Charles Wheelan - The Rationing

Yes. Though I am not convinced that “withhold” is really the right word, nor that gender had anything to do with it, as the Secretary of State has often alleged. In any event, this bad situation was made worse by ongoing turf battles between the Departments of State and Defense and a personal animus between the two Secretaries. The Secretary of Defense had been involved in the Capellaviridae meetings from the beginning, in part because of his close personal relationship with the President, but mostly because he happened to be at the White House on the morning of that first meeting. The Secretary of State, paranoid on the best of days, rejected that benign explanation. The suspicion between these two cabinet members was inflamed by political differences. The Secretary of Defense was a New Republican; the Secretary of State was a Democrat. (The President’s cabinet was a mix of independents, New Republicans, and moderate Democrats.)

To put a cherry on top of it all, the Secretary of State was highly sensitive to being treated differently as a woman. By all accounts, including everything I experienced, the President was gender-blind, in a good way. His appointments going all the way back to his early days in Virginia were always reasonably inclusive. There was nothing to suggest he would exclude a senior cabinet member from some discussion because she was a woman. (He had, after all, picked her for one of the most important jobs in the cabinet.) Having said that, I should say also that the Secretary of Defense was more, well, old school. He had been dogged with charges of sexism for much of his career, including his infamous remark (disavowed aggressively at his confirmation hearing) that women are less fit for senior military positions because “maternal instincts could cloud their judgment in the heat of battle.” [15] My inner scientist compels me to point out that recent research has found clear gender-based differences in decision making, particularly in life-and-death situations (or the simulation thereof). There is no evidence to substantiate the Secretary of Defense’s assertion that women are less capable military leaders. However, his implicit suggestion that there might be systematic differences between how men and women make battlefield decisions is defensible. Of course, it is entirely possible—and perhaps likely, according to my amateur reading of history—that less testosterone makes for much better military leadership. That is really what he said; I have watched the video.

Also, one could not help but notice that the President and Secretary of Defense—both tall, fit, middle-aged white guys—gave off a certain fraternity brother vibe. If you were to see them chuckling comfortably as they walked into a room together, you might assume they had just come from a weekly squash game. All of this is relevant if one is to understand the dynamic on Air Force One in those first hours after the Outbreak became public. The Secretary of State had gone to sleep after a light dinner, assuming she would wake up when the plane landed in Australia. As America’s top diplomat, she would accompany the President as he signed the South China Sea Agreement, arguably the most significant international agreement of the twenty-first century.

The Secretary of State had spent much of her earlier career working to reform the United Nations. She had negotiated on behalf of the U.S. for the enlargement of the Security Council and the adoption of an updated charter that breathed new life and relevance into the UN. There was serious talk that she might be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, most likely to be shared with some of the world’s other senior diplomats, for having revitalized multilateral diplomacy and repaired much of the damage done during the Trump presidency.

The reality on board Air Force One turned out to be radically different than the Secretary of State’s serene expectations. She walked into the conference room and encountered a handful of adrenaline-addled advisers trying to manage a situation that was spinning out of control. The Chief of Staff briefed her quickly on the Outbreak and the impending Dormigen crisis. We do not know exactly what was said, other than that the Secretary of State used “inappropriate language,” as she would later describe it. We know for certain that the Secretary of State quickly joined the other foreign policy advisers in making the case that the President must continue on to Australia to sign the South China Sea Agreement. Any other tack, she argued, would alter the course of international affairs in ways that would limit American influence, sell out our key allies in the region, and give a green light to some of China’s most nefarious activities.

These arguments had been made before, but the Secretary of State brought three things to the room. First, she knew the South China Sea Agreement better than anybody on the American team. She had been negotiating the most niggling details for years; she could literally recite the rise in carbon emissions that would result if the harmonized carbon tax among the signatory nations were not implemented. [16] Unless you are a policy wonk, you may not have any interest in this: One feature of the South China Sea Agreement was a uniform carbon tax to be implemented in all of the signatory nations ($42 per ton of CO 2 emission, to rise at 2 percent annually). Commonly called a “pollution tax,” this was a measure that economists had recommended for years as a tool for discouraging the most carbon-intensive activities. The signatory nations also agreed to impose a “carbon tariff” on countries that did not adopt a similar carbon tax—namely China. The net effect was likely to be a huge reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, albeit at a high cost to Chinese manufacturing. Second, the Secretary of State was walking into the room with fresh eyes. Those of us who had been involved from the beginning were partially blinded by a “fog of war.” We had made decisions, told each other those decisions were sensible, and then made more decisions based on what we had done earlier. The Secretary of State described this as going “deeper and deeper into a maze.” That seems overly harsh given the unprecedented nature of what we were dealing with. Still, the Secretary of State brought new and much-needed perspective to the situation. We were slowly persuading ourselves that it would be unacceptable to let Americans die if the Chinese were willing to throw us a lifeline. This was a moral calculation, not a political one. The Secretary of State dismissed our reasoning almost as soon as she walked into the conference room. “By that logic, Churchill should have cut a deal with Hitler,” she said. “That would have saved English lives, right? Does anyone here believe that would have been the right thing to do? Look out the window, people. There is a reason we fought at Kiribati and Guadalcanal.” [17] As a matter of basic geography, Air Force One was still east of Hawaii, so no one was going to see Kiribati or Guadalcanal out the window. But, to paraphrase the iconic twentieth-century film Animal House , she was “on a roll.” By all accounts, she paused and stared intently at the President before continuing. “With all due respect, sir, your responsibility is to do what is best for the long-term interests of the country, and that may well involve extraordinary sacrifices in the short run. Abraham Lincoln was not—”

“Okay, I get it,” the President said, cutting her off. The Secretary of State’s historical references may seem facile in the retelling. The reality is that the third thing she brought into that stifling little room was a powerful intellect and unparalleled global experience. Her parents had both been American diplomats, moving from posting to posting every couple of years. The Secretary of State spoke Swahili, Arabic, and enough Hindi to delight any Indian audience. Perhaps more important, she had attended local schools in many of those postings, picking up a visceral understanding of the needs and wants of local families. She could tell humorous stories about bouts of dengue fever (Indonesia), or winning a goat in an elementary school spelling bee (Tanzania). The Secretary of State was not, however, a natural politician. Twice she had run for office, once for Congress in a suburban Maryland district and once for the U.S. Senate, also in Maryland. Both times she was trounced in the Democratic primary, having delivered long monologues on “America’s unique leadership role in the post-industrial world” that caused voters’ eyes to glaze over. She declared bitterly at the end of her Senate campaign, “Americans have stopped caring about the rest of the world.” There was a grain of truth in that, but it was also true that the Secretary of State had difficulty speaking about issues in ways that made normal people care. A Washington Post–USA Today political columnist described her stump speech: “Imagine your worst college professor. Then take away the excitement.” A YouTube video of the Secretary of State speaking about a Brazilian antipoverty program went viral, apparently because college students had turned it into a drinking game.