Chapter 145: Foreign Relations

Foreign trips are a mix of smoke and mirrors and public relations. What they usually aren’t is anything substantive. Nobody flies halfway around the planet to meet with the high and mighty without everybody knowing what is going to happen ahead of time. So why do them at all? For one reason, just like in any other form of business, it’s usually helpful to actually meet the guy you’re doing business with and look him in the eye. At the minimum you can start to get a sense of the other person.

We were scheduled for eight days in mid-November, visiting London, Paris, Moscow, and Tel-Aviv. Figure two days in each spot, and travel at night. I was not expecting miracles, but this could be interesting. I was the new kid, untested and untried, the billionaire playboy who had somehow managed to be in the right place at the right time when the real President died. Expectations were low. I think the State Department would be happy if I simply managed to use the right spoon and fork at the various state dinners we would be attending.

I was traveling with the Secretary of State, and he was a well-known commodity on the world stage. He had become very high profile back during the Gulf War and had managed to avoid stepping on his dick in the ten years since then. In most foreign capitals he was much better known than I was. Marilyn and I were both going, and the kids were staying home. Colin’s wife, Alma, was also traveling with us.

I was current on what our history was with each country, including what had been planned under President Bush. That didn’t mean I agreed with his plans. I was less than thrilled with his antagonistic view and tone concerning Russia. There were a bunch of people who longed for the good old days of the Cold War, when we only had one enemy, the dirty Commies. They were evil people you could point to and say were bad. Since a lot of the more hard-core neo-conservatives dated back to the Reagan and Bush 41 years, when the ‘Evil Empire’ was given its nickname, they still thought that way. It was easy to point at Russia; it wasn’t so easy to point at radical Islamic terrorists.

I had argued this out with both Bush and Cheney. We had spent fifty years in a European-centric world view. Certainly, the army I had served in was all about fighting the Soviets. The Russians were going to flood the Fulda Gap with T-72s and BMPs, and the 82^nd was going to be dropped in to stop them. That was the theory, in any case. In reality, for fifty years the Russians never attacked in Europe, and the 82^nd went everywhere but Europe! However, World War II had ended in 1945, and fifty-six years later, we still had armored units facing Eastern Europe, even though the Soviet Union had collapsed twelve years earlier. Worse, nobody seemed to think this was a strange idea! The Russians couldn’t successfully invade their refrigerator right now, let alone a foreign country. Their tanks were rusting to pieces in the fields, they didn’t have the money to pay for gas to fly their planes, and their ships and subs were being slowly sold to other countries, at least the ones that hadn’t rusted out to the point they sank at the docks.

It wasn’t helping that Vladimir Putin was taking a more international stand than his predecessor. Boris Yeltsin had been almost exclusively focused on internal Kremlin politics and policies. Putin had a much firmer hold on power in Russia and was able to focus on foreign affairs. He had a very good grasp on the fact that Russia was in the crosshairs of more than a few Islamic radicals, and it was a lot easier for them to get to Russia than it was to get to America. They had been fighting in Chechnya and Dagestan for most of the last decade. Meanwhile the neocons were yapping about the need to strengthen NATO by admitting former Soviet Bloc client states and moving anti-ballistic missiles and armed forces closer to the Russian borders. If nothing else, I needed to ratchet down the nonsense. We could start by at least being a lot politer to each other.

Powell didn’t agree with me completely. He still had a European focus, though that had changed somewhat. Like me, however, he was not possessed of an overwhelming desire to get pushy with the Russians. I had a much more realpolitik view of the world. I had to live with the world as it really was and didn’t have a burning desire to replace it with something else, especially something that wouldn’t work. I remembered how on my first trip through, the Bush crew had allied themselves with the Republic of Georgia, and then looked like they were pulling their puds when the Russians invaded in 2008 and gave them a quick spanking. The entire world knew we weren’t going to have a nuclear confrontation over Georgia, but we certainly managed to look stupid during the process. The harsh truth was that most of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus were in the Russian sphere of influence, just like the Western Hemisphere was in ours. There was no need to get pissy about it.

