Q: As you leave office, you now have China and Japan increasingly at odds over the Senkaku Islands. There are other territorial disputes over islands in this region. A lot of foreign policy analysts mention this part of the world as a potential flashpoint. Do you think the South China Sea is an example of the limits of the United States influence? Or do you think you can make the case that that you have actually influenced China’s behavior?
I would make the case that we have influenced the behavior of the nations in the region, in a way that has pulled them together, particularly through Asean to seek a code of conduct, which had been promised but not delivered in years past.
In the last two years, there’s been a move toward a rules-based framework that should be used to resolve these disputes. Now having said that, it’s going to be very difficult.
Interview With Hillary Clinton
by MICHAEL R. GORDON and MARK LANDLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/us/politics/interview-with-hillary-clinton.html?pagewanted=all
Hillary Rodham Clinton was interviewed by Michael R. Gordon and Mark Landler on Thursday, her second-to-last day as secretary of state. Below are excerpts from the interview, which was conducted in her State Department office. Some of the questions have been edited for brevity.
Q: President Clinton said that one of his greatest regrets was not doing more to stop genocide in Rwanda. We have a situation in Syria where more than 60,000 Syrians have been killed. [U.N. envoy Lakhdar] Brahimi has been making no headway diplomatically. The conflict is beginning to spread regionally with Iran’s intervention with its Quds Forces, its arms supplies, Hezbollah’s participation and now the Israeli strike on the convoy in Syria. Looking back, can you say that the United States has done everything it could have to stem the killing in Syria? And when you look back on this episode in the book you are going to write, do you think that you might regret that the United States wasn’t able to do more in your years here?
A: I think those are two separate questions, Michael. I think that certainly there will always be regrets when you are in positions like this one when it comes to the horrific slaughter of people trying to express themselves and defend themselves by a government that seems to have lost all sense of responsibility toward their own population. That is definitely a terrible set of facts on the ground that we try to deal with every single day.
However, when you look at it as we have, the United States has been very active. We have worked assiduously, first to create some kind of legitimate opposition presence that we would then serve as the vehicle by which we conducted negotiations and tired to use that to push [President Bashir al-]Assad over the edge of legitimacy.
That turned out to be much harder than it should have. Unlike Libya, where we had a Transitional National Council, despite all of their many difficulties there was an address. There were people I met with. I met them. I looked them in the eye. I was able to go back and say to the president, “These are people you can count on, you can bet on and we need to help them.”
For the first year, unfortunately, the people who were trying to represent the opposition outside Syria just couldn’t gain traction or credibility, and it made it difficult not only for the United States but many other countries to really do what we had hoped we could do.
But we never stopped trying, and we now have a new opposition coalition largely established because of our intensive efforts, my personal efforts, Robert Ford and our team. And yesterday for the very first time [Syria’s top opposition leader Moaz] al-Khatib came out and said, O.K., under certain conditions we can actually begin a political dialogue with this regime. That took a long time to get to, unfortunately nearly two years.
Secondly, we have been very active in training and equipping, with nonlethal tools, a lot of Syrian oppositionists who would come out of Syria and go back in. And we think it has made a difference in their ability to coalesce and organize.
Thirdly, we have been the architect and main mover of the very tough sanctions against Assad, which we know are causing problems because Iran has limited ability at this point to replace everything they don’t have, like diesel fuel. So we think that’s making a difference.
And finally on the humanitarian front, we are the most generous donor. It has been very difficult to get the aid and the money into exactly where it is needed. We have gotten a lot better about that. And we have worked also with our neighbors in the region.
Having said all that, Assad is still killing. The opposition is increasingly being represented by Al Qaeda extremist elements, including representatives of Al Qaeda in Iraq and Al Qaeda in the Maghreb and Al Qaeda, you know, messages coming, we believe, from the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a semi-autonomous region in northwestern Pakistan], which is deeply distressing and unfortunately adds to the narrative with the Assad regime.
Now along those lines, I have spent enormous amounts of time and capital working with first Kofi Annan and now Brahimi. They are both very capable diplomats. They each have a lot of successes behind their names.
