Jeffrey Goldberg
May 10 2011, 6:00 AM ET
In an exclusive interview, the secretary of state says Beijing's human rights record is "deplorable" and it is "trying to stop history" by opposing the advance of democracy
In my latest Atlantic cover story, which is out now, I interview Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton about America's response to the Arab Spring. When we met last month, in her State Department office, she was, as usual, fluent, comprehensive, and in total control of the details. She was also insistent that the Administration's approach to the Middle East betrayed no inconsistencies or hypocrisies (there is much on this subject below, in a transcript of the interview). We didn't spend a great deal of time on the Middle East peace process (though my belief, expressed repeatedly, is that she is the best-qualified person in America to bring the Israelis and Arabs to a negotiated settlement); instead, we discussed the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and what it might mean for women, and we also spent some time on the debate between foreign policy realism and idealism.
It was during this part of the conversation, when the subject of China, and its frightened reaction to the Arab Spring, came up, that she took an almost-Reaganesque turn, calling into question not just Beijing's dismal human rights record, but the future of the Chinese regime itself. The Obama Administration has been ratcheting-up the rhetoric on China's human rights record lately, especially since the arrest of the dissident Ai Weiwei, but Secretary Clinton, in our interview, went much further, questioning the long-term viability of the one-party system. After she referred to China's human rights record as "deplorable" (itself a ratcheting-up of the rhetoric), I noted that the Chinese government seemed scared of the Arab rising. To which she responded: "Well, they are. They're worried, and they are trying to stop history, which is a fool's errand. They cannot do it. But they're going to hold it off as long as possible."
Clinton's assertion that the repressive Chinese system will eventually collapse brought to mind nothing so much as Reagan's statement, made to Richard V. Allen in 1977, about America's goal in the Cold War: "My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic," Reagan said. "It is this: We win and they lose." (See this post from Jim Fallows for more, and better, analysis of these comments.)
I traveled with Clinton on her most recent trip to Egypt and Tunisia, in March, and she stated on many occasions during that trip that she was moved by the peaceful rising of pro-democracy protesters. Her comments on China to me suggested strongly that she sees the Arab Spring as the harbinger of a worldwide move toward democracy.
What follows is a transcript of our conversation. It has been slightly condensed, and edited for clarity:
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I stayed on in Tunisia after you left, and the next day, I was downtown, and there was a demonstration forming. And I thought, "Great, young people yelling about something." I couldn't figure out what it was immediately. They're in front of the Interior Ministry, and I mix in with the crowd and I find out that they're demonstrating against an Interior Ministry decision to ban women from wearing the hijab in their photo IDs for their national identity cards, and this was a demonstration for the hijab. And I asked -- I said, "Is this something that you would compel?" And they said, "No, but in our vision of society, people would know the role of men and the role of women." And I thought to myself at this moment, "Man, I wish Hillary Clinton was here so I could ask her what she thinks of this." THESE revolutions are moving in some ways that are pleasing to the American mind and some ways that aren't pleasing.
SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: I have spoken to this on other occasions, because what I want to see is the freedom to choose for women and men in responsible ways that are protected by the laws of their society so that -- my model, of course, would be our own country -- women are able to dress as they choose in accordance with their own personal desires. And I would like to see that available to women everywhere so that there's no compulsion, there's no government coercion. It is a choice, and --
JG: So the red line is compulsion or anything --
HRC: Absolutely.
JG: -- on the continuum of compulsion.
HRC: Absolutely, anything on the continuum of compulsion. Now, I think there are security issues with, like, the burka, but if you're talking about the hijab, which is the head scarf, for me, that is not a red line. Now, when people start to say, "Oh, but there are certain things women should not be permitted to do and the only way we can stop them from doing them is by passing laws against them," like you can't drive in Saudi Arabia or you can't vote. They just had a riot in Bangladesh because the government wants women to inherit equally. That's a red line, and that infringes on the rights of women, and therefore, I am against it and I think any society in the 21st century that is looking toward modernization, and certainly if they are claiming to be democratic, needs to protect the right to make those choices.
JG: Should we fear the Muslim Brotherhood?
