Tag Archives: John Kerry

Checkpoint Charlie

October, 1961: Checkpoint Charlie: one of those barely remembered confrontations in the early days of the Cold War.

A few months before, the Soviets, against allied protests, had built the Berlin Wall, effectively sealing off East Berlin from the rest of the world. Western diplomats were refused free access to the area, against earlier agreements that they would be allowed such access.

The confrontation escalated when Americans moved tanks to the border to support the accord. The Soviets responded with tanks of their own on their side. Would someone begin firing, triggering World War III?

Fortunately, neither U.S. President John F. Kennedy nor Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev wished to begin a war. Back channel negotiations were established. Eventually both sides began backing away their tanks. Diplomats on both sides continued to have access to the entire city.

Before these events, before the Wall was even in place, in the mid 1950’s, John Kerry was a school boy in Berlin with his father, a U.S. official there. Kerry, who would later become U.S. Secretary of State, likes to tell of the time he biked over into East Berlin, apparently using his American passport, to explore the area. His father was horrified when he discovered what his son had done and promptly grounded him. Apparently, he had visions of his son’s escapade causing an international incident.

Now, more than six decades later, the world is still subject to crises along that longer divide between east and west.

Shaming Russia

“How can people go sit at a table with a regime that bombs hospitals and drops chlorine gas again and again and again and again and again and again, and acts with impunity? Are you supposed to sit there and have happy talk in Geneva under those circumstances when you’ve signed up to a ceasefire and you don’t adhere to it? What kind of credibility do you have with any of your people?”

–John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State, at the United Nations during talks on Syria

The recent talks followed air strikes which killed workers attempting to bring relief supplies to besieged Syrian civilians, despite an agreed upon ceasefire. The United States has blamed Russia, either for the strikes or allowing their Syrian allies to carry them out.

John Kerry is a diplomat’s diplomat. He continually remains civil and courteous even to those who must frustrate him to the point of insanity. This time, however, he could not contain his anger.

Until now, he’s managed civil negotiations with Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. He wants Lavrov and his country, in the interests of simple humanity, to reign in their protegé, Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s leader. Assad has committed atrocities against his people surely surpassing Russia’s own Ivan the Terrible.

Russians support Assad because they wish to retain their airbase and Mediterranean port in Syria. What to do?

Considering what happened when U.S. troops invaded Iraq, few Americans wish to commit their troops to Syria. The United Nations is hamstrung from acting because of Russia’s veto in the Security Council.

One suggestion is for American planes to bomb Syria’s airfields, preventing planes from using them to bomb civilians. Such actions are an act of war against a country not directly harming us.

Perhaps the heroes are those who come back, yes, again and again to seek a solution. If the atrocities committed in that small country continue, they refuse to allow the world to forget. Let the shaming continue.

Shutdown, Day 9, View Not From Washington

 

State Department officials attempting to carry out U.S. policy overseas, despite the shutdown, must answer embarrassing questions from the foreign press. John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State, answered one such question, as reported by ABC news.

“I am absolutely confident that when we get this moment of political silliness behind us, we will be back on track,” Kerry said in Indonesia, where he was attending meetings at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. We have recently recognized the importance of Asian nations to our economy as well as to our security arrangements.

President Obama was scheduled to attend but canceled his trip to stay in Washington while Republicans and Democrats wrestle with funding the federal government and bringing roughly 800,000 furloughed employees back to work.

The news report indicates how the diversion of our energy to the shutdown, and possible debt default, affects our influence overseas. China, of course, scored brownie points off our humiliation. Chinese officials cautioned that a default might change their thinking about the creditworthiness of the US government.

Diplomacy The Old-Fashioned Way

 

Noting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s peripatetic globe trotting, I remember a criticism someone leveled at U.S. diplomacy at the beginning of the digital age. Now that we have instant electronic communications, he said, we don’t need diplomats. Now the leaders can communicate electronically.

Thankfully, national leaders can and do utilize modern communications, but face to face meetings remain essential. These meetings do not magically appear. Venues, lists of invitees, translators, hotels, protocols (who will sit next to whom in an order established over centuries) must be organized, at times on short notice. Executive summaries, background papers, and talking points provide up-to-the-minute information for the principals, flying in for a day or two.

