A Journey (42 page)

If the president isn’t going to do a full press conference – and it would be inappropriate to do that with an Opposition leader – he often does an impromptu few words in the Oval Office, as the press file through to take pictures. As we sat there and the cameras rolled, someone (Peter Riddell of
The Times
, I think) asked Clinton if he thought he was sitting with the next British prime minister. Tricky. Saying ‘Not a question for me’ looks a bit cold; saying ‘Yes’ would be diplomatically unthinkable. Quick as a flash, Bill says: ‘Well, I just hope he’s sitting with the next president of the United States.’

He also had inimitable resilience. When you reflect on what Bill went through during the impeachment saga, you have to sit down. It’s too much. How could he, how did he, survive it? But he did, and left office with an approval rating over 60 per cent.

He did it first and foremost by refusing to let it dominate his view of his presidency, even if it did indeed dominate the media’s. This is where the resilience was so fundamental to his success and survival. He used to tell me that every day he got up, determined to carry on governing. They would be talking about Monica Lewinsky; he would be launching a health-care plan. They would be dilating on the impossibility of him still being there; he would still be there, putting forward a new welfare programme. Whatever they did to him, he would carry on doing what he could for the people. He just got up and got on with it.

The second reason is that, as I suggested earlier, the public have always taken a more measured and human view of the sex lives of politicians than the media hysteria surrounding them would indicate. They understand; they empathise; and, to some extent, they indulge. It’s not that they approve, but their disapproval is tempered. Their disappointment is qualified in its intensity by their knowledge that they too fall from grace, they too err and they too need forgiveness. While some take the view that their political leaders should be above reproach in this regard, others think that there are more important measures by which to judge them, such as: are they doing a good job for the nation?

So even Bill’s ‘not telling the truth’ they understood as him not wanting to embarrass his family. And then of course his persecutors overplayed their hand, and by the end were as much in the dock as he was. I was also convinced that his behaviour arose in part from his inordinate interest in and curiosity about people. In respect of men, it was expressed in friendship; in respect of women, there was potentially a sexual element. And in that, I doubt he is much different from most of the male population.

He was preternaturally cool under fire. By sheer happenstance, I was with him when major parts of the saga broke. The first time, in February 1998, the main revelation from Monica Lewinsky appeared, and I was in the White House. We had to do a press conference. As we stood in the ballroom, waiting behind the curtain to go through, we chatted away. I was more than a little nervous. I didn’t for an instant think of doing anything other than being completely supportive. He was a great guy, a good president, and above all he was a friend. I am very, even excessively, loyal to friends.

It was one of those surreal moments in politics. At the press conferences there is a stated topic – actually, believe it or not, in this case it was Saddam and the WMD. He was obstructing the inspectors yet again and the international community was gearing up. We thought a military strike a real possibility. Here was an issue of pressing life-and-death importance. But then there is the issue the media wanted to get their teeth into: Monica. So it was obvious which one would provide more interest.

Just before we walked out to the stage, Rahm Emanuel, at that time one of Bill’s senior advisers, said to us, ‘Don’t f*** it up.’ We didn’t. Bill was dignified. I was supportive. Given the circumstances, all in all it was a triumph.

Later, on the day of another event – a third-way progressive politics conference, where Bill and I were due to speak along with the president of Bulgaria (a lovely guy called Petar Stoyanov) and Romano Prodi (bizarre line-up) – a fresh revelation broke, namely the tapes of the Starr interview. It was wall-to-wall. The pressure was mounting on Bill and the attacks were absolutely vicious. His opponents could smell blood and they were going for it.

As it turned out, the tapes were less sensational than at first had been hoped or feared, but the day was more surreal than the last occasion. As I entered the build-up to do the seminar, Bill and Hillary took me to a small office where we talked. It was there that I witnessed the indomitable Hillary determination, nerve and strength. If ever I wondered how important a part of Bill’s rise she had been, I knew it from then on. She was angry and hurt in equal amounts and large amounts – that was clear – but no way was she going to allow it to destroy what she, as well as he, had built. And if anyone had the right to be angry with him, she had, nobody else.

