With the presidency of George W. Bush in its last months, and a new campaign now in full swing, American politicians have taken to grandstanding about the Beijing Olympics. US foreign policy has always been a precarious balance of cold calculation and moral considerations, and some Americans see these historic Games as an opportunity to lecture the Chinese government about human rights violations.
Sadly absent in the din is a voice of uncommon brilliance and unfailing sobriety: that of Bill Odom. A retired army lieutenant general and former head of the National Security Agency, William E. Odom died on May 30 after a long and distinguished career in American public service. Odom had a keen grasp of the possible, and knew that you didn't accomplish much by slapping people in public. When I asked him, in late 2006, how he would handle the mullahs of Iran, for instance, his response characterises the American approach to the world at its best: 'We're big guys. We can talk to them.'
I'll bet he had the same sentiments towards China on the occasion of its first Olympic Games. He recognised that a big guy didn't begrudge others their successes, and that magnanimity and grace went a long way.
With chemical runoff polluting farmlands and other high-profile cases of environmental degradation, China is surely not without blemish, and labour abuses are still pervasive. But what country has industrialised without upheaval? In Massachusetts, in the 1830s, the workers who built the Lawrence and Lowell canals were not blessed with competitive medical plans, but they too bore great indignities in the hope of a better life.
Odom understood that you can't solve every problem at once, and that you should keep means and ends distinct in your mind, concentrating your efforts where they accomplish most. He knew that a country couldn't create constitutional regimes out of thin air. 'Remember back in the Carter years, that list of states we were told were 'developing democracies'?' he once asked some former colleagues at an event at the Hudson Institute. 'Mexico? Pakistan? Well, they're still developing, aren't they?'
In China, too, politics may not look like a town hall meeting, but who can say that they're not moving in the right direction? Last year, China enacted remarkable new protections for private property, and though enforcement still leaves much to be desired, for the first time, rural Chinese have the basis for legal recourse against officials and companies that appropriate or pollute their land.
Odom tolerated a degree of adversity abroad because he could tell when it mattered and when it didn't. He never pulled his punches to please his audiences. It was a particular pleasure watching him clean the floor with people, or having him clean the floor with you. And when he reached a conclusion, he shared it whether or not it would win him affection. When I asked him about the worst-case terrorism scenario, what happens if terrorists detonate a nuclear weapon in an American city, he said simply: 'Destroy a city? Yeah, they might do that. But that wouldn't be the end of the United States, and that might be the price you pay to keep your liberty.'
