Ultimatum (9 page)

Olsen leaned forward in his chair.

“Senator, you want my strategic priorities? One, we need to accept the reality of the Shia alliance and work with its moderate leaders instead of pretending its threat can be dealt with by the relevant states. Two, we need to get Syria and Iraq talking seriously to end their dispute over the Euphrates, and we need to lead a broader water conference in the Middle East. We need to find a way of dealing more effectively with the insurgency in Pakistan and of transitioning from the Badur regime back to a democratic form of government. We also need to give counterinsurgency aid to Indonesia if we want to prevent it becoming the next Pakistan. We need to get the Indians talking with the Bangladeshis, and I believe in the end we will need to provide significant aid for the resettlement of the Bay of Bengal water refugees. Officially, more than eleven million are already in India, and in reality it’s probably more than double that. So if we’re going to have to help, let’s start doing it and not wait for a regional war to break out before we act. We need urgently to strengthen the global quarantine framework. We need to start offering asylum to Russian opposition leaders as a first step to achieving the restoration of meaningful democracy there. And we need to put troops in the Congo and develop a multistate solution to the political breakdown of Central Africa.”

“Why the Congo?”

“The civil war in the Congo has gone on for sixty years. Eighteen million people have died.”

“Granted. On a humanitarian level, I agree. Where’s the U.S. interest?” “The Congo conflict destabilizes the entire central African region. This sends refugees to North Africa, which destabilizes those countries and adds to environmental migration from them toward Europe. This means more refugees crossing the Mediterranean toward Spain, Italy, and Greece, who try to keep them out. This means these southern European countries are effectively fighting a low intensity naval war against civilian populations. Given the populations we’re talking about, this is also a racial war, and the countries prosecuting it are becoming increasingly xenophobic. These countries are our allies. Xenophobic countries do not make good allies for the United States, sir.”

Benton was impressed. He didn’t want to show it. “That’s a wish list,” he said.

“It is for you. For me, it’s a to-do list.”

“Nothing’s a to-do list from Yale, Dr. Olsen,” said Benton pointedly.

Olsen stared at him for a moment, then silently shook his head.

“Tell me about emissions,” said Benton. “You haven’t mentioned that.”

“Your position’s well known on that issue, Senator.”

“You said you were going to tell me your strategic priorities. Isn’t emissions among them?”

“We need to develop a standing mechanism involving ourselves, the EuroCore, Brazil, Russia, India, Japan, and China to controllably reduce them.” Olsen’s tone was mechanical, as if he was saying it for form’s sake, not expecting the senator to agree with any of it. “That puts ninety percent of the world’s emissions on the table.”

“You wouldn’t use Kyoto?”

“I would pull out of Kyoto. I opposed Kyoto 3. It’s no secret. They gave you a briefing about me, didn’t they?”

“You said it was too weak. Maybe we can make Kyoto 4 stronger.”

Olsen shook his head. “Kyoto’s all process. Right now, the illusion that we can solve things through Kyoto is the most dangerous piece of fiction in the world. Someone has to have the courage to kill Kyoto and liberate us from it. I would kill it, day one.”

“And how do you envision that we get to the mechanism you mentioned?”

“Bilateral negotiations with the Chinese. Start there. Once an agreement’s in place, we apply sanctions to those who don’t join. The moral force of the argument will be powerful. The economic force of combined sanctions from the U.S. and China will be irresistible.”

“That only leaves the slight problem of how to get the Chinese to agree.”

“I wouldn’t call it a slight problem, Senator. But they’re going to have to agree one way or another, at some point, whether through Kyoto or another mechanism, so there’s no way of avoiding it, is there? Kyoto doesn’t solve the problem for you—it just puts it into a context that’s a thousand times more complicated.”

Joe Benton didn’t say anything to that. Olsen’s point struck him with a strange force. If Chinese agreement was the sticking point—and it had to be, with China being by far the world’s biggest polluter—somehow it had to be overcome, whatever the framework.

“Senator, we’ve had thirty years of Kyoto treaties. Kyoto itself, then the Copenhagen round, then Santiago. How long do you keep going before you admit a process isn’t working? The people who negotiated that first Kyoto Protocol would not
believe
the world we live in today. Southern Europe is on its way to becoming a desert. The fire in the Amazon has been burning for the past four years and no one has any idea how to put it out. How much of the Greenland ice pack is left? Every country with a coastline accepts that millions of people are going to have to be moved. Already we’re seeing ethnic conflict over this. That’s the world we live in, Senator. Do you think when they agreed on the first Kyoto Protocol in 1997 they thought this was what they were going to achieve? If those people were here today, do you think they’d count this a success? Senator, those people, if they were around today, would be the first ones to declare the process dead. They’d tell you, Stop! For God’s sake find another way.”

Olsen stopped. He shook his head slightly, as if struggling to contain his exasperation.

“Tell me why you think Kyoto’s been such a problem,” said Benton quietly.

“It gives too much room for cover. Too much diffusion of responsibility. It’s too easy to avoid agreeing any kind of meaningful sanctions. It’s all promises and no way to enforce execution. Senator, you and I differ in outlook. I think multilateral negotiations rarely work, not when we’re talking about something on this scale with so much at stake and so many parties involved.”