People often asked me about their relationship. There was a common assumption among many people, including other leaders, that theirs was a marriage not of convenience exactly, but of political partnership; that this kept them together, despite it all. I used to say: you know what I think it’s all about? I think they love each other. That’s the real revelation. Yes it’s a political partnership, yes it is buttressed by mutual ambition, but when all is said and done, the ambition is the awning under which true love shelters, not love which gives shelter to the ambition.

I didn’t quite know what to say as the three of us sat there together. Hillary just explained calmly and forcefully: this wasn’t going to drive him out. He would stay, fight and win. We talked for a time about it all, then we went to do the seminar and of course Bill was articulate, interesting, relaxed. I sat there at points open-mouthed in admiration of the chutzpah.

Later that day he and I went to do a meeting with students at Montgomery Blair High School outside Washington. We were supposed to deliver a speech on education policy. When we arrived there were thousands of students in the gymnasium. It was like a rally; they were shouting, stomping their feet, singing. We threw away the scripts and worked the crowd like two old music-hall queens. He got a fantastic reception and it lifted him.

By that time – September 1998 – Kosovo was already making its presence felt. When we got to early 1999 and I had worked out what we needed to succeed, I realised it all depended on my relationship with him. If he could be persuaded, we had a chance. If not, the Europeans on their own would never act. We would repeat the mistake of Bosnia, not learn from it.

In January and February, Bill and I spoke regularly. The diplomatic offensive was still going on, but so was the Milosevic offensive against the Kosovan Muslims. The descriptions coming out of atrocities – Račak was the most reported, but was not exceptional – were pitiful. This was horrible: a civilian population slowly being ground into the dirt and for no other reason than being of a different religion. The leader of the Kosovans, Ibrahim Rugova, came to see me. He was a thin, unwell man who had had throat cancer. He begged for help. ‘They are killing us,’ he said. He gave me a present, a small piece of purple-and-white Kosovo crystal. ‘I have little to give,’ he explained. I used to keep it on my desk in the den in Downing Street.

Bill and I agreed to take military action through NATO in a series of air strikes. At the beginning, and despite my intense misgivings, it was stated unequivocally that there would be no ground troops. Without that statement, there would have been no air action, so I thought it worth agreeing to. We could work out how to unravel it later.

Preparations were made. Suddenly in late March, the eviction, cleansing and killing of Muslim Kosovans quickened. Milosevic was mounting the campaign that had always been presaged. Now we had to act. The air strikes began, in which UK planes took part. I made a statement in the House, and we had broad cross-party support. Paddy, though he had announced in January that he was standing down from the Lib Dem leadership, was still leader at this point, and was strongly supportive. He also sent me a note warning that ground forces would be necessary.

My first full-scale military campaign got under way. Basically, Kosovo demonstrates the fundamental, unavoidable and irredeemable limitations of a pure air campaign against a determined opponent who cares little about losing life. It followed what is now a familiar path for such campaigns. Air strikes do real damage and are visually forceful; they weaken an enemy’s infrastructure and demoralise the military and certainly the civilian population; they can deter, inhibit and constrain – what they can’t do is dislodge a really dogged occupation of land by an enemy willing to sustain losses and wait it out.

At the beginning, the targets are plentiful. With modern technology and weaponry, these are swiftly taken out. The question then arises: now what? The targets get more interspersed with civilian areas. ‘Collateral damage’ – a ghastly phrase that I tried to ban – grows, and the wrong targets get hit. (In this case, not just civilian, but in a terrible accident, the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.) The enemy is being damaged, but not being beaten. Frustration grows, as does a sense of unfairness, at least in Western nations, at a purely air campaign. ‘Planes versus soldiers’ is not thought quite fair. All of it increases the pressure on the political leaders. If you are not careful, the aggressor starts to assume the mantle of victim.

