[Dhaka Tribune] In what is almost certainly his last job in public service, Secretary of State John F. I was in Vietnam, you knowKerry
Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a
lucky hat,conqueror of Cambodia, and current Secretary of State...
is bumbling his way around the world, ricocheting from crisis to crisis. The idea of the last chapter of his biography portraying him as a punch line can't sit well. But is it Kerry's fault, or is he simply being swept up in an American foreign policy in historic disarray?
America lashed out after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and a decade later has substituted strategic incoherence for idiotic decisiveness. A common meme is that Kerry is at worst a bad actor stuck in an even worse movie, contributing little to lift it up but at the same time not baring any real responsibility for the flick's failure.
There's truth in that, but it misses Kerry's genuine capacity for haplessness. Over decades, this kind of serial failure just did not happen to previous secretaries of state. Not Schultz, not Baker, not Powell, not Albright, not Clinton.
To understand John Kerry's near-unique failures as secretary of state, it is important to look at how a secretary's trips abroad are conducted, and how secretaries in the past have used the State Department to accomplish their goals. I know, because during my own 24-year career at the State Department, I was on the receiving end of many of these visits.
| There's truth in that, but it misses Kerry's genuine capacity for haplessness. |
"Talking points" are a key planning item used to pull in all that expertise. The points ensure a tired and busy secretary does not need to know everything, and neither leaves out something important nor strays from policy. When a superpower's interests - never mind world markets and the possibility of war - are on the line, precision of speech is critical.
An example of Kerry's unintended consequences? An offhand remark by the secretary, less than a year ago, saying that Syria could avoid US
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...into the role of unlikely peacemaker. He failed to do what most need to be done in a crucial situation - just read the cards.
Another Kerry failing is not using his many deputies to set the stage for his visits. In the spring, Kerry flew out on what was intended to be his signature diplomatic achievement, a peace agreement between Israel and the Paleostinians. Israel's announcement a few months later canceling a release of prisoners ended that; didn't anyone arrange ahead of time for Israel's acquiescence? The use of deputies not only lays the groundwork for a triumphant secretarial visit, it prevents such equal-scaled secretarial failures.
Kerry seems to confuse effort for outcome; the State Department obsessively tracks his travel time as if it was billable hours. His frantic diplomacy (the last two weeks for example, India for 72 hours; Africa Civil Society Forum in Washington, August 4-6; an unannounced trip to Afghanistan; a six-day trip to Myanmar, Australia, the Solomon Islands and Hawaii) leaves him little time to follow-up on past efforts. As the United States finds itself playing catch-up to Putin in the Ukraine and the Islamic State in Iraq, Kerry is literally adrift mid-Pacific.