In what is almost certainly his last job in public service, Secretary of State John Kerry 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.
A secretary of state visit is planned in excruciating detail, both by Washington staff (known to insiders as “The Line”) and by the embassy on the ground. Short notice just means more people stay up later to prepare. Senior people at State doing this work have likely been in government since the Reagan administration, as Foreign Service Officers are not political appointees, and serve both Democratic and Republican administrations over their careers. “Use the building,” the rank-and-file always say to incoming secretaries, “take advantage of the expertise of the six floors below your office.” Nobody can know everything.
“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 airstrikes if they turned in their chemical weapons propelled Vladimir Putin 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 Palestinians. 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.
Peter Van Buren spent 24 years as a US foreign service officer. The column was first published by Reuters.