Worse, in this case, after a few days it became clear that NATO itself had certain severe limitations in running such a campaign. We had a hopelessly, almost laughably, complicated committee procedure for clearing targets, which frequently delayed decisions. Wes Clark, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe in charge of NATO military operations, was a good guy, fired up, committed, but in no way did he have the necessary media and communications infrastructure which a campaign like this, dominating the world news, required. Javier Solana, NATO Secretary General, was also first class, but caught between the differing views (not to say egos) of his political bosses.

To cap it all, there were now hundreds of thousands of refugees streaming across the border, swamping the surrounding nations, especially Macedonia. After two weeks, I thought enough was enough. The thing couldn’t go on like this. It was going to be a disaster.

I then took a clear decision. I had only been in power eighteen months, but already I was contemplating that I might have to leave. I spoke to Alastair and Jonathan and then called the close team together. I said: I am willing to lose the job on this, but we are going to go for broke. We are going to take even more of a fronting-up, out-there, leadership position and stake it all on winning. The response so far to what was a monstrous and unpardonable outrage had been pathetic. We were going to try to grip it and I would use all my chips with President Clinton to get a commitment to ground troops on the agenda.

The team were fabulous at moments like that. Some of them thought it more than a little strange that a government committed to changing Britain’s public services and cutting unemployment should put its life on the line for a military adventure in the Balkans, but they all jumped to it to make it happen.

First, I contacted NATO and spoke to Wes and Javier. To my surprise, rather than resenting help, they welcomed it with open arms. We went to NATO. I took Alastair with me, not for my press but for theirs. I recall seeing Wes in his office. Suddenly his mobile went. It was a journalist asking about the campaign. He spoke to him briefly and returned to our conversation. ‘How often does that happen?’ I asked. ‘Oh, all the time,’ he replied. He was doing the military side brilliantly, but was immensely frustrated at the lack of political cohesion and commitment. He warned me, rather nicely and in a kindly way I thought, that I shouldn’t think all leaders felt like I did. Alastair stayed on to work his magic and organise a proper comms infrastructure. Wes told him that he should watch my back. This was good of Wes but I knew already I was way out on a limb.

I then spoke to the generals, in particular the decent German in charge of the air campaign. The generals, including our own very capable Rupert Smith, were unanimous: you can’t win this by an air campaign alone.

Paddy went out to the Balkans again, and returned convinced we were not winning. After thirty days, he said, we have yet to stop Milosevic taking any action he wants to take against the Kosovans. The number of refugees was growing; the targets were shrinking. The Macedonian prime minister sent me a message through Paddy: ‘My people are frightened because they think NATO has a plan and they are not being told about it. I am even more frightened because I know NATO hasn’t got a plan.’

I spoke once more to President Clinton and then followed up with a personal note. I put forward plans for better coordination, changes in targeting procedure, changes in the media operation.

A week later I sent another note. In the meantime, I had visited one of the refugee camps myself. However specious such visits are, it allowed me to speak with greater authority. In this second note, I went over our call of the night before, during which I had again raised the issue of ground forces. Unsurprisingly, Bill had recounted all the objections, even of planning such a thing, since the fact of the planning would inevitably leak out. In the note, I pressed the need for the logistics to begin now, because unless that happened, we might be too late to do anything before the winter came, given that a ground campaign could take months to implement.

I then really went over the score. I saw our military. The Chief of Defence Staff, Charles Guthrie, was someone I really liked, respected and relied on, as I say. He was of the same view as me, but I said if we needed a ground offensive, we should be prepared to offer 50,000 UK troops, with the US supplying 100,000–150,000. I knew that very few, if any, other European nations were likely to join in and we would be relying on the Americans. Not unreasonably they would say: Well, if you’re so keen, what are you prepared to commit? Even Charles’s eyebrows were raised. It was an outsized gamble. And also Gordon, again not unreasonably, was starting to question the cost.