Warren Christopher is so reserved that he once dismissed the idea of writing his memoirs because "there would be too many vertical pronouns."
That sort of modesty is a bit out of place among the self-promoters in Washington. But presidents keep turning to Christopher, grateful for his sound judgment, deep loyalty and reputation for integrity. In four years as Bill Clinton's secretary of state, Christopher faced a web of sticky foreign policy issues: Middle East peace, Russian democracy, violence in Haiti, Somalia and the former Yugoslavia. He visited 61 countries (including 34 separate stops in Israel alone), logging more than 700,000 miles on his Air Force jet. When he announced in November that he would step down from his Cabinet post, the New York Times praised his maturity, tenacity and reflection."
A 1949 graduate of the Stanford Law School, Christopher has long valued his ties to the University. He has served more than 15 years on the Stanford Board of Trustees, including three as its president. In late October, two weeks before the presidential election, he met with Stanford Editor Bob Cohn and Alumni Association Vice Chairman Rich Jaroslovsky, a 21-year veteran of the Wall Street Journal. They talked in Christopher's elegant wood-paneled office on the seventh floor of the State Department. Ever the diplomat, Christopher declined to comment on advice he might give Clinton for his second term. But he did chat openly about rogue nations, the challenges of post-Cold War diplomacy and why he is so attached to California.
The Interview
Stanford: You recently passed Jim Baker's mark for the most miles logged by a secretary of state in a single presidential term. Is it any coincidence that the two most widely traveled secretaries both served in the period immediately following the collapse of the Berlin Wall? Does this say something about how the job has changed over the last decade?
Christopher: It's probably a compliment to my endurance; I'm not sure what it says about my judgment.
I think you have a good point. All that travel is a reflection of some new responsibilities and new freedoms, new opportunities that the secretary of state has in this period. One of the overwhelming factors is the disappearance of communism as a monolithic threat to the United States. The United States has become the dominant power. There certainly are continuing threats around the world, and some new ones have emerged, such as the ethnic threats. Nevertheless I think there are opportunities in this period to address issues that we were not able to address when the world was polarized.
Stanford: What sort of issues?
Christopher: First, I think we're able to deal with global threats. In a polarized world, countries were constantly worried about joining an international approach to problems because they always got caught up in the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. But now you can make a case that we have a common interest with the rest of the world dealing with, for example, non-proliferation issues. And that's why it was so satisfactory during our term here to have extended the Non-Proliferation Treaty without conditions and to have gotten a signature just a few weeks ago on the Comprehensive Test Ban.
We also have an opportunity to work on global issues such as the environment. That's why I was so pleased to be at Stanford [last April] to announce the initiative on the environment. We also have to deal with terrorism; that's one of the issues that emerged in the penumbra of the Cold War period. Many of these things would not have been possible during the Cold War. Also, there has been a tremendous opportunity to deal with the global trading system and provide access to each other's markets--not just for the United States but for many countries. The president has been able to show the nexus between domestic and international issues, especially in the economic field. I think that will be one of the long-remembered things that the president has done. What we did at APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation]--the commitment to an open trading system in Asia by 2010 and 2020, the commitment to the Miami summit, the trans-Atlantic agenda with Europe--many of those things would not have been possible in a polarized world. Each of these global issues contributes to the secretary of state's new responsibilities for travel.
Stanford: Have all these new possibilities made the job of secretary of state more complex, or is it in some ways easier because the Soviet threat is removed?
Christopher: It's certainly easier in this sense: The constant threat of nuclear war has been diminished. No one would long for those days; no one who is thinking clearly would have a nostalgia for the greater simplicity of the old days. And yet, clearly the job is more complex than it was because of these new responsibilities and opportunities. I think it makes the job of being secretary of state more demanding, a very demanding job. The easy analysis of problems that could sometimes occur in the Cold War period--how would it affect the Soviet Union?--was always a predominant question. Containment was a paradigm that did make analysis simpler. Now the analysis is much more complicated.
Stanford: In the post-Cold War era, is it still critical to view the world through the strategic prism, or are we better served by tactical responses to particular trouble spots? Is Kissingerism dead?
