delegation was just boarding their plane. They were seen off by a minor consular official who spoke plastic words from plastic lips, received by the Americans through plastic ears. Then they boarded their USAF aircraft, which started up at once and began rolling toward the runway.
“So, how do we evaluate this adventure, Cliff?” Mark Gant asked.
“Can you spell ’disaster’ ?” Rutledge asked in return.
“That bad?”
The Assistant Secretary of State for Policy nodded soberly. Well, it wasn’t his fault, was it? That stupid Italian clergyman gets in the way of a bullet, and then the widow of that other minister-person had to pray for him in public, knowing that the local government would object. And, of course, CNN had to be there for both events to stir the pot at home ... How was a diplomat supposed to make peace happen if people kept making things worse instead of better?
“That bad, Mark. China may never get a decent trade agreement if this crap keeps going on.”
“All they have to do is change their own policies a little,” Gant offered.
“You sound like the President.”
“Cliffy, if you want to join a club, you have to abide by the club rules. Is that so hard to understand?”
“You don’t treat great nations like the dentist nobody likes who wants to join the country club.”
“Why is the principle different?”
“Do you really think the United States can govern its foreign policy by principle?” Rutledge asked in exasperation. So much so, in fact, that he’d let his mind slip a gear.
“The President does, Cliff, and so does your Secretary of State,” Gant pointed out.
“Well, if we want a trade agreement with China, we have to consider their point of view.”
“You know, Cliff, if you’d been in the State Department back in 1938, maybe Hitler could have killed all the Jews without all that much of a fuss,” Gant observed lightly.
It had the desired effect. Rutledge turned and started to object: “Wait a minute—”
“It was just his internal policy, Cliff, wasn’t it? So what, they go to a different church—gas ’em. Who cares?”
“Now look, Mark—”
“You look, Cliff. A country has to stand for certain things, because if you don’t, who the fuck are you, okay? We’re in the club—hell, we pretty much run the club. Why, Cliff? Because people know what we stand for. We’re not perfect. You know it. I know it. They all know it. But they also know what we will and won’t do, and so, we can be trusted by our friends, and by our enemies, too, and so the world makes a little sense, at least in our parts of it. And that is why we’re respected, Cliff.”
“And all the weapons don’t matter, and all the commercial power we have, what about them?” the diplomat demanded.
“How do you think we got them, Cliffy?” Gant demanded, using the diminutive of Rutledge’s name again, just to bait him. “We are what we are because people from all over the world came to America to work and live out their dreams. They worked hard. My grandfather came over from Russia because he didn’t like getting fucked over by the czar, and he worked, and he got his kids educated, and they got their kids educated, and so now I’m pretty damned rich, but I haven’t forgotten what Grandpa told me when I was little either. He told me this was the best place the world ever saw to be a Jew. Why, Cliff? Because the dead white European men who broke us away from England and wrote the Constitution had some good ideas and they lived up to them, for the most part. That’s who we are, Cliff. And that means we have to be what we are, and that means we have to stand for certain things, and the world has to see us do it.”
“But we have so many flaws ourselves,” Rutledge protested.
“Of course we do! Cliff, we don’t have to be perfect to be the best around, and we never stop trying to be better. My dad, when he was in college, he marched in Mississippi, and got his ass kicked a couple of times, but you know, it all worked out, and so now we have a black guy in the Vice Presidency. From what I hear, maybe he’s good enough to take one more step up someday. Jesus, Cliff, how can you represent America to other nations if you don’t get it?”
Diplomacy is business, Rutledge wanted to reply. And I know how