Hi
Which government dignitaries typically greet a US President on official visits after stepping off a plane? Which aspects of protocol (other than the missing staircase and red carpet treatment) were not followed on Obama’s recent visit to China?
“In another departure from protocol, there was no rolling staircase for Mr. Obama to descend in view of the television cameras. Instead, he emerged from a door in the belly of the plane that he usually uses only on high-security trips, like those to Afghanistan.”
“Yesterday, a Chinese official involved in the diplomatic arrangements for the international event told the South China Morning Post that the apparently embarrassing incident was in fact due to a decision made by the American delegation, saying that Washington had turned down Beijing’s proposal to provide a rolling red-carpet stairway for the US leader.”…
“China provides a rolling staircase for every arriving state leader, but the US side complained that the driver doesn’t speak English and can’t understand security instructions from the United States; so China proposed that we could assign a translator to sit beside the driver, but the US side turned down the proposal and insisted that they didn’t need the staircase provided by the airport.”
“The innocent explanation is that there was a diplomatic misunderstanding at the airport, albeit a rather astonishing one. The New York Times reports that the Americans had flown in with their own stairs for the occasion, only for the Chinese to block their use at the last minute. The Chinese then offered their own, which the Americans refused because the driver could not speak English. The darker interpretation is that China’s sudden rejection of the American-provided stairs was calculated to insult Mr Obama on his last trip to Asia as the American president. That would have been an odd tactic: the chaos on the arrival of Air Force One looked more embarrassing for China than America. Mr Obama, for his part, downplayed the significance. “We’ve got a lot of planes, a lot of helicopters, a lot of cars and a lot of guys,” he said. “If you are a host country, sometimes it may feel a bit much.””
American presidents sometimes look like old time potentates or leaders or banana republics, with their motorcades and cohorts of armed security guards. This was discussed to some extent in another thread - Other important world leaders do not see the need for all this show of strength and it can put the backs up of the host.
From my reading it appears that the Pope and Queen Elizabeth get very special treatment by host country leaders/heads of state when they arrive at airport. But if you look at Xijing Ping’s arrival at Ontario International Airport in California in 2013, he was met by the governor. I think at times the media does blow things out of proportion. But when the Saudi King Salman didn’t meet Obama at Riyadh airport, it did seem unusual, since it was regarded almost customary for the king to meet the US President there. I was just curious if there are any internationally agreed-upon protocols on welcoming foreign leaders/heads of state. There don’t seem to be any.
There are protocols, but they create a range of possible treatment, rather than a single permissible treatment. For example, protocol requires that a visiting head of state be greeted by the host head of state, but it doesn’t require that he be greeted immediately on arrival at the airport. He might travel to the host’s official residence and be greeted there. The greeting might not happen until the next day. Etc, etc. So if the host head of state turns up at the airport to greet the visitor, that sends a signal that “this is a relationship we really value”, or something of the kind. If he doesn’t, nobody’s allowed to get their knickers in a knot about it.
There appears to have been a stuff-up here with the Americans expecting to use their own staircase for the President to alight from his plane, and the Chinese expecting to provide a staircase for the purpose. Never attribute to malice what can be adequately accounted for by incompetence; this is down to a simple lack of communication, probably at a fairly low level, probably some time before the President arrived. Is it the Americans’ fault? Is it the fault of the Chinese? Are they both responisble? We don’t know. And it almost certainly doesn’t come with any larger political signficance.
On the wider point, are the American security and protocol arrangements seen as overbearing? Well, yes, in the wider world we do like to laugh at them. I recall a few years back, when Obama visited Ireland, he brought with him his own massively overengineered and massively overweight limousine (“the Beast”). The beast runs fairly low to the ground, and when it entered the American embassy compound it drove over a fairly high-off-the-ground traffic hump which the embassy had installed for security purposes. The chassis fouled the hump, with the result that the driving wheels lost contact with the ground and the leader of the free world was immobilised at the embassy gate inside his own car. They drove up buses to screen the presidential dignity from the chortling masses, and Obama walked into the embassy while the heavy lifting gear was sent for.
