How Obama’s Undercover Statecraft Secured Three Major Accords
By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — One aide slipped off a Hillary Rodham Clinton trip in Paris and flew to the Persian Gulf. Two others ducked out of the White House periodically to catch commercial flights to Ottawa or Toronto. A top adviser vanished from the West Wing during the waning weeks of the midterm election campaign to travel to Beijing.

Three of President Obama’s top diplomatic achievements — the reopening of ties with Cuba, announced this week; the interim nuclear agreement with Iran; and the climate-change pact with China — resulted from secret negotiations. Some were conducted in exotic locales like the Vatican and the Arab sultanate of Oman; others in less exotic places like Boston.

Not since Henry Kissinger’s secret trip to China in 1971 has a president embraced undercover diplomacy with the enthusiasm of Mr. Obama. For an administration that likes to promote its transparency, this White House has concluded that some deals are best pursued with all the openness of a drone strike against distant terrorists.

What the Cuba, Iran and China talks have in common — aside from their cloak-and-dagger allure — are a small team of negotiators, strict discipline and tight control by the White House. They also attest to Mr. Obama’s willingness to entrust historic projects to close aides, some of whom are young and have little experience in diplomacy.

In the case of Cuba, the entire American delegation consisted of two White House officials, one of whom, Benjamin J. Rhodes, is a 37-year-old speechwriter who has worked for Mr. Obama since his 2008 campaign and has become an influential voice in the administration. The Iran and China negotiations were also led by trusted Obama aides.

Using non-diplomats helps preserve the veil of secrecy, a senior official said, because such people are less likely to arouse suspicion among colleagues or the press. The three countries with which they were negotiating, the official said, were also able to keep a secret.

“Negotiations are like mushrooms: They grow in the dark,” said Martin S. Indyk, the director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. “That’s especially true of negotiations between longtime adversaries, where the domestic politics on both sides make it impossible to reach a deal if the negotiations are conducted in public.”

Mr. Indyk knows firsthand the hazards of conducting diplomacy in open view. As the administration’s special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, he struggled to bring together distrustful parties under a white-hot media glare. While the details of the talks were kept under wraps, the very public nature of the process made it vulnerable to scrutiny from all sides.

The last time Washington had a vigorous debate over the need for secrecy in diplomacy was in 2010 when WikiLeaks released 250,000 confidential State Department cables, forcing the Obama administration to mend fences with foreign leaders and others who had been slighted in the reports that diplomats sent in from the field. The damage from the WikiLeaks disclosures proved less severe or long-lasting than many people in the government predicted. But it did nothing to dissuade the Obama administration that fledgling initiatives needed to be shielded from the public and the press.

In plotting its Cuba overture, the administration drew on the success of its secret back-channel talks with Iran. The United States had taken part in multiparty talks with Iran over its nuclear program. But with those talks frozen in late 2011, Mrs. Clinton, then secretary of state, authorized one of her aides, Jake Sullivan, to make direct contact with Iranian officials.

In July 2012, Mr. Sullivan met with Iranian representatives in Oman, where Sultan Qaboos bin Said had taken on the role of middleman between two longtime enemies. Mr. Sullivan, 38, and a colleague crashed on a couch in a house belonging to the American Embassy. The effort proceeded in fits and starts, but suddenly became serious with the election of Hassan Rouhani as Iran’s president in June 2013.

Mr. Sullivan, now joined by a more seasoned deputy secretary of state, William J. Burns, continued to meet secretly with Iran in Oman, at the United Nations, and in Geneva. By the time the other Western powers arrived in Geneva for decisive talks with Iran in November 2013, they discovered that much of the deal had already been sown up.

Mr. Rhodes worked closely with Mr. Sullivan when he was at the State Department and recruited him to the White House after Mrs. Clinton stepped down. The two teamed up to support another diplomatic opening — to the military rulers of Myanmar — and they shared a conviction that a thaw with Cuba was long overdue.

This time, Mr. Rhodes volunteered to lead the effort. He was joined by Ricardo Zuniga, a 44-year-old Cuba expert who served in the United States Interests Section in Havana, and was chosen to fill the Western Hemisphere post at the National Security Council because the White House planned an overture to Cuba in Mr. Obama’s second term.

The administration’s agreement with China on greenhouse gas emissions was less dramatic. It was quietly negotiated over months by the State Department’s climate negotiator, Todd D. Stern, and the White House’s adviser on climate issues, John Podesta, who went to Beijing a week before Mr. Obama to try to nail down the details.

But it, too, had its made-for-the-memoir moments. In October, Secretary of State John Kerry played host in Boston to China’s top foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi. Over lunch at a Legal Sea Foods restaurant, Mr. Kerry pointed to Boston Harbor, saying it had been cleaned up by environmental regulations.

The visit evidently made an impression on Mr. Yang: A month later, Mr. Obama and President Xi Jinping stood together in the Great Hall of the People to announce they had reached a landmark deal.

The pact was less of a bolt-from-the-blue than either the Cuba agreement or the Iran talks. But even the day before, White House officials said they were unsure whether the Chinese were ready to go public. Mr. Obama’s aides were plainly impressed by their opacity.

紐時：歐巴馬3大外交成就 全是密室談判

紐約時報報導，美國總統歐巴馬締造的三大外交成就，包括準備與古巴復交，與伊朗達成有關伊朗核子問題的臨時協議，以及與中國大陸敲定以具體措施因應氣候變遷的協議，全部來自祕密外交。部分交涉在天主教教廷與阿曼等奇特的地點為之，其他則在波士頓等地進行。

歐巴馬是季辛吉1971年祕訪中國大陸以來，最熱中從事祕密外交的美國總統。歐巴馬政府經常強調透明的重要性，近來顯然認為，部分協議最好透過祕密外交促成。

除祕密進行，美國與古巴、伊朗、中國大陸達成協議的共同特色是，白宮指派少數談判代表，不但強調嚴格紀律，而且全程嚴密主控。這些談判還證明，歐巴馬願意將重要計畫委由心腹幕僚執行，其中一部分是外交經驗稚嫩的年輕人。

以古巴為例，美方代表團由兩名白宮官員組成，其中年僅37歲的羅德斯在歐巴馬2008年首次角逐白宮寶座時，即已為歐巴馬撰寫講稿，此後成為歐巴馬團隊的有力人物。與伊朗、中國大陸之間的談判同樣由歐巴馬倚為心腹的白宮助理主導。

一名資深官員說，非外交系統出身的官員主談有助保密，因為他們較不會引起同僚或媒體的注意。他們交手的對象也能保守機密。布魯金斯研究所外交政策部門主管殷迪克說：「談判有如蘑菇：它們在黑暗中生長。長期為敵的國家之間的談判尤其如此，因為雙方的國內政治使它們無法在公開談判下取得具體成果。」

殷迪克有切身經驗。在擔任以巴談判的美方特使期間，他必須設法在媒體全程注意下，促使互相猜忌的雙方代表坐上談判桌。談判的具體細節並未公布，但全程攤在陽光下卻會讓談判易受各方嚴格檢視與批判。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/19/us/mastering-the-art-of-secret-negotiations.html

2014-12-20．聯合報．A15．國際．編譯陳世欽