Title: War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence
Author: Ronan Farrow
Publish Date: April 24, 2018
Publisher: WW Norton & Company
Format: Hardcover
Page Count: 392
Source: Library
Date Read: May 6-10, 2020
Review
A fascinating if also a sombering and somewhat depressing look at the state of the State Department and the US foreign policy. Ronan Farrow is now known as an investigative journalist, but before journalism he worked in the State Department under Secretary Clinton on Special Representative Richard Holbrooke's ISAP team. But the cracks in the department go back to White House policies of Clinton, Bush II, and Obama and are accelerated by the policies of Trump.
Farrow worked as a liaison between NGOs and the ISAP team, than as the lead on Clinton's global youth leadership initiative. He still had contacts within the departmental regulars and with former Secretaries of State, so there is a cross section of what the administration's views were (via the Secretaries) and the ground truth from diplomats, ambassadors, and those working in Washington DC. Part of the trouble was that the Secretaries