So, the plan was to visit England and France and meet and greet the powers that be, go on to Moscow and tone down the rhetoric with Putin, and then head to Israel. Sharon had invited me twice so far. He was on the front lines, so to speak, and dealt with the crazies daily. I wanted to ramp up our intelligence capabilities, and he wanted some money for weapons and for us to shut up about settlements and other shit. We basically just needed to do business, and I had spent a number of years doing business. We could get along.

Great Britain and France were the first two stops. In some ways they were the easiest and most ornamental. Tony Blair was the British Prime Minister, and I was now his third American President to deal with. He was Labour Party, which was closer in sympathies to the Democrats than the Republicans, but they ran a Parliamentary system in any case. Most importantly, unless the Americans got stupid and crazy (and sometimes even if they did), the British would back us up.

The French were a different matter. There was a real love-hate relationship there, and they tended to do things their own way and be rude about it in the process. Jacques Chirac was the President, and I was his third American President as well. In some ways I didn’t really need to go to Paris, but Marilyn made some comments about visiting there when she was in high school, and we had never gone before. Maybe I could get a few minutes and take her to see the Eiffel Tower.

This was really our first trip to anyplace exotic for political reasons. Marilyn and I had flown together around the country during the election and before, when I was in business. As the Vice President I was mostly sent to the drearier parts of the planet as punishment for being outspoken, and Marilyn stayed home for those trips. I offered to let her stay home rather than meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace, and was promptly asked, “If I divorce you, do I get to keep the White House?” Frank and Ari both heard her ask that and both just about rolled on the floor laughing.

It’s a seven-hour flight from D.C. to London, but you are also traveling east five time zones, so it takes twelve hours to get there. Before we left, I saw John McCain, now officially sworn in as Vice President, and asked him not to start any nuclear wars without me. He gave me an evil laugh and sent me off. We left Andrews on Wednesday, November 7, at 8:30 PM, and landed at Heathrow the next morning at 8:30 AM on Thursday the 8 ^th. One nice feature was that the President and First Lady have their own suite in the nose of the plane. Colin and Alma would catch a few winks in some nice first-class seats that leaned way back, but it still wasn’t the same as a bed. I teased Marilyn about that. We hadn’t fooled around on an airplane since I began using security details back when I got into Congress. I don’t think we slept more than five or six hours, but it beat an airliner seat all to hell. We were even able to take showers and clean up before changing for landing.

It was more than a little weird leaving Air Force One at Heathrow. The only other time I had flown in the plane was as the Acting President when I flew to New York right after 9-11. There had been zero pomp and circumstance involved, and I had traveled with just a few people. We had an emergency and decorum be damned. We flew in, went down the stairs, and moved out.

Now it was nothing but pomp and circumstance! According to the briefing paper I was given, Prince Charles was standing in for his mother the Queen and would greet us at the airport. I would review some ceremonial troops, and then we would be taken to the Hyatt Regency London, where we were staying. We would freshen up and settle in, and then Marilyn and I would split up. I would meet with Prime Minister Blair while Marilyn was taken on a tour of London and a visit to an elementary school. Somebody had figured out that my wife had a degree in teaching, even if she had never taught a day in her life.

The one thing I really wished we had kept when we threw the Brits out all those years ago was a separate Head of State. In Britain the Queen was the Head of State, while the Prime Minister was the Head of Government. This is very common in parliamentary systems. The Queen gets a nice paycheck and deals with all the ceremony. The Prime Minister doesn’t have to do that stuff. I was constantly switching back and forth between running a country and shaking hands. It was not uncommon to leave a budget meeting to congratulate the top selling Girl Scout cookie salesperson who had won a trip to Washington, go back to a different budget meeting, get yanked out to meet and greet the Wisconsin Dairy Princess, and then head off to meet the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It’s a major pain in the tail. I know it’s important, but it really makes you lose focus, and takes an immense amount of time. In Britain, it lets them do something with all those otherwise unemployed princes and princesses.

