravic, one of Jodie Ames’s aides, playing the role of Emmy Peterson, the NewsLog interviewer who was going to be conducting the interview. Of all the questions Cindy had thrown at him, only one—in all the variants Cindy had tried—kept resonating in his mind after the rehearsal was over. What mistakes had he made? What had he learned? What would he do differently? He could answer it—it was easy enough to give an impression of thoughtfulness and humility without admitting anything specific that could be used against him. Jodie Ames had given him a half-dozen sound bites to throw in for good measure. And yet it had stuck with him, made him think, because that really was the question. If the hundred-day milestone meant anything, it was because it was a time to sit back and reflect. What had he learned? What would he do differently?

He glanced at John Eales. “John,” he said, after Ball had left, “there’s something I think we should do.”

~ * ~

Friday, April 29

Oval Office, The White House

John Eales tapped on his handheld, and a slide came up on the screen.

“Our involvement in this began November fifteenth, when President Gartner invited the president and myself to see him outside D.C.”

Eales clicked again. A new slide came up. Over the next ten minutes, he ran through every step in the chronology that had brought them to this point in the process with the Chinese government. At the end he had a numbered summary slide.

“One,” he said, “we used Gartner’s channel. Two, we confined knowledge of the situation to a small subgroup in the administration. Three, we took off the table the offers Gartner had made in the past, including the final one that the Chinese side claimed, probably falsely, was still under consideration. Four, we demanded a proposal from the Chinese government. Five, we turned down a suggestion for a presidential visit in September. Six, when a proposal wasn’t forthcoming from the Chinese side, we threatened sanctions, although we ourselves hadn’t decided what sanctions we might impose and in fact we hadn’t made an explicit decision that we were going to follow through and actually use them. Seven, when the Chinese responded by awarding business contracts to European competitors, we made no direct response. Eight, later, as an indirect response, we spoke to Wen without having a definite program or demand in mind. Nine, as an extension of that indirect response, we sent the secretary of state to Beijing to see whether we could get a better insight into Wen’s perspective, and learned only that Wen claims not to have wanted to see the president embarrassed by the press leak about the emissions data. The thing with the leak, we don’t know where it came from, and our feeling is it probably wasn’t from the Chinese, or if it was, it was a mistake. So I’m setting that aside. Those are the nine key decisions we took. I’m not saying any of them was right or wrong, but that’s how we got to where we are.”

Eales sat down. The slide with the nine points remained on the screen.

“I asked John to summarize those steps,” said the president, “because I want us to question them. If we accept that where we are today is not the best place, I want us to think through each of those steps and understand where we might have acted differently, whether we should have acted differently, and what that means for what we do from now. If we made mistakes, it’s crucial that we identify them and learn from them before we go any further.”

“Well, it’s clear,” said Olsen immediately, “We haven’t taken any action. We were okay until seven, but you can’t threaten something and then not do anything, especially if the other side comes back and does something first. After seven, we lost it.”

The president let that stand. He waited for someone else to speak.

“With respect, John,” said Alan Ball, ignoring Olsen’s remarks, “I think you’ve missed a point. We made a decision to go the bilateral route rather than bringing this into the open. That’s a crucial decision and it isn’t on your summary. You start from where we decide to use Gartner’s channel, but prior to that a decision was made to continue bilateral and secret negotiations.”

“Alan’s right,” said Benton. “That was our first decision.”

Eales picked up his handheld and typed the point in at the top of the slide. There was a moment of levity as he struggled to get the points to renumber.

“Mr. President,” said Ball, “if we’re trying to be genuinely open, if we’re going to question what we’ve done, we have to question that as well.”

“Go ahead,” said Benton.

Alan Ball laid out the case for looking for a solution within the Kyoto framework. It was still possible to bring the scientific data into the public domain—the leak might turn out to be a blessing in disguise, preparing the way for the release of extreme projections. Even if information about the negotiations with Chen then leaked, these could be pitched as preliminary discussions. Why not come out into the open now, releasing the data and affirming commitment to the Kyoto process? It could all be done around the meeting that had been arranged between the president and Secretary-General Nleki in New York in May.