Christopher: I think you have to view it through both a strategic and a tactical lens. From the beginning, we've tried to have a strategic vision. There's no single paradigm such as containment, but several things have dominated. The United States is a global power with global responsibilities, and hence has a responsibility for leadership that always has to be kept at the top of one's thinking. It's not entirely new, but it takes on new dimensions in this period.
Another thing that we identified very early, a second point, is the advantage now that the great powers are not a threat to each other. They don't have the kind of military rivalry that they've had in the past, and one of our aims is to try to preserve that situation. Hence an enormous amount of time has been spent on the relationship with Russia, the relationship with China, the relationship with Japan. It would be a terrible step backward if we lost the advantage we have now that all the great powers have relatively positive relationships.
Another overarching strategic idea has been economic issues and the importance of access to trade. And finally, keeping the global issues, the global threats, at the top of the agenda has always been one of the priorities.
Now within each of these strategic aspects are a number of tactical matters that you have to address on a day-in and day-out basis. For example, well, take almost any one of them. Look what we did with Russia in order to try to ensure that only one nuclear power emerged from the Soviet Union, not four--that Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus didn't end up nuclear powers. Those are tactical matters of great importance, but they have to be put under the strategic concept of trying to seek non-proliferation.
Stanford: You mentioned the environment as a global issue you can focus more attention on now that the Cold War is over. I read recently that you credited [former Stanford President] Don Kennedy with having a big impact on your thinking about the environment in global terms. Can you talk about that?
Christopher: Don awakened me to the significance of the environment as an issue that affected foreign policy. The stability of various regions and countries is importantly affected by their environment. You can certainly see that so dramatically in a place like Haiti, where deforestation and overpopulation of the country are major sources of instability. You can also see it in Central Europe, where what the Communists did to abuse the environment there--think of the rusting factories--has been a major source of instability.
Those are really the indirect effects on the environment. There are a number of direct effects. I'll never forget being in Ukraine and going to the hospital where they're still discovering the victims of Chernobyl, the babies who are born there with birth defects that can only be attributed to that catastrophe. So you have both the indirect effects and the direct effects on the environment, not just on people qua people, but on foreign policy. And this is something that Don has known and understood for a long time.
As long as we're talking about Stanford, I should add how impressed I am with the Institute for International Studies, particularly the work of Chip Blacker on emerging democracies around the world. It's really coming into its own.
Stanford: During the previous administration, we heard the phrase "new world order." For four years, it's a phrase that has seldom escaped the lips of this administration, probably for good reason. Is there still a new world order that we simply don't talk about? Or is there no need for a new world order beyond the fundamental strategic point that you mentioned earlier, that the United States is and must remain a world leader?
Christopher: I certainly don't want to quarrel with somebody else's concept; I don't want to get into a debate about the validity of that concept. Of course, my first responsibility here is to the United States, and to try to ensure that at the end of my tenure, we can say, hopefully, that the United States is more secure, more prosperous, and that we've had a chance to carry forward our basic values, like democracy. In many instances, that primary responsibility I have to the United States is best carried out in the context of a global responsibility, trying to ensure that there's a more peaceful world, a more prosperous world.
The United States is so big and powerful it's sometimes hard to separate our interests from global interests. Whenever they have to be separated, I think the first responsibility of the secretary of state is to the United States, to protect our interests.
Stanford: You've had to deal with some of the world's--well, you probably can't use the word, but I can--despotic regimes. What have you found is the most effective way to deal with a nation that is beyond the pale? Is it engagement in an attempt to bring rogue nations back into the family of nations? Or is it more effective to isolate and if need be confront?
Christopher: It depends upon the particular case. There are some nations that are so at odds with the rest of the civilized world that the only appropriate approach to them until they change their focus or their policies is isolation. That's a relatively small number of nations: Iran, Iraq, Libya.
Iran is a case in point--its projection of terrorism, its opposition to the peace process, its attempt to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Those things really make it an international outlaw. And when you're dealing with that kind of situation, isolation seems to be the best tactic.
On the other hand, in many instances you choose a strategy of engagement, because that may be a way to influence a country or give that country an opportunity to join the family of nations, to join civilized processes. I would say that one ought to be quite careful not to make the list of those you're isolating as rogue nations too long and also not to rule out them changing their positions. But if they want to change, they need to do it, at least from my standpoint, in an overall sense. They can't come and say, "We'd like to have engagement on this one narrow issue, but on the other issues, we're going to continue to undercut the peace process, or project terrorism."