Diplomats who live in these countries and speak the language perform these functions. They hold conversations, not only with leaders, but with ordinary citizens of the country. They talk to the opposition who may one day lead and to the younger populace who will become the next movers and shakers. Person to person remains paramount. Electronic communication enhances. It can never replace.

Kerry is especially knowledgeable about the work of a diplomatic outpost. He is the son of a U.S. diplomat and spent at least a few years of his childhood living in U.S. overseas missions. Kerry likes to tell of the time when his father and family were posted to Berlin during the days of the Cold War. The twelve-year-old Kerry, using his diplomatic passport allowed him as part of a diplomatic family, biked through checkpoints one day over to East Berlin.

His father, Kerry says, was not pleased when he found out, confiscating his young son’s passport to prevent future such escapades. “You could have caused a diplomatic incident,” he lectured the future Secretary of State.

From Vietnam to Anti-War Protester to Syria and Iran

 

In his first trip abroad as U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry spoke to a Facebook gathering of youth in Berlin. One questioner asked “And since you have served the Army [actually Kerry served in the Navy], what exactly made you an opponent of the Vietnam War and maybe of war in general?”

Kerry answered that he went to Vietnam because he wanted to serve his country, and his country’s leaders said that the conflict there had “strategic implications for the country.” Instead he came to believe that the conflict was NOT strategic to America’s interests but was instead a civil war between Vietnamese. That’s why he led Veterans Against the War on his return.

Some wars must be fought, when America’s interests are directly attacked, Kerry said, but not “wars of choice.” Others have warned against being drawn into war when American interests are not directly affected.

Kerry was careful to emphasize our strong relationship with the European allies he is visiting, because they are based on mutual interests of strong democracies in a dangerous world. For decades we helped protect allies there from the Soviet Union until democracy replaced most of the communist regimes in eastern Europe. Europe was and is a strategic interest for us.

But what about countries like Syria and Iran? The U.S. and Europe have an interest in the war in Syria not turning into a dangerous regional conflict, with terrorists gaining a foothold, and Iran not becoming a nuclear power. We do not, however, want to send troops into what is a civil war.

These will continue to be subjects Kerry and others will discuss with allies. The ghosts of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan will stand as backdrop to their decisions.

At each step on Kerry’s trip, Syria and Iran have been topics of discussion. How do we encourage the non-terrorist opposition without ourselves become too embroiled in this civil war? How do we find the “right” sides to aid?

New Secretary of State; Thoughts on Christian Conscience and Diplomacy

 

John Kerry is now slated to head the Department of State, home for U.S. diplomacy.

The Cold WarAn age ago when the Cold War with the Soviet Union was at its height, a famous American diplomat made the following observations:

” . . . while Christian values often are involved in the issues of American conflict with the Soviet power, we cannot conclude that everything we want automatically reflects the purpose of God and everything the Russians want reflects the purposes of the devil. . . . We must concede the possibility that there might be some areas of conflict involved in this cold war which a Divine Power could contemplate only with a sense of pity and disgust for both parties, and others in which He might even consider us to be wrong.”

george f kennan bookThe diplomat, George F. Kennan, advocated that his beloved country take the high ground, that it develop its moral principles first and that military power only be used when absolutely necessary.

Further, he said:

“A government can pursue its purpose in a patient and conciliatory and understanding way, respecting the interests of others and infusing its behavior with a high standard of decency and honesty and humanity, or it can show itself petty, exacting, devious, and self-righteous. If it behaves badly, even the most worthy of its purposes will be apt to be polluted, whereas sheer good manners will bring some measure of redemption to even the most disastrous undertaking.”

These quotations are taken from “Foreign Policy and Christian Conscience” which The Atlantic Monthly published in May, 1959.

The U.S. never fought the Soviet Union directly in a war that may well have involved nuclear weapons. Kennan’s influence in no small part led the country to wait patiently. Eventually the Soviet Union caved from its own weaknesses, as Kennan had predicted.