The Back Channel

by William J Burns

  A more durable twenty-first-century European security architecture has eluded us in nearly three decades of fitful attempts to engage post–Cold War Russia. That is not likely to change anytime soon—certainly not during Putin’s tenure. Ours should be a long-game strategy, not giving in to Putin’s aggressive score-settling, but not giving up on the possibility of an eventual mellowing of relations beyond him. Nor can we afford to ignore the need for guardrails in managing an often adversarial relationship—sustaining communication between our militaries and our diplomats, and preserving what we can of a collapsing arms control architecture. Over time, Russia’s stake in healthier relations with Europe and America may grow, as a slow-motion collision with China in Central Asia looms. With the return of great power rivalry, we’ll have an increasing interest in putting ourselves in the pivotal position, able to manage relationships and build influence in all directions.

  Disorder in the Middle East will remain that troubled region’s default position for years to come. Pessimists are hardly ever wrong there, and they rarely lack for company or validation. A hard-eyed look at our own interests argues for less intensive engagement. We are no longer directly dependent on Middle East hydrocarbons. Israel is more secure than ever before from existential threats. Iran is a danger, but an opportunistic power, its ambitions bounded in a Sunni-majority region, as well as by simmering domestic discontent and a moribund economy. Despite Russia’s resurgence, there is no external adversary to compel our attention, as there was during the Cold War.

  As President Obama discovered, however, deleveraging in the Middle East is sometimes destabilizing in its own right. Insecurity in the region is a powerful contagion, and threats regularly metastasize beyond its boundaries. The United States can’t afford to neglect its leadership role—while applying a massive dose of humility and rejecting the large-scale military and nation-building efforts of the recent past, which were doomed to failure in a region that has often been a graveyard for military occupiers and social engineering projects by outsiders, however well intentioned. As part of a long-term strategy, we should reassure our traditional Arab partners against the threats they face, whether from Sunni extremist groups or a predatory Iran. But we should insist in return that Sunni Arab leaderships recognize that regional order will ultimately require some modus vivendi with an Iran that will remain a substantial power even if it tempers its revolutionary overreach. We should also insist that they address urgently the profound crisis of governance that was at the heart of the Arab Spring. Genuine friendship with Israel should impel us to push for the two-state solution with Palestinians that is already past its expiration date, but without which Israel’s future as a Jewish, democratic state will be in peril.

  President Trump’s disregard for Africa and Latin America has been foolish, as demography and a variety of uncertainties and possibilities reinforce their strategic significance for the United States. Similarly, his antipathy for multilateral agreements and international institutions will leave his successors with a huge rebuilding task, especially since renovation and adaptation were already long overdue. It was an historic mistake to walk away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership; with a subsequent effort in Europe, we could have anchored two-thirds of the global economy to the same high standards and rules as our own system, helped emerging markets join the club over time, and shaped China’s options and incentives for reform. None of that is to suggest that we don’t have to do a much better job of insisting on fair, two-way-street provisions in trade agreements, and of cushioning their effects on important sectors of our own economy and labor force. Walking away from imperfect agreements, however, is rarely better than addressing their imperfections over time.

  Trump’s rejection of the Paris climate accords and spectacular backtracking on our global commitments on migration and refugees were also devastating, deepening mistrust of our motives and reliability. There has been no hint of American leadership on a host of accelerating technology questions, from cyber threats to the impact of rapid advances in artificial intelligence, that are likely to transform geopolitical competition in the twenty-first century in the way that the Industrial Revolution transformed it in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the emerging power configuration, American resources and influence are relatively less substantial than they were a decade ago, and even more damaged as a result of the Trump administration’s policies. Nevertheless, in all these areas, the United States has a pivotal role to play, and the quality of its diplomacy will be the key to playing that role well.

  * * *

  * * *

  “MY GOD, THIS is the end of diplomacy,” sighed Lord Palmerston, Britain’s foreign secretary, a century and a half ago when he was handed his first telegram. It was not the first time that diplomacy’s demise seemed imminent, and it was not the last. As the second decade of the twenty-first century draws to a close, the notion of American diplomacy as a tool of first resort seems quaint, if not naïve, like pining for the return of the village watchmaker in a smartwatch world.

  Selling the practical virtues of diplomacy is a complicated undertaking. For all the debate about “hard power,” “soft power,” and “smart power” in recent years, diplomacy is most often about quiet power, the largely invisible work of tending alliances, twisting arms, tempering disputes, and making long-term investments in relationships and societies. Diplomacy is punctuated only rarely by grand public breakthroughs. Its benefits are hard to appreciate. Crises averted are less captivating than military victories; the lower costs to consumers that come from trade agreements are less tangible and direct than a closing factory; the preventive care that occupies most diplomats is less compelling than the military’s dramatic surgical triumphs. In the new era of disorder before us, however, the quiet power of American diplomacy has never mattered more.7

  There is no neat alchemy for renewing American diplomacy, but there are at least three imperatives: reinforcing the core roles and qualities that continue to sustain successful diplomacy; adapting diplomatic tradecraft to manage new challenges; and revitalizing a compact with an American public less certain of the purpose and importance of American leadership.

