Boon of Modern Communications Is Also a Modern Diplomat’s Bane

He was in the midst of a landmark trip to open U.S. relations with Vietnam. So how did Secretary of State Warren Christopher spend his two evenings in Hanoi, the only two nights an American secretary of state has ever spent here?

Not really on Vietnam. There were no dinners, no meetings, no tours. Instead, Christopher spent considerable time in his hotel on the phone to the United States, trying to deal with the latest turmoil in Croatia and Bosnia. The secretary also spent time doing interviews with American television networks. These are, of course, all activities largely indistinguishable from what he does back home in Washington.

Christopher’s recent 10-day trip to Asia underscored the extent to which the ease of modern communications is making foreign travel by American presidents and secretaries of state more distracted and less focused.

Gone are the days when a globe-trotting leader could concentrate intensively on the country he was actually visiting. The phones now work all too well--well enough for someone like Christopher to try to take part, from thousands of miles away, in the Administration’s Bosnia-Croatia policy deliberations back home. Communications satellites have opened the way for a secretary of state to do the Sunday TV talk shows from Hanoi as though he were in Washington, answering questions not just about Vietnam but about the Balkans.

This is not meant to single out Christopher for criticism. He was doing no more than other top-ranking American officials are doing in their overseas travel. He is not unique, but merely an example of a problem that is becoming ever worse.

These officials are perennially distracted while abroad. They spend more and more energy in the time zones where they are not, and less and less in the ones where they are.

On overseas trips, the amount of time available to prepare in advance for meetings with foreign leaders is reduced. Secretaries of state have less time to get out and get a feel for the cities they are visiting.

Let’s go back to Christopher in Hanoi, trying to handle a crisis in the Balkans. What’s the matter with that?

First, Christopher may have been missing opportunities in the country he was visiting.

To be sure, Christopher’s trip to Vietnam was relatively successful. He held talks with all of Vietnam’s top leaders, including Communist Party General Secretary Do Muoi, in a meeting at Communist Party headquarters (one that took place late Saturday night in the United States, a time when it would attract the least possible public attention back home). Christopher also gave a strongly worded speech on human rights to Vietnamese students, with this event occurring at a time that would attract maximum exposure in the United States.

Still, in those evenings he spent at his hotel working the phones and the talk shows, he might have done more yet. These were the first and only 48 hours a top American official will spend in Hanoi for a while. He could have had dinner with Vietnamese leaders, either the ones he had met earlier or others in the field of economics or human rights. He could have merely gone out for a long tour of a very lively city. If he were tired, he could have rested. Certainly, working on Bosnia and appearing on the Sunday talk shows doesn’t qualify as relaxation.

Looked at another way, from the standpoint of Bosnia and Croatia policy, you have to wonder whether it’s a good idea for a secretary of state to try to manage things from Hanoi.

It is hard enough from back home. There is, of course, always a certain dynamic, a tension between what’s actually taking place on the ground in places like the Balkans and what can be understood about the situation from Washington. How much more difficult it must be, then, when the policy choices, the intelligence, the domestic politics on Bosnia must be relayed still further, from Washington to Hanoi.

Christopher is now resigned to the fact that the bloody strife in the Balkans will follow him around the world. At the end of his human rights speech here to Vietnamese students of international relations, one of them asked about Bosnia. “There can never be a meeting of this kind without Bosnia coming up,” the secretary of state sighed.

What can be done to keep American officials from becoming so distracted on the road that, after a while, their trips won’t be worth the jet fuel? One remedy is to have top officials delegate more authority to their subordinates while they travel.

Why can’t the secretaries of state or defense turn over the business back home in Washington to their deputies? Why can’t a President leave it to his vice president, or to Cabinet secretaries, to manage and answer questions about domestic policy and other areas of the world besides the one the leader is visiting? (At a news conference in Jakarta, Indonesia, last fall, President Clinton tried to wade into a question about prayer in American public schools. His answer created so much confusion that the Administration was backtracking for days.)

News organizations, particularly television, could also help by showing some realism and restraint.

In this age of celebrity, we all help create the myth that the only people who really count are the few identifiable faces at the top: the President, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense. Panelists on the Sunday talk shows want to ask the secretary of state about the Crisis of the Day--even if the only answers they are going to get are the same stale talking points that have already been made by other American officials back home, and even in cases where other, lesser-known officials have really been running the policy.

Journalists also help further the illusion that a single top official, like a President or secretary of state, can be all-knowing and on top of policy around the world. One longs for the first top American official who answers: “I can’t answer your question about Bosnia because I’m too far out of touch. I’m in Vietnam right now. Talk to the deputy secretary back in Washington.”

Christopher’s effort to manage Bosnia from Hanoi points to another problem: It unintentionally furthers the pervasive image abroad of America, the Distracted Superpower--a country too big and self-absorbed to care about any one place.

The worst example of this sort of distraction, however, does not come from Christopher’s travels.

It occurs back home in Washington. These days, when the world’s leaders have talks at the White House and appear afterward at joint news conferences with Clinton, they and their foreign ministers and leading journalists of their countries are increasingly obliged to stand by silently while the White House press corps asks Clinton a series of questions about Whitewater or Waco or whatever the main story of the day happens to be.

It seems needlessly insulting to these heads of state and government--who, after all, did not fly thousands of miles to Washington just to be used as props in America’s political process.

Couldn’t the White House arrange for Clinton to give White House reporters a separate news conference to ask whatever questions they want, either immediately before or after the President’s joint appearance with another head of state? And if the White House offered this, then during the joint news conference, couldn’t reporters stick to subjects related at least tangentially to the foreign leader’s visit?

If U.S. foreign policy seems unfocused these days, one reason may be that our leaders don’t have time to focus.