What the ledger must show

The Washington Examiner describes the White House reception of President Xi Jinping as a display of conspicuous hospitality, and then poses the harder question beneath the hospitality: what, precisely, did the United States receive in return? I cannot speak to the private minutes of those meetings — no dossier has been placed before me — but the shape of the question is one I know well. I negotiated with Great Britain for years, and I learned that warmth at the table and advantage in the text are not the same thing. Often they move in opposite directions.

A nation's foreign policy earns its legitimacy not from the grandeur of the reception but from the clarity of the resulting obligation. What was agreed? On what terms? With what mechanism of enforcement? The Examiner's lead suggests that the Pacific strategic position — basing rights, island-chain influence, naval access — accrued to China's benefit, while the American side received gestures. If that inference holds upon examination of the actual record, it is a serious matter, not a ceremonial one.

I negotiated the Jay Treaty with Britain in 1794 under considerable popular suspicion, and I have never pretended it was a triumph of terms. What I can say is that every article was written, every concession was named, and the Senate was left to weigh the whole openly. The obligation to transparency belongs to every administration that commits the nation's interests in a foreign forum. Secrecy in diplomacy is sometimes necessary during negotiation; it is not permissible once the agreement is reached and the public faith is pledged.

The Examiner's framing — that America was "fleeced" — is editorial language, and I would temper it with a caution: strong rhetoric in a domestic forum does not substitute for rigorous analysis of the actual exchange. But the caution runs the other way as well. If the administration's defenders cannot produce a clear accounting of what commitments were made and received, the charge of imbalance cannot be answered by pointing to the ceremony alone. Pandas are charming. They are not a strategic doctrine.

What should follow is straightforward: the relevant congressional committees ought to receive a complete account of any understandings reached, whether formal or informal. The treaty power belongs to the President in negotiation, but to the Senate in ratification of binding agreements — and the spirit of that arrangement extends to any significant commitment of national interest. A republic does not govern itself by the impressions a visit leaves; it governs itself by the written record of what was promised and by whom. Let that record be produced, examined, and judged on its merits.