One of the most celebrated diplomats of his generation, Richard Holbrooke helped normalise U.S. relations with China; served as U.S. ambassador to a newly reunified Germany and then to the United Nations; and, most famously, negotiated the 1995 Dayton peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia. But he began and ended his career struggling with how to resolve two American wars: first in Vietnam, then in Afghanistan.
Diplomacy may be one of the world’s oldest professions, but it’s also one of the most misunderstood. It’s mostly a quiet endeavour, less swaggering than unrelenting, oftentimes operating in back channels, out of sight and out of mind. U.S. President Donald Trump’s disdain for professional diplomacy and its practitioners—along with his penchant for improvisational flirtations with authoritarian leaders such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un—has put an unaccustomed spotlight on the profession. It has also underscored the significance of its renewal.
The Trump show is endlessly distracting in a way that would be familiar to any connoisseur of the Latin-American strongman. The Wednesday-afternoon Oval Office appearance alone had enough fodder for countless talk-show segments: Trump grounds the airplanes! Trump lies about building the wall! Trump lies about being vindicated in the special-counsel probe —even when a federal judge says, in court, that he hasn’t been!
…there’s no question that the United States is at a level of political polarization unseen for many decades. Most of the attention to this phenomenon has focused on its effects on America’s internal politics, and some observers are clearly worried that the core institutions of the country might be at risk—understandable, given President Donald Trump’s open hostility towards some of these institutions, his apparent fondness for authoritarians, and the emergence of something resembling “state media” (i.e., Fox News).
President Trump appears to be getting advice on China policy from World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). It’s all starting to resemble a pro-wrestling match where one wrestler gets his opponent in a headlock, throws him to the ground and has him pinned—for a long two seconds—until he miraculously escapes. It’s good theater, but it’s tough on the audience.
The expectations were enormous: Perhaps Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un would, at a summit in Vietnam, finally declare an end to the Korean War…Instead, the second meeting between the two leaders ended in failure on Thursday, with a table set for a leaders’ lunch abandoned, a signing ceremony scrapped, and a terse statement from the White House press secretary: “No agreement was reached at this time.”
Photo courtesy: White House
Does Trump indeed mark the end of an era? Or will he prove a transitory figure who created a mere interregnum in America’s quest for primacy after the Cold War? In speaking about America’s purpose, Trump himself has repeatedly made it clear that he seeks to overturn what he regards as the benighted policies of the past. In contrast to his predecessors, Trump has repeatedly disparaged the notion that America is uniquely virtuous.
…three factors are key: establishing common policy ground, forging trusting and respectful personal relationships, and managing leaders’ respective domestic politics. These “three P’s,” other differences among the cases notwithstanding, provide a strategic framework crucial to successful summit diplomacy. While neither Trump’s nor Kim’s record inspires much confidence that these lessons will be drawn, it’d be in their interest – and the world’s – to do so.
February brings the most significant series of tests yet of whether President Trump can transform his disruptive U.S. foreign policy into concrete outcomes. The four to watch most closely are: negotiating a trade deal with China, denuclearising North Korea, rallying an international community to contain Iran, and democratising Venezuela.