HRC: Well, I think we don't know enough yet to understand exactly what they're morphing into. For me, the jury is out. There are some Islamist elements that are coming to the surface in Egypt that I think on just the face of it are --
JG: Coming out of jails, in fact.
HRC: Coming out of jails, coming out of the shadows, and they are inimical to a democracy, to the kind of freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience that was the aspiration in Tahrir Square.
JG: Is there a situation in which a woman can find herself in a country where it's not necessarily the law that you have to wear the hijab, but that a culture is created by the government that would cause you to raise a flag? I've never understood the division between so-called realists and so-called idealists
HRC: Of course, but that's true in any society. You can go into neighborhoods in the United States where people dress a certain way because they don't want to be out of touch, where boys wear pants down to their knees, which nobody has compelled them to do but they pick up the cultural norms, or where girls are improperly dressed by my eyes, but that's what they see in the media.
So certainly, there are cultural norms and there are family expectations and there are even religious admonitions. But so long as there is not the coercion of the state, then I'm not going to be pointing fingers at people who make certain choices that I would not make, but within a democracy should be protected. But when it comes to political decision-making, then I think you have to be very careful that the people who are in those positions are understanding of their obligation to protect decisions that they do not necessarily agree with.
It's almost impossible to imagine in today's world, but there might be a family in our country that doesn't want their children to learn to drive because they think it's against their religion. Well, that's very different than the family that says we don't want our children to get medical assistance. And our courts step in and say, "That's too far even for parental authority." And similarly, in societies, you do not want so-called political decision makers, political parties, or political leaders to be making decisions that are going to infringe on the range of opportunities that should be available to both women and men.
JG: Should the U.S. now be using the bully pulpit to go to countries and say, "You know what, we have a system, liberal democracy, that works really well, and since you're in this very fluid moment, you should look into this." In other words, engage in the battle of ideas --
HRC: Absolutely.
JG: -- with Islamist parties.
HRC: Well, with everybody. The Islamist parties are the ones that, obviously, we look at with most worry. But there are remnants of old regimes that are also trying to prevent progress and keep people economically denied opportunity and politically denied their rights.
So in this kind of transition, there are ideological foes of democracy, there are economic and commercial foes of democracy, there are political foes of democracy. So I think we need to be competing in the arena of ideas and information.
JG: Is that a little bit neoconish?
HRC: No. I don't think so. I think that's what we believe in. We believe that more speech is better than less speech. We deplored the guy in Florida who burned the Koran, which is so hard for other people to understand, around the world, because they say, "Well, if you thought it was terrible, you should have stopped it." And we say, "No, we overwhelmed it with speech deploring it and speech calling for tolerance and respect."
So I testified before Congress a few weeks ago. I said we are losing the war of ideas because we are not in the arena the way we were in the Cold War. I don't think that belongs to a political party or a political philosophy in our country. I want to see us out there pitching our ideas. Now, we need to do it in a way that's more likely to be understood and received than just asserting it in a conclusory way, but no, we need to be much more engaged. And frankly, just at the moment when there's this ferment for democracy breaking out -- 20 years-plus after the Berlin Wall fell, and we invested so much money and effort over so many decades to get behind the Iron Curtain, to talk about what democracy was, to keep the flag of freedom unfurled in people's hearts, to get our messages in through every means of shortwave radio and smuggling Bibles, and we did all kinds of things just to give people a sense that they weren't alone and that maybe their ideas about the human spirit were not subversive -- well, we have cut back on all of that. We don't have those messages going out.
China is starting an English-speaking television network around the world, Russia is, Al Jazeera. And the BBC is cutting back on its many language services around the world. We're not competing. I just feel like we're missing an opportunity. And I'm well aware of our budget constraints and all of the difficulties we face, but now is the time -- not in an arrogant way, but in a matter-of-fact experiential way.
We have figured out (in America) how people from every part of the world, every kind of person you can imagine, can live together, can work together. It wasn't easy. It took a long time, but I think we know a little bit about how to do it, and we want to offer whatever assistance we can.
Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/05/hillary-clinton-chinese-system-is-doomed-leaders-on-a-fools-errand/238591/
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