  Over the course of my career, we struggled and often failed on all these counts. Lulled into complacency by a seemingly more benign post–Cold War international environment and our unipolar dominance, we let atrophy the essence of diplomacy—the ability to cajole, persuade, browbeat, threaten, and nudge other governments and political leaders in directions consistent with our interests and values. Stunned by the earthquake of 9/11 and its aftershocks, we entered a prolonged period of strategic and operational distraction. Stabilization, counterinsurgency, countering violent extremism, and all the murky concepts that mushroomed in the era of the great inversion proved to be flawed guideposts for the adaptation of American diplomacy. We tended to oversell the merits of diplomats as social workers and undersell the core role of diplomats in hammering out the best relations we could between states, from the like-minded to the nastily adversarial.

  Even as funding and State’s relative role diminished, we spread our diplomatic wings further and took on issues and missions for which we lacked expertise and the means to make a meaningful difference. We compounded the problem by failing to build the expertise and operational agility that we’d need to confront the increasingly urgent challenges of this century, from the revolution in technology to climate change. That all combined to make it infinitely harder to demonstrate the power and purpose of American diplomacy at its best, precisely at the moment when we needed it most, and at a time when the political foundations at home critical to effective leadership abroad were collapsing.

  * * *

  * * *

  THE CORE ROLES and qualities of good diplomats are not fundamentally different today from what they were in earlier eras. George Kennan and George Shultz both described diplomats as “gardeners,” painstakingly nurturing plants and partners
and possibilities, always alert to the need to prune, weed, and preempt problems. Their prosaic description may not fit well on a recruiting poster, but it still rings true today.

  Others have referred to diplomats as conductors or organizers. In music, conductors ensure that all the instruments of an orchestra come together as one. In foreign policy, diplomats similarly harness all the tools of American statecraft—from the soft power of ideas, culture, and public diplomacy, to economic incentives and sanctions, intelligence-gathering and covert action, and military assistance and the threat of force—to achieve policy aims. Diplomats are classic organizers, whether in mobilizing the levers of American influence, shaping international alliances, or bridging divides with adversaries. Jim Baker played all of these roles in helping George H. W. Bush build the Desert Storm coalition, less a gardener than a herder of geopolitical cats. A political animal at heart, he understood instinctively how important it was to “remember your base”—to tend to international alliances, the great force multiplier of U.S. influence.

  Effective diplomats also embody many qualities, but at their heart is a crucial trinity: judgment, balance, and discipline. All three demand a nuanced grasp of history and culture, mastery of foreign languages, hard-nosed facility in negotiations, and the capacity to translate American interests in ways that other governments can see as consistent with their own—or at least in ways that drive home the costs of alternative courses.

  Judgment is essential to navigating foreign terrain in America’s best interest. I have yet to find a better frame for the basic challenge of diplomatic judgment than Reinhold Niebuhr’s “serenity prayer”: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Like any aphorism, Niebuhr’s insight can be twisted in lots of different ways. Neoconservatives cited his “courage” to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003; critics of the war pointed to his “wisdom” as the most compelling argument for restraint. What cannot be overstated, however, is the importance of sound judgment in a world of fallible and flawed humans—weighing ends and means, anticipating the unintended consequences of well-intentioned actions, and measuring the hard reality of limits against the potential of American agency.

  When diplomacy succeeds, it is usually because of an appreciation of its limits, rather than a passion for stretching beyond them. Durable agreements are rooted in mutual self-interest, not one-sided imposition of will, and they frequently carry the baggage and imperfections of compromise, the inevitable consequences of the give-and-take of even the most fruitful negotiations. That was the story of the Iran nuclear agreement, and Qaddafi’s negotiated abandonment of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. It was an appreciation of the limits of power that encouraged George H. W. Bush and his team to stop short of overthrowing Saddam in 1991, after the rapid success of Desert Storm in expelling Iraq from Kuwait. Bush, Baker, and Scowcroft were patient practitioners of Hippocratic diplomacy, intent on doing no harm in uncertain circumstances, guided by prudence and judicious use of America’s power and tools.

  When circumstances offer rare openings for diplomatic agency, diplomats have to be able and willing to make big bets. That was the genesis of the Bush 41 administration’s masterful management of German reunification, and of Jim Baker’s brilliance in translating military victory in Iraq into a diplomatic triumph in Madrid. American leverage was at its zenith in that period, but it took sound diplomatic judgment to apply it skillfully and seize historic openings.

  Professional diplomats have an obligation to offer their honest judgments, however inconvenient. To policymakers and elected officials predisposed to “do things,” career diplomats and their broken-record warnings about potential consequences or pitfalls can seem terminally prudent. Americans see themselves as problem-solvers, and the notion that some actions are best avoided can seem almost un-American to political leaders. Ambassadors in the field always face a tension between warning of possible policy failures and recognizing that gloomy analysis is not a policy.

