Whatever Happened to John Kerry
By Daniel Greenfield
SultanKnish.Blogspot.com
John Kerry returns from his latest Russian visit
bearing two baskets of potatoes and a t-shirt.
The
t-shirt, given to him by Foreign Minister Lavrov,
might as well say, “I wasted my time in Russia and
all I got was this shirt.”
It’s a diplomatic success only in relation to
Kerry’s previous humiliations such as the time that
Russia’s adeptly slimy foreign minister kept him
waiting for a week before returning his call while
the State Department spokeswoman announced to the
world that Kerry was “ready to talk whenever Foreign
Minister Lavrov can find the time.”
The Putin regime enjoys humiliating the United
States, but even it seems to have tired of degrading
Kerry who ruins their fun by failing to realize what
is going on. Instead Kerry has become a nonentity; a
forgotten messenger boy. It’s a fitting purgatory
for the formerly tireless leftist activist in the
Senate.
It wasn’t all that long ago that John Kerry was
being touted as the last best hope for diplomacy. No
one could quite admit that Hillary Clinton and
Barack Obama had made a complete mess, but the sighs
of relief when John Kerry got the job instead of
Obama’s dishonest crony Susan Rice spoke volumes.
American diplomacy had never before hit the low
point that it had under Obama and Clinton. Liberals
with an interest in foreign policy had expected
professionalism; instead the two politicians used it
as their private piggy bank. Obama handed off
ambassadorships to key countries to big donors while
Hillary spent more time seeing to the interests of
Clinton Foundation donors than to our national
interests.
Obama had campaigned as an internationalist who
would put aside the provincialism of the Bush years
to build meaningful multilateral relationships based
on his experience with other countries and cultures.
But once in office, he treated visits to other
countries like domestic campaign trips to obscure
states.
Foreign leaders soon found out that an Obama visit
was usually a cross between a photo op using their
historical landmarks as background and a vacation.
While his gaffes and embarrassing behaviors got the
most attention, the underlying problem was that he
didn’t understand what his job was. His routine of
self-important speeches and announcements of billion
dollar programs that would never materialize was
built for his endless domestic campaign and its
lapdog media. And it didn’t play well
internationally.
Obama refused to understand how international
relationships work. His grand plans for an end to
nuclear weapons, wars and industry were big ticket
progressive items with no relevance to events in the
real world. Two out of three of them quickly ended
up being scrapped. His undermining of American
allies in the Middle East with the Arab Spring
poisoned diplomatic relations in the region. His
weak and erratic response to Russian aggression
discredited his administration in Eastern Europe.
As it turned out, Obama did not have a foreign
policy, he had a domestic policy. His failure to
work together with Republicans at home was more than
equaled by his failure to work with allies abroad.
At home or abroad, he came with a pre-approved
progressive program that ignored emerging crises and
which he refused to budge from until a crisis became
severe enough to threaten his popularity.
An experienced White House staff might have eased
the problem, but Obama was surrounded by fellow
amateurs and egomaniacs putting the progressive
agenda ahead of pragmatic diplomacy. And his
Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton had little real
experience. In the past, she had told a number of
lies to compensate for that by manufacturing
imaginary achievements.
Hillary claimed that she had “helped to bring
peace to Northern Ireland" and negotiated open
borders for Kosovo refugees. In the real world, her
practical experience was extremely light, but heavy
on theory. Hillary Clinton was anxious to present
herself as extremely knowledge about foreign
affairs, but she preferred to avoid actually putting
theory into practice because it might interfere with
her future political campaign.
To the misfortune of America and the world, both the
White House and the State Department were led by
politicians with little understanding of foreign
affairs who wanted photo ops for their domestic
political campaigns more than they wanted to
actually put in the work to get things done. John
Kerry was supposed to change all that. An unlikely
repeat presidential candidate, Kerry was not holding
down the job as a platform for seeking higher
office. Instead the career activist would finally
have a direct line for putting his feverish foreign
policy obsessions into practice.
And Kerry did not disappoint, immediately diving
into deep waters, aggressively trying to revive the
corpse of the dead peace process between Israel and
the terrorists, circling frantically around Syria
and even chasing after Russia. It was a striking
contrast with Hillary’s empty tours or Obama’s
vacation diplomacy. There was finally a Secretary of
State willing to take on the big issues.
Kerry cheerleaders had forgotten that while he
genuinely did care about foreign affairs, unlike
Hillary, his diplomatic adventures had been that of
a professional patsy for assorted totalitarian
states. It took the rise of a genuinely delusional
Democrat like Obama to make Kerry seem like the
voice of reason.
Obama was oblivious to the way things were done.
Kerry was just oblivious. He understood the forms of
diplomacy, but was as inept at assessing the
sincerity of the other side as a sucker at a used
car lot. When it came to Syria, no one could forget
his pandering to Assad, and his confused statements
made an already incoherent administration policy
seem like it was coming apart at its contradictory
seams.
And Kerry couldn’t keep his big mouth shut. Before
long the real job of the State Department
spokespeople became explaining what Kerry had really
meant. Kerry’s infamous ‘for and against’ gaffe had
helped take down his presidential bid, but
miscommunications in diplomacy are far more
damaging. Most governments read comments at a more
subtle and convoluted level than the United States
does. Kerry’s statements, misstatements and
corrections were interpreted as double-dealing by
America.
Kerry’s sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood
alienated Egypt. His sympathy for Assad then
alienated the Muslim Brotherhood. Iran became his
only option because he had alienated everyone else.
Obama let him have his way on Israeli and even lent
some of his personal prestige with a visit, but
Kerry botched the negotiations by letting the
terrorists walk all over him and then insisting that
Israel do the same. Then he made the mess into an
even bigger disaster by blaming Israel for the
failed talks.
That incident reinforced Netanyahu’s conviction that
Obama could not be trusted. Netanyahu had gone out
on a limb for Kerry by making unpopular concessions
while receiving nothing in return. And after all
that, Kerry had turned around and stabbed him in the
back. Not only had Kerry precluded further Israeli
participation, but his promises on Iran were viewed
as worthless in Jerusalem.
Obama
stopped paying whatever little attention he had to
Kerry. And Kerry became the man who totes potatoes
back from Russia while imagining that he is changing
the world. A clown in a diplomatic circus he is too
oblivious to see.
The agenda isn’t set by Kerry. It isn’t even set by
Obama. It’s set by anyone and everyone else.
Iran has gotten its way on the nuclear program. The
Saudis have turned up their noses at Obama’s summit.
Israel has led a loud protest campaign against the
nuclear deal. The Saudis still insist on bombing
Yemen. Iran insists on raising tensions with its
expansionism around the region. The United States is
unable to do anything about this because, aside from
everything else, it no longer has any relationships
abroad or credible voices to carry its message.
Kerry finally had the power to make the changes that
he always wanted and proved once and for all that he
is not a brilliant diplomat or a deep thinker, but a
miserable failure.
And American diplomacy has failed with him.