Marilyn had looked over at me while our trip was being reviewed prior to our leaving Washington, and asked, “Just what am I going to do on this trip?”

I shrugged and replied, “Something First Lady-ish, I guess. Whatever you do, try not to get me in trouble.”

“You’re no help!”

I wasn’t overly sympathetic. “So, you really didn’t want to visit Buckingham Palace and meet the Queen? I mean, we can always send you home...”

“Will you behave? I never said that!”

I shrugged some more. “I wonder what Charlie and the girls would do over here. Think they might get into any trouble?”

“We’d probably end up with another War of 1812! Maybe that wouldn’t be so good,” she laughed.

“So, don’t piss anybody off. Just smile and say how everything is wonderful. Sort of like I had to do when campaigning,” I told her.

“Just as long as nobody serves us lutefisk. Your sister told me about that. Even Stormy wouldn’t eat that!”

I had to laugh. “Could you imagine Stormy rampaging through Buckingham Palace? God help those poor little Corgis the Queen likes!” Marilyn had to laugh at that vision, too.

So, while Marilyn and everybody else went out the back door, I went out the front, smiling and waving at everybody and went down the stairs. At the bottom I met up with Prince Charles, who shook my hand and led me over to a small podium. Beyond that was a double line of smart looking troops, with a red carpet between them, heading over to the limousine. Off to the side, out of sight of the cameras, were a pair of C-5 Galaxys that had brought in the support. First the Prince made a short speech welcoming me to the United Kingdom, and then I returned the favor, saying thank you and how I looked forward to getting to know the British people better. I simply read something the State Department trotted out every time we did this. I would do the same thing at every stop, and simply change the name of the country I was visiting.

It really was a lot like campaigning for office.

Afterwards I marched down the line of troops, the prince at my side, and being trailed by a colonel. Nothing was out of place, not that I expected it to be, and I commented positively to the colonel. Then it was time to head out. The prince got in his Rolls Royce limo and headed back to the Palace, and Colin, Alma, Marilyn, and I got into the Presidential Cadillac and went to the Hyatt Regency. The Ambassador and his wife would meet us there and accompany Colin and me to meet the Prime Minister.

Marilyn teased me and asked, “So, were the troops up to snuff enough for you?”

I chuckled at that. “You’d probably better ask Colin that one. I never made it past captain, and he was a four-star general.” Colin smiled and chuckled too and nodded in response. “Still, they seemed okay. They’re ceremonial troops. They are supposed to look clean and shiny. You never know how good they are until the bullets start flying.”

Colin commented, “That’s true enough, but the British are better at that than most. I’m no expert on British medals, but a few of those men have seen action. I’d say they were good troops.”

I nodded in agreement. Turning to my wife, I said, “The real test is when they are out in the field. If the troops are dirty but their guns are clean it’s usually a much better sign than the reverse.”

“Worst of all is when the troops are dirty, and the guns are dirty! You see that, just get out of there before somebody does something stupid!” added the Secretary of State. I nodded in agreement.

Marilyn looked over at Colin’s wife and said, “He’s been out of the Army almost twenty years and he still thinks he’s a paratrooper!”

Alma sympathized. “Colin’s the exact same way.” Both Colin and I snorted at this, and she added, “You two boys are retired now. You can stop acting like little boys playing soldier now.”

The Hyatt Regency is a very nice hotel, and I think we were renting damn near every room in the place. For certain we were renting several entire floors. For security reasons, the Secret Service had rooms above and below our suite. Add in the Powells, the guy with the football, Josh Bolten, Ari Fleischer, and the traveling staff, security, and communications - we probably had an entourage of a hundred people or more. We would repeat the process three more times before heading home again.

Ambassador Farish and his wife greeted us and ushered us into our suite. He was a Republican businessman and contributor with no previous State Department experience, but he seemed adequate to the task. I assumed he had employees at the embassy who did the real work involved. I couldn’t recall ever meeting the man, but he was a Texas friend of George’s and we moved in different business circles.