  Secretary of State Dean Acheson once complained that senior diplomats tended to be “cautious rather than imaginative.”8 Most of his successors, including the ten I served directly, have harbored similar concerns, some more openly than others. It is true that career officers sometimes seem to take particular relish in telling a new administration why its big new idea is not so big or so new, or why it won’t work. It is also true that the increasing roles in foreign policymaking of both the NSC staff and other agencies over successive administrations have tended to bring out the more passive (or passive-aggressive) side of the State Department.

  From Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump, American demagogues have doubted the loyalty and relevance of career diplomats, seeking to intimidate and marginalize them. Those are the most extreme circumstances, in which good people are forced out of the Foreign Service or muzzled. In my own career, I never had to face those extremes. I learned from remarkable professionals like Tom Pickering that policy initiative and a willingness to provide candid views were an essential part of being a career diplomat, especially as you became more senior. It never made sense to him, or to many in my generation, simply to serve as a postman for Washington decisions, or to wait for White House choices without first trying to shape them. I always admired the way Secretary Rice encouraged me to continue to provide my warnings of the looming trainwrecks with Putin’s Russia and argue alternative policy courses, even though she had her own views, and the White House theirs. Never once did I feel that my two rubles from Moscow were unwelcome or irrelevant.

  I have nothing but admiration for colleagues who in recent decades decided that they could no longer serve policies in which they did not believe. More than a dozen Foreign Service professionals resigned over American nonintervention in the Balkans in the early 1990s. Several others left over the Iraq intervention a decade later. Many more have resigned in protest of the Trump administration’s assault on American diplomacy and the values that sustain it. Short of resignation, officers are obliged to exercise discipline and avoid public dissent. But they also have a parallel obligation to express their concerns internally and offer their best policy advice, even if the truths they perceive are unpalatable. A State Department in which officers are bludgeoned into timidity, or censor themselves, or are simply ignored, becomes a hollow institution, incapable of the disciplined diplomatic activism that this moment in history demands of the United States.

  Balance is an equally important diplomatic trait, for diplomats are constantly called to manage inevitable trade-offs—among tactical choices, between short- and long-term goals, of practical interests and less tangible values. Diplomacy is often unavoidably transactional. It is a mistake, however, to lose sight of the enlightened self-interest that connects immediate choices to strategic possibilities, and embeds short-term interests in wider questions of principle.

  The problem of promoting respect for human rights in authoritarian societies, where we also have important security interests, is particularly complicated, and sometimes particularly painful. There is no perfect diplomatic playbook for managing this dilemma. The Trump administration has tended simply to abdicate, reserving its condemnation only for those autocracies with whom we are sharply at odds, like Iran. Much as I am convinced of the flaws of that approach, which just feeds the arguments of Putin and other autocrats that the United States is fundamentally hypocritical and only promotes democracy and human rights to suit its own strategic purposes, our record in other administrations is hardly pristine.

  Tone certainly matters. I have yet to meet the foreign leadership, or society, that responds well to being lectured to or patronized by Americans. Nor is ritual invocation of American exceptionalism especially compelling against the backdrop of our current exceptionally unappealing domestic landscape. Yet there is also no substitute for raising human rights concerns directly and plainly. Addressing t
hem is a matter of any state’s long-term self-interest, not a favor to the United States or anyone else. Pressing those concerns is also a matter of who we are as Americans, and of our commitment to ideas of political tolerance, pluralism, and respect for diversity that remain a source of enduring strength.

  I admired the way Hillary Clinton stepped up in the case of the blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng. She took real risks, for the right reasons. In other cases over the years, however, we often had far less satisfying outcomes. I had countless conversations over the past couple decades with dictators in the Middle East and Central Asia and other hard places, pushing for a specific prisoner to be released, or to consider some general easing of repression. I also had countless conversations with local human rights activists, listening to their concerns and explaining as honestly as I could that we would continue to try to help, but also had interests in military access or counterterrorism cooperation that we couldn’t easily jettison. Those were the trade-offs that were hardest to swallow.

  Pulling off the myriad balancing acts of diplomacy demands discipline—the self-awareness to be humble and question assumptions. Too often, we’ve lulled ourselves into diplomatic wishful thinking, an almost willful cluelessness about what’s really driving events abroad and the long-term consequences of our actions. After the Gulf War, many of us assumed naïvely that Saddam Hussein’s regime would collapse of its own contradictions. However skeptical we may have been about much of the intelligence suggesting that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the 2003 war, it didn’t occur to us that the Iraqi dictator would manufacture the illusion that he retained them to ward off external and internal foes. Our failure of imagination obstructed more honest debate about the core rationale for war and our judgments about the risk of alternative courses. The wider tragedy, of course, was stubborn refusal to see clearly the inexorable complexities of the day after.