Larry Olsen snorted. “I wish we were living in the kind of fantasy world Alan thinks is out there.”

“Larry, what’s your argument?” said the president sharply.

Olsen laid it out. In essence, it hadn’t changed from the argument he had presented the first time Benton met him. It was based on the likelihood of achieving a meaningful result in a multilateral forum, compared with the ability to use a bilateral result between the two key global players to unlock the rest of the world.

“Larry’s position is as much fantasy as mine,” said Ball. “He’s assuming you can pressure the Chinese bilaterally. Go do it! Surely you’ve got more chance pressuring them with the rest of the world lined up behind you.”

“Go get the rest of the world lined up first,” retorted Olsen. “
That’s
the point. Look, Alan, in the end we both want the same thing—an agreement with everyone. We both agree China’s key to that, both as the world’s largest polluter and its largest economy. All we really differ on here is which step comes first and which comes second. Do you do the deal with China, and believe that will make everyone else follow, or do you do the deal with everyone else, and believe China will follow?”

“No. Don’t misrepresent what I’m saying. China wouldn’t be following. It would be part of the deal with everyone.”

“You can’t regard China as just another country.” Olsen turned to the president. “On this issue, there are two countries everyone watches, us and them. No one’s going to move an inch unless they believe we’re both in. Now, given that we’re in, I say it’s got to be China first, and then everyone else follows. Alan’s saying it’s everyone else first, and then China follows. I say we’ve had thirty years trying the route of getting everyone to do a meaningful deal and stick to it. Hasn’t worked. What’s changed this time round?” “Our level of commitment,” said Eales.

“True. But it’s going to take ten years to demonstrate that, ten years before anyone believes it. We don’t have ten years.”

“Well, we’ve tried what you’re suggesting,” said Ball. “Look where that’s got us.”

“No, we haven’t tried what I’m suggesting! That’s exactly it, Alan. We haven’t carried through.” Olsen pointed forcefully at the screen. “Step seven—sorry, it’s eight now—after step eight, we back down. The president asked why we find ourselves in the position we’re in. That’s it right there. Round one, Wen outplays us. He was smarter. He was quicker. He was prepared to act and he knew where we’d hurt. So far, we’re all talk. That’s why we are where we are, not because the strategy is wrong.”

“Excuse me,” said Jackie Rubin. “I’d like to say something. We’re forgetting the domestic program here. Instinctively, I agree with Alan—although I agree with Larry that we haven’t carried through the game plan we started with, so it’s difficult to judge whether it could work. But even though I’m inclined to agree with Alan, if we turn around now and come out with these projections and raise the Relocation number from ten million to, say, thirty million, everything stops. Every one of our bills. People just aren’t going to know what we’re saying anymore. What
are
we saying? Are we saying New Foundation is enough? Is there going to be more? Is it the end or the start?”

“We’re going to paralyze the process,” said Ben Hoffman.

“Absolutely. Paralyze it. We agreed on that right at the start and in retrospect I think that was the right call. If anything, it’s even more true now.”

Benton was glad Jackie had raised the point, because it was what he believed as well. He wanted to see if he would hear it from somewhere else.

He glanced questioningly at Alan Ball.

Ball threw up his hands. “I’m here to advise you on national security policy, Mr. President. Your domestic program is outside my remit.”

Larry Olsen smiled.

The president looked back at the screen. It seemed to him there was agreement in the room on the conclusion to be drawn, or at least as much agreement as he would ever get with Alan Ball and Larry Olsen sitting at the same table. “If we look at this road map, and if we accept that decision one was right—and I accept, Alan, that was a distinct decision and it’s open to question, and I know you would still question it—then the problem is we didn’t take action after step eight. Is that right? Does anyone disagree? Alan, is that correct in your view?”