I was still piecing together a coherent strategy on foreign relations, and my advisers were shooting holes in it left and right. Vice President McCain didn’t completely agree with me on what I was working towards. That was fine with me, because they might just be smarter than me. I certainly hoped so! Maybe I could learn something from them. What I was working towards was some form of containment towards radical Islamics.

The predominant form of foreign policy that America had was formulated shortly after the end of the Second World War, when the true nature of communism and Soviet expansionism became obvious, was containment. Originally articulated by George Kennan, it envisioned that western governments, led by the United States, would enter into alliances that would keep Soviet influence limited to where it was, and prevent it from going further. This was the Cold War and lasted for roughly fifty years until the Soviet Union collapsed. It wasn’t pretty. It was fairly messy, and the Cold War had a disturbing tendency to heat up at times, like in Korea and Viet Nam. Regardless, we managed to stabilize the world and keep from going to nuclear war, and to ultimately win.

The biggest threat to civilization now wasn’t communism, but radical Islamic fundamentalism. Al Qaeda wasn’t so much a specific group of nut jobs as much as it was a philosophy. Why couldn’t we in the West figure out a way to contain the nut jobs? For years we had been backing one local strongman after another, to keep the peace. They would take our money and weapons and either use them to start a war, use them on their own population, or use them against us. It might be cold blooded but why bother with trying to keep the peace? If they didn’t bother us, why should we care how many of each other they killed? In effect, cut them off from the rest of the world. Buy their oil, don’t sell them weapons, don’t support them with charity and donations, and don’t let their fundamentalists loose.

There were problems with doing this, of course, and every country had different answers and problems, both in the West and in the Muslim world. The country with the largest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia, considered itself an Asian country, not an Arab country, and their entire outlook was considerably different than the countries in the Middle East. The fundamentalists varied from country to country and some countries had them locked down better than others.

The Western European countries had their own issues. Muslims were a much higher percentage of the population in many European countries than in America, running five to ten percent in some countries. They generally hadn’t done well assimilating into the local culture and were not appreciated. France had Algerians, Italy had Libyans and Tunisians, Germany had Turkish nationals, some were there illegally, some were on work visas, some had overstayed their visas. It was very messy. Furthermore, it was very easy to say that we shouldn’t sell Muslim countries weapons, but weapons manufacturing was a very high profit business and very competitive. France was going to sell the Arabs planes and ships and such, no matter what they might promise publicly.

On the other hand, some form of containment had some real benefits, both in terms of lives lost and dollars spent. The locals might not like us occasionally bombing them when they started getting too big for their britches, but they really didn’t like us when we landed on their doorstep. Forget about picking sides in the local version of a civil war! The Sunnis hated the Shiites, the moderates hated the radicals, the Muslims hated the Christians and the Jews, but everybody hated foreign invaders! Unless you embraced Genghis Khan’s solution to the problem when the Tartars rebelled against him, in which he lined the entire Tartar nation up in a row and slit the throats of everybody over the height of a cart handle, you would never get anybody to go along with you.

This was the total antithesis of the neocons’ battle cry. We needed to go into these countries forcibly, throw out the dictators, hand them the Constitution (suitably translated, of course), and install free elections and a two-party democratic system. Never mind that nobody in most of these places understood the idea of an election. Never mind that forty percent of the population in some countries was illiterate and couldn’t even read a ballot, let alone understand it. Never mind that women were still considered property and that in some of these shitholes they still had slavery in place. America was a burning flame of freedom, and if some of these places got singed, so be it! Once one of them fell in a quick and glorious and cheap campaign, the neighbors would immediately understand the wonders that we had brought and overthrow their leaders to get in on the freedom.

We spent ten years, tens of thousands of casualties, and trillions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and all we did was piss off a huge part of the world. We certainly didn’t bring democracy to these places; both ended up in civil war. My thought? They hate us already! We don’t need to invade them to piss them off. They’re already pissed at us. Let the bastards rot. It’s cheaper.

