Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this week accomplished a diplomatic feat that her immediate predecessors tried but failed repeatedly to pull off: visiting South Korea, but skipping Japan and China on the same trip. It may sound immaterial, but defying protocol is a tricky thing in diplomacy, especially in Asia.
For years, I’ve been very amused when the State Department would send us in the traveling press corps a note about the secretary plans to visit just South Korea or just China or just Japan. Every time, I’d smirk and bet that he or she would end up going to all three countries — and I was right. That had become a tradition — the Japanese in particular considered it an affront to be ignored by their staunchest ally in favor of Seoul or Beijing.
In early 2008, Condoleezza Rice had to go to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s inauguration, and initially had no intention of stopping in Tokyo or Beijing. But after diplomatic pressure from both capitals, she caved in. I skipped Tokyo on that trip.
Clinton herself fell victim to protocol in May. She had to co-chair the so-called U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in Beijing, and to drop by the 2010 Shanghai Expo in Shanghai. For months, her aides said that no other stops were planned, but in the end, she went to Japan and South Korea, too.
It seems that this time Clinton successfully defied protocol. It helped that she met with her Japanese and Chinese counterparts at the annual meeting of foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Vietnam. But I have little doubt that, in spite of those meetings, the Japanese and Chinese still lobbied for her to drop by their capitals.
By the way, this ASEAN meeting was the first I’ve missed in years. I always thought attending a high-level summit in Southeast Asia in late July was a misery because of the very hot and humid weather, but DC is much worse these days.
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A pushback from the military and a skeptical secretary of defense have dashed the hopes of some Obama administration officials for closer cooperation with a global war-crimes tribunal that some fear could prosecute American service members, current and former U.S. officials say.
Although the United States has rejoined the meetings of the International Criminal Court (ICC) member states after an eight-year absence, it has taken little new action to work more closely with the court.
In fact, many international legal analysts argue that there was a more significant change in U.S. policy toward the ICC from the first to the second term of President George W. Bush than there has been since President Obama took office last year…
A dispute over the State Department budget has pitted the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, against a fellow Democrat and head of the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, and the Obama administration.
Mr. Conrad led an effort to slash President Obama’s $58 billion international affairs request for 2011 by $4 billion, a cut his committee approved last week. Despite protests from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and all her living predecessors, the senator stood his ground on Wednesday.
“The fact is that international funding has grown significantly in recent years,” he said. “Budgets are about setting priorities. Our budget provides a responsible and balanced approach”…
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The State Department plans to create seven new senior positions to ensure that a public-diplomacy perspective is always “incorporated” in policy-making around the world, as well as to respond quickly to negative coverage of the United States in foreign media.
In an ambitious strategy that goes beyond any previous efforts to reach out to other countries, the Obama administration “seeks to become woven into the fabric of the daily lives of people” there, its top public-diplomacy official said Wednesday.
“We must do a better job of listening, learn how people in other countries and cultures listen to us, understand their desires and aspirations, and provide them with information and services of value to them,” said Judith A. McHale, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs…
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Nicholas Kralev talks about the Senate confirmation hearing of Condoleezza Rice, President George W. Bush’s nominee for secretary of state, on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” program, on January 18, 2005.
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