“I don’t know if I agree with that. What about the World Trade Organization?”

Olsen smiled, the kind of smile, Benton imagined, he might use in his seminar room at Yale. The senator didn’t much like it.

“The outcomes of the WTO can afford to be imperfect,” said Olsen. “And they are. Very imperfect. But the future of the planet doesn’t depend on them. The analogy here for me isn’t the WTO, it’s the SALT and START treaties between us and the Soviets in the later decades of the last century. Bilateral negotiations on limiting nuclear weapons. Senator, let’s look at history. Why did they work?”

“We were the only countries involved.”

“Not so. A number of other countries possessed nuclear weapons at the time, and had the means to deliver them. The limitation by the two leading exponents created an irresistible pressure on those others to limit proliferation as well, which led to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. But would there have been a multilateral test ban agreement without the bilateral treaties between the two global arms leaders to create the imperative? I submit that there would not. The lead shown by the dominant nuclear powers—their ability to do a bilateral deal—was the crucial thing.”

“This is different,” objected Benton. “Every country is affected by climate change.”

“Every country would have been affected by an outbreak of full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., arguably more severely than climate change will affect them. Would you have invited Fiji to participate in the SALT talks? Would you have restricted yourself to conditions they agreed with?”

Benton didn’t reply. Olsen could see he was listening.

“Look, Senator, you and I and everyone else on the planet know that if you get the top seven polluters agreeing to what needs to be done, the problem’s solved. China, us, India, the EuroCore, Japan, Brazil, and Russia. So why do we go to a conference where we sit down and listen to Malawi tell us what they think we should do? I’m sorry, I’ve never met a Malawian I didn’t like, but that is just not going to work. Now, first thing you do, is you admit the emperor has no clothes. When you see a process that’s busted, you kill it. Then, you start with the top two polluters, and you get agreement with them—and that’s the top two economies in the world—and that unlocks the rest. And if Malawi doesn’t want to play ball, if it won’t cut any of its emissions, you know what, it doesn’t even matter.” Olsen shrugged. “I’m sorry. I know that’s not what you want to hear. It’s only my opinion, but if you can find anything in the history of Kyoto that tells you otherwise, let me know.”

Olsen leaned back. He shook his head again, as if he knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere with what he had said.

Joe Benton frowned, gazing at the coffee table that stood between him and Olsen. Then he looked back at the other man. “Have you been working with the White House on this?”

Olsen looked at him in surprise. Then he laughed. “If you can show me a less competent administration in foreign affairs I’d like to see it. Senator, you’re insulting me.”

Benton smiled. “Unintended.”

“Fine.”

Benton frowned again. “You make a powerful case, Dr. Olsen.”

“Others have been making it.”

“Not as eloquently. Not to me.”

“So much depends on who you listen to, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Benton. “Yes.” He said it emphatically. “You mistake me, Dr. Olsen.”

“How so, Senator?”

“You said I need someone at State who wants our foreign policy to be reactive. You implied that’s because that’s the role I think we should play. I don’t think either of those things is true. What I need at State is someone who does want to see this country take an active leadership role, and doesn’t use the domestic prism for foreign policy. I need that counterbalance. You said it yourself, it’s my job to make the call between domestic and foreign priorities. So I need that State viewpoint given to me sharp and clear every single time I have to make a decision, and I need it given to me by someone who won’t be afraid to stand up and say what he thinks, even if he knows that a majority of the people in the room are instinctively against him. Which they may well be, by the way. And I need that person to know how to work the State Department machine so he can go out and do what he has to do. And by the way, I need that person to have a very, very good grasp of Chinese affairs.”

The Senator paused. Olsen was watching him closely.

“But here’s the other thing, Dr. Olsen. I need that person to be able to live with decisions he doesn’t like. That’s what worries me about you. Because after that person makes the case—when we’re talking about the major foreign policy issues for this country, the crucial strategic ones— they’re going to be my decisions. And if he hasn’t persuaded me on one of them, then I’m going to ask him to go out and do something which he may not necessarily want to do. You talked before about having a voice within the administration. Well, that person will have a voice. He’ll have his chance in the debate, he’ll have his chance to persuade me—he’ll always have that chance—but after that, he’s going to have to execute the policy I agree with. Now, that may not sound great, but if I was in your shoes, it would seem like a pretty good deal to me. The only way you could get more is if you ran for president yourself. So what you have to ask yourself, Dr. Olsen, is do you want to spend the rest of your life talking about the things on that to-do list you’ve got in your head—or do you want to actually start doing some of them? Not everything, but something. Do you want to get out on the park, or would you rather stay in the dugout?”

Olsen stared at him. “What are you saying, Senator?”

Joe Benton hesitated. He had agreed to this meeting only because John Eales had pretty much insisted on it. Privately, he had thought it would be a waste of time. He had expected to have a conversation with Larry Olsen and then call up Steve Naylor and tell him he was offering State to Al Graham. Yet in forty-five minutes, Olsen had demonstrated a more crisp and cogent approach to foreign affairs than Benton had had from any other advisor. It was also more challenging, provoking, and demanding of his attention. And that, paradoxically, was the most important reason Joe Benton said what he proceeded to say next.