I knew it was more complicated than that. We couldn’t embargo dozens of countries. We would still get drawn into fights, much like we had to just do in Afghanistan, and what we were still doing with Saddam Hussein in Iraq. We were going to need to keep armed forces around the world. However, the mix and locations needed to change. Our military was one that was designed to face off against the Soviet Union. It was very high tech and very expensive - much too expensive to use against raghead assholes. We didn’t need invisible fighters and bombers, but we did need tankers and cargo planes. We didn’t need multi-billion-dollar destroyers, but we did need some corvettes and frigates to do convoy duty and antipiracy patrols. We didn’t need self-propelled push-button one-man howitzers, but we did need commandos and high-quality infantry.

Force locations were in the same fix. Why were we defending the German border when the Iron Curtain had rusted to pieces? Why were we involved in Bosnia when it was right next door to NATO? We needed to pivot our forces from Europe to Asia, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific and Indian Oceans. We needed new alliances, and to reformulate old ones.

It was complicated and sophisticated, not an approach suitable for sound bites and political grandstanding. Worse, while I understood the costs of a failed approach, having seen it originally, I knew that others wouldn’t believe me. Besides, what if I was wrong? No matter how smart I was, if terrorists managed to make another spectacular strike, the nation would put boots on the ground somewhere, and I wouldn’t be able to stop it. We were going to have to play smarter than ever before.

I discussed these ideas with both Tony Blair and, a few days later in Paris, Jacques Chirac. The results were predictable. Britain thought I had a good idea. France would give it some thought, but they were smarter than us (and everybody else, too.) Neither wanted to invade anybody, though both had capabilities to do so, at least nearby in Africa and in Europe. Both lied through their teeth about limiting arms sales.

Otherwise, the trips to Britain and France were successful. Neither Marilyn nor I insulted anybody or spilled soup on the Queen. We said nice things about the British and the French and didn’t stick our noses in any sort of local politics. We took boat rides on the Thames and the Seine and got to see the Eiffel Tower. There was a huge amount of residual sympathy from the devastation of 9-11, and since we had stopped our campaign in Afghanistan before we left home, that wasn’t an issue. France was surprisingly sophisticated regarding that since they had done similar things with the French Foreign Legion over the years. Yes, there really is a French Foreign Legion, and they are as tough a bunch of bastards as you are likely to find. I had seen a few of their officers once while I was in the 82 ^nd when they were doing some cross training and familiarization. The Frogs used them as expendable mercenaries in all sorts of shitholes.

So, anyway, London and Paris went okay. In a lot of ways, it was simply a chance for the old pros to get to meet the new kid on the block. He was different than the last kid who lived in that house across the street, but he looked like he would be there awhile. Even if we didn’t solve the problems of the world, I thought we had accomplished something, and Colin Powell indicated that I hadn’t stepped on my crank. And besides, if I ever started thinking that living in the White House was like living in a museum, all I needed to remember was that little side trip through Buckingham Palace. There are some fascinating things that never make it into the usual tour itinerary! Amazing place!

Russia was a more interesting trip. Vladimir Putin was Russia’s latest strong man, and even though they had nominally embraced democracy, it was a thin embrace. All the pre-trip briefings had stressed that it was a nation of contradictions. They rejected communism but preferred a strong ruler. The Russian Mafia vied with billionaire oligarchs to control the economy, so you had a kleptocracy challenging a plutocracy. Parts of the country were modern, parts were Third World, and the only reason anybody feared them was that they had nukes. I remember how my parents visited there on my first time through, and my dad came back and told me about the trip. His comment? “Why in the world were we afraid of them for fifty years? They’re broke!”

Part of Putin’s political calculus was to use foreign affairs to deflect the public’s attention from domestic problems, a surprisingly common tactic around the world. In this he was aided by the fact that the Russian economy was just starting to rebuild after the economic collapse of the ‘90s. Both he and Russia were feeling stronger.