An amusing metaphor, maybe, for the limitations to what can be achieved by the application of massive power and massive resources. On the one hand, you can understand why the Americans spend prodigious amounts of money on the presidential entourage because American presidents do in fact get shot at quite a lot, compared to the leaders of similar democratic countries. On the other hand, the fact that American presidents do get shot at quite a lot, compared to the leaders of similar democratic countries, despite the resources put into security, suggests that the basic problem isn’t a lack of resources, and it can’t be fixed by the application of every-greater resources. And there comes a point where the application of further resources results in negligible security gains, or even makes matters worse.
Thank you UDS. What initially prompted my question was that although there may be basic protocols in greeting a leader/head of state, each country seems to exercise them to a greater or lesser degree. Italy would have the chief of the Carabinieri on hand, as are officers of the armed forces. The chief of the Garda Síochána(Ireland’s National Police Service) would be on hand presumably, whereas I don’t know whether that would happen in the US. Certain countries prefer a certain lineup of delegates to meet and greet the visiting leader/head of state. Some countries prefer more pomp than others. Would the Chief of Police in China or the US greet a visiting head of state/leader? I don’t know.
"An RAF Ceremonial Squadron was on hand, saluting as the couple walked the red carpet to their motorcade. Also present was US ambassador to the UK Louis Susman and his wife Margaret, Chief Constable of Essex Police Jim Barker-McCardle, and Nick Barton, managing director of London Stansted Airport.
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Well, to compound matters, there’s your State Visit, which is usually attended by a higher degree of trumpets and cymbals than your Official Visit, even though the same person may be doing the visiting. And then below that again you have your Working Visit, and then your Private Visit, which has less formality again but is still not necessarily private in the ordinary sense of that word.
Plus, I think a certain latitude has to be given to a country that is hosting something like the G20, with enormous egos and their enormous entourages arriving from all over the world over the same 24-hour period. Realistically, the greeting assets have to be spread a bit more thinly than would apply in other circumstances, and nobody can take offence at that.
The link you give to the Telegraph describes a State Visit by Obama to the UK. Evidently it was intended that he would be greeted on arrival by Wales and his current doxy, but for some reason Wales was a late scratch from the running, and all he got was Lord Brookeborough (who?) and the local chief constable which, for a State Visit, strikes me as a pretty poor show. The ceremonial fly-past might have been some consolation, though. But, still, there had better have been a pretty good reason why Wales was a no-show.
(On googling: Obama came some hours early to the UK, because his originally-scheduled flight time was going to clash inconveniently with an ash cloud from an Icelandic volcanic eruption. So that probably explains it.)
On his arrival in Ireland just before the visit to the UK Obama was greeted at the airport by the deputy Prime Minister/Minister for Foreign Affairs, then flown by helicopter to the official residence of the President of Ireland where he was greeted by the President and planted a tree, then driven to the State Guest House where he was greeted by the Prime Minister and presented with a hurley. So, he was pretty comprehensively greeted, but the greeting highlights were not at the airport.
I think a Lord- or Baroness-in-Waiting is the normal greeter when the state visitor arrives in advance of the state events, and a royal only goes to the airport when the visiting head is being brought straight to Horse Guards (or Buckingham Palace in the case of Obama) for the arrival ceremony.
Well when you’ve got the heads of the most powerful 20 countries in the world arriving within a short time you obviously just can’t give them the same welcome as if they came individually no matter what your intent is.
This youtube shows Obama’s arrival and Putin’s arrival, apart from the lack of the red stair it seems like they got equal number of honour guard and officials waiting for them:
IMO there is no chance the stairway incident was an accident, their security teams would be communicating the requirements months in advance in minute detail. It’s a deliberate snub, but which Obama responded to well, implying they were overwhelmed as a host and couldn’t deal with it
I would guess a working visit. But the important question is not how I would describe it, but how the Protocol Section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC does in fact describe it.
A quick google shows that the Ministry Website isn’t showing any of the G20 leaders as making state, official or working visits, which (wild guess here) suggests that maybe there’s a distinction being made between visiting China, and attending a meeting which is being held in China. So from a diplomatic point of view, the G20 heads of state/government may be making private visits to China. There are some meetings noted (“President Xi Jinping met in Hangzhou with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia, who was in China for the G20 Hangzhou Summit”) though none with Obama. But that may simply be because the meeting between Xi and Obama hasn’t happened yet.)
Well, if it was a working visit it would explain the low-key affair at Hangzhou airport, though still a flub (possibly due to misunderstandings or incompetence on both sides).