Stanford: Given your background in public service, you probably were as prepared as anyone could be to take this job. But back in 1993, after you'd been in office for a month, you talked to a reporter at the New York Times about the "heavy responsibilities" of the job and whether one could adequately acquit those responsibilities. How steep is the learning curve in a job as complicated and important as this one?
Christopher: I think I made that comment as I was walking out of the Yad Vashem memorial [to Holocaust survivors] in Jerusalem. It takes somebody who is totally immodest not to be somewhat humble in light of that. There is probably no way to understand the responsibilities until you're actually here. People would say that being deputy [secretary of state], as I was [from 1977-81], should have fully made me conscious of it. But when you feel the full weight of representing the United States around the world, that is a very sobering experience. And when the president looks to you as his principal foreign policy adviser, obviously it's a weighty responsibility.
I would say you do learn how to exercise those responsibilities more effectively. I think we're a more effective foreign policy team in the second half of the Clinton administration than we were in the first half. But there were a number of considerable successes in the first half of the administration as well. Of course, we had a plate of very difficult problems when we came into office that we've been dealing with through most of this four-year period. I believe I was prepared for the task when I took it over, but nevertheless the full weight of the responsibility did bring home to me the heavy burden the United States has as a whole, because the rest of the world looks to us for leadership. By and large, I think we've acquitted that leadership very well. I think the United States is safer and more secure than we were four years ago, and we've been able to project our values [better].
Stanford: You mentioned seeing the impact of Chernobyl during a visit to Ukraine. Can you talk about other moments that in some way had a profound effect on you?
Christopher: Oh, there've been a number of moments of great inspiration to me. Going with President Aristide on the day he returned to Haiti and seeing him being welcomed by the people. Hearing the inspiring speech he made, that was very much a high point. The signing of the Dayton Accords [ending the war in Bosnia], both here in Dayton under my supervision, and then in Paris. That area has been a source of great concern and consternation for us, and to at least bring the war to an end and to create peace in that country was rewarding. That was brought home to me vividly by being in Sarajevo recently and walking the streets and seeing the streets full of people and seeing the stores full of people going about more or less normal lives.
I don't want to bore you with a list but . . . going to Vietnam, normalizing relations in Vietnam was an extremely moving experience for me. After all the problems we've had in coping with the Vietnam phenomenon, we really did begin to treat it as a country and not as a war.
My list would be very incomplete if I didn't mention the Middle East--the signing ceremony here on the 13th of September 1993, followed up by the signing ceremony in Cairo, and then going down to see the signing of the Jordanian and Israeli peace agreement. Those have been extremely rewarding moments.
Stanford: Any low points?
Christopher: Well, clearly there are some days that are better than others, but I think I won't try to identify the low points.
Stanford: In addition to serving as secretary of state, you played a key role in the transition period prior to President Clinton's inauguration in 1993. How have you seen the president change over the last four years, and how would your advice to him on preparing for a second term differ from your advice in the first term?
Christopher: I'll answer at least the first half of your question. The president is clearly a more effective leader in the foreign affairs field now than he was at the beginning. He has grown more confident. He has developed relationships with a number of foreign leaders. He develops relationships so easily. He's so effective with people that he now has a wide circle of acquaintances and friends whom he has been able to observe firsthand, and he is, I think, very purposeful in the field of foreign affairs. He was [purposeful] when it was necessary at the very beginning, but I think he's developed an overall concept and strategy that will serve him very well in the second term. I think he is well-positioned for great international leadership in the second term. I expect to see him addressing global issues increasingly in the next term, like environmental issues, projection of democracy, proliferation issues, terrorism issues. As far as how my advice to him would differ, I think that gets me into an area that I'll ask to be relieved of; I think I'll save that advice for him.
Stanford: You've clearly had a deep personal attachment to California. What makes California so special to you?
Christopher: I think it's the openness and enthusiasm of the people, their welcoming attitude toward new ideas, their acceptance of people from all over the world, all races and colors and religions. The ability to integrate those so successfully is a reflection of a society that is really quite open and accepting. That's what I miss in some places in the world, and I find very attractive in California.
Stanford: So you'll go back to California when you leave this job?
Christopher: I'll go back to California. That I can safely say.