So far, Bush had simply been tossing around ideas and talking about the need to ‘rein in’ Russia, but we hadn’t really done anything yet. We had brought Poland, Hungary, and the Czechs into NATO during the Clinton years, but so far, we had just been talking about bringing in the rest of Eastern Europe. I knew once we did that, the Russians would begin treating us as hostile again, which would only be exacerbated when we started moving Patriot anti-missile batteries towards the Russian border. I could see no possible reason to piss them off just for the sake of pissing them off.

Colin did have some good ideas. We’d had a meeting in early October, after we had decided on the trip. “Okay, so you are planning on caving in on NATO and the anti-missile issue.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he held up a hand to stop me. “That’s what it’s going to look like. What do you want in return? We need some specific points to ask about, and at least get a discussion going. What do you want from the Russians?”

When he put it that away, it made sense. We were going to do some negotiating, so we needed to figure out what the bid and offer prices were going to be. “Cooperation on anti-terrorism, for one thing, and not just some speeches. We are going to be setting up some form of counter-terrorism intelligence center, and I am going to want active cooperation with them. We send a request, they respond, and vice versa. If they want to send people to help, we will return the favor. I want real cooperation. This is what is going to be the problem for most of the next century.”

Colin nodded. “What else?”

Pushy bastard! “They need to play nicer with their neighbors, at least their European ones. I don’t care what they do on the backside of nowhere, but they can’t be as pushy with the Baltic States and the Ukraine. I know it’s complicated, but if they ratchet their shit down, so will we. They also really need to cut any ties with Hugo Chavez. They stay out of our back yard, and we can stay out of theirs.”

“They are going to claim that is interference in their internal politics.” Again, he held up his hand to slow me down. “I know it’s not, but that will be their response. Okay, so we need to firm up some of these ideas and get specific. I’ve never heard that you were a big poker player...” I shook my head at that, and he continued, “ ... but I know you are used to making deals. We need to make a deal with them.” We worked on that prior to the trip.

The schedule in Russia was that we left Paris late and landed in Moscow very early. It’s only a three-and-a-half-hour flight, and Moscow is only two hours ahead of Paris. We left at 10:00 PM and arrived 3:30 AM and headed directly to the Moscow Ritz Carlton. International travel was beginning to wear on us, and we all got some sleep before heading to the Kremlin mid-morning. The formal state dinner was actually for the next evening. We would be in discussions with Putin and Kasyanov all day, and then take in the ballet at the Bolshoi that night, more meetings tomorrow, and then the fancy dinner.

According to my State Department briefing, Putin spoke Russian and fluent German, which was probably why a big chunk of his KGB career had been spent in Germany. Supposedly he was taking English lessons, although to what extent he was fluent was questionable. We would be using translators. So be it. My Russian was limited to da, nyet, sookin sin, and yob tvou mat! That worked out to yes, no, son of a bitch, and go fuck your mother. (It’s amazing the junk you pick up and store in your memory.) I didn’t figure to use the last two phrases anywhere in public, and Marilyn would probably smack me if I used them around her, especially since I would have to translate them for her.

We met at 11:00 AM for a small photo session, to be followed by lunch, after which we would have a working session. During the photo session you sit there, side by side, and smile and don’t say anything more important than “Do you get a lot of snow here?” The answer is “A whole shitload!” or something to that effect. Whatever you do, don’t say anything meaningful while the cameras and recorders are running. More than one American President has stepped on his dick by saying something private and having it run on the air that evening. I kept asking about the weather until everybody had left, and we were able to get down to business.

Putin started off by having his Prime Minister, Mikhail Kasyanov, review a litany of complaints about George Bush’s speeches and actions related to NATO. He argued with the NATO expansion with Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic (even though that had been done by the Democrats under Clinton) and argued strenuously against any continued expansion into the Baltics or further east. Secretary of State Powell and I kept our mouths shut and listened. The complaints were nothing new.