The role that Russia has played cannot be understated in terms of preventing the kind of action that should have been taken in the Security Council. So I worked with [the initial U.N. envoy on Syria] Kofi Annan. We convened the meeting in Geneva. I personally, literally, wrote and negotiated the accord for the action group. We had every reason when we left there to believe that the Russians were finally going to do something. They wanted airtight language against military intervention, but they were willing to throw in on the political transition. A new executive authority would have to be established. And there were willing to even tighten sanctions on individuals and institutions.
We leave Geneva. We go back to the U.N. And all of a sudden, whether it is because they exceeded their brief in Geneva or they had a change of mind, put on the brakes again. So it has been an ongoing effort to put together, inside and outside of the U.N., enough of an international coalition to actually take some action, and we’re still working toward that.
Q: If one looks back at how the Clinton administration handled the Kosovo crisis, it became clear that Russia would not support a new Security Council resolution authorizing intervention to protect the Kosovars. So the United States elected not to seek a new resolution and instead justified intervention on the basis of international law. Why have you and the Obama administration taken the position that a stronger stance on Syria requires a new Security Council resolution, which means the formal endorsement of the Russian government, when that has always appeared to be a highly unlikely proposition?
A: Well, I think that first of all Kosovo, despite the brutality and the horrors of what was happening in the Balkans, was immensely simple in lots of ways than what we’re talking about in Syria.
And the approach that the Clinton administration was thinking about was much more focused and possible than the difficulties, the borders and the hostilities taking place in Syria allow.
Secondly, the potential of getting NATO support right now is quite challenging, if not impossible. And that’s not a comment on NATO, because NATO did Libya and we did this unprecedented partnership with Arab countries and the Arab League. But there is not the same level of willingness within NATO to do something like that again right now. I think that you can debate whether that should or shouldn’t be, but I think that’s a fair description.
So part of what the United States really has attempted to do in this situation is what we were able to do in Libya. Because for many nations now, even those in NATO, they don’t feel comfortable moving forward without some kind of internationally legally recognized basis for action. So times are difficult. I think that Kosovo was different and the times are different.
And we also are well aware that Russia is an actor in Syria. Russia has a naval base. It attempts to continue supplying weapons to Assad. It has demonstrated its willingness to perhaps do even more to help Assad. So it is not a passive opposition. It is an active one with potential consequences that has to factored in.
Q: On Burma, we have learned that you and your team overcame a certain amount of resistance internally, from the Pentagon on security grounds, from human rights officials, that doing any deal with the generals was unacceptable, and were able to make the case for a diplomatic opening. I am wondering how you made that case. It was described to me as you doing a little bit of an end run and going straight to the president.
A: Well, first of all I believed strongly when I came in that there were some places that we had to test with respect to changing our relationship with them and seeing if we could find ways to incentivize change from within. So in the very early days I made a decision that we wanted to test Burma. And we started sending diplomats there to meet with officials across the board — N.L.D. [National League for Democracy, a Burmese political party] representatives, generals who would meet with our people, obviously Aung San Suu Kyi in very limited circumstances and Kurt [Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs] was the point person for me on sending these diplomats out, evaluating their reports and then finally I sent him, which was the highest profile visit we had made to Burma in quite some time.
He came back after a very full set of meetings, including with Aung San Suu Kyi, and said, “You know, I just feel it. I feel like there is movement here and that we can help push it. And we need to have a formal process at the same time looking at our Burma policy.”
Because I was well aware, as you just said, a lot of people have a very black-and-white view of these situations: why would we engage, why would I send anybody there?
So I did a couple of things. I knew that there were some very strong supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi and of sanctions on Burma in the Senate led by Mitch McConnell, who could scuttle a lot of what I might try to do. I went to see him and I said: “This is off the record, this is just me talking to you, Mitch. I want to tell you that I am trying to put together an effort to test what is happening in Burma.”
He said, ‘I don’t think that will work.” I said, “It may or may not work, but what I want to know if you will support us trying.”
We talked and he finally said, “Nothing else has worked. You might as well.” And on the way out of the office, he stopped, and right before you get to the door of his inner office there is a handwritten letter from Aung San Suu Kyi to him, thanking him for all the support he has given her over the years.
So once I had kind of enough evidence and had developed this plan I said to the White House, “I think we need to test this and take some chances here.” And again, you know, debate, debate, debate was happening.
Eventually, I needed to do something very dramatic to demonstrate we were going to do this opening. So I should go. I talked to the president and I said, “I think this is real. I think we need to test it.” And the only way for me to feel comfortable advising you on this is to go.
So he was supportive of my going. So we did the announcement that I was going to go, and I went. I was very careful to pay a lot of attention, and spend a lot of time with, the generals. Because I had during the process of thinking this through had some great conversations with the Indonesians. Because [the Indonesian president, Bambang] Yudhoyono had been telling me “I think, Burma is going to change.” And he personally had invested a lot in working with the generals. Because he had been a general, taken off the uniform and was a democratically elected president.
There still is a long way to go for Burma’s democracy.
Q: What was President Obama’s attitude on this?
When I went, we had no idea what was going to happen. The president basically said, “Look, I’m behind you on this.” He had people in the White House who were very worried, even negative. “You’re rewarding them. They haven’t done enough.” We dealt with all of that.
So it was really between the president and me, and he trusted me and he said, “Lets see what happens.” There was no discussion about him going, until I go.
And what I told the Burmese, “We’re going to action for action.” You release political prisoners, that we believe is authentic, we send an ambassador. You do economic reforms, we lift sanctions. It was just an action for action agenda. And slowly we saw [Burma’s president] Thein Sein and his close advisers moving in that direction.
Q: As you leave office, you now have China and Japan increasingly at odds over the Senkaku Islands. There are other territorial disputes over islands in this region. A lot of foreign policy analysts mention this part of the world as a potential flashpoint. Do you think the South China Sea is an example of the limits of the United States influence? Or do you think you can make the case that that you have actually influenced China’s behavior?
I would make the case that we have influenced the behavior of the nations in the region, in a way that has pulled them together, particularly through Asean [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations] to seek a code of conduct, which had been promised but not delivered in years past.
In the last two years, there’s been a move toward a rules-based framework that should be used to resolve these disputes. Now having said that, it’s going to be very difficult.
Q. But what about China’s behavior itself? Do you see any change in their behavior?
I think it has served a very important purpose of helping to create a broader recognition of Chinese behavior that predated our saying anything, but which had led to real anxiety.
We keep saying that we want China to be a responsible stakeholder in a rules-based global order. And being a responsible stakeholder means that you have to present your claims if you can’t resolve it between you and the other claimant or you have to negotiate a fair, acceptable compromise. I think there has been some movement on that with respect to some of the nations.
There’s still going to be belligerence, and there’s going to be a lot of very hot rhetoric, and there’s going to be a flotilla of Chinese vessels in the region. But I think we’ve helped support a strong case of the kind of framework that we believe in.
Q: During the negotiations over Chen Guangcheng [the blind Chinese dissident] the talks became very difficult. Some officials thought it might not be salvageable. What made you think you could resolve this?
I believed we were going to figure out a way through this. Because I knew that the Chinese leadership and our leadership both valued the investments that we all had made, not only in the strategic and economic dialogue, but in creating a more durable framework for our relationship. It was a very, very tough set of negotiations.
And I was pulled into it, as I recall, on Wednesday night when we thought we had a deal. And then Mr. Chen decided that he did not like the deal we had negotiated, which, you know, caused a great deal of anxiety on the part of our team and we had to had to go back and renegotiate, which the Chinese were understandably quite unhappy about. And so there was a lot of drama. And I believed I would eventually have to get into it, but we would have to let a lot of the steam off.
[On Thursday], I had a lunch that include the main negotiators for the Chinese side and then I went to a large event on our people-to-people relationships. There were two incredible, attractive young people, one Chinese and one American, and they stood up and spoke about how important this relationship was and how valuable their experiences had been. Most of the main players on the Chinese side were there. It was a moment when I looked at all of them, and I know they’re thinking: “We don’t want this all to break up over this guy. What are we going to do?” I could just see it.
The next morning we had a pre-existing event with American and Chinese business people, and we were back in one of the big beautiful all-glass pavilions. And I sent a note to Dai [China foreign policy official Dai Bingguo] saying, “You and I have got to talk.”
I made what I knew would be the kind of final argument about why, but we couldn’t risk seeing our relationship founder over this. We would never agree on what happened and why, but we had to resolve it. So then Dai gave the go-ahead for his side to negotiate with ours again and we got an agreement. It was incredibly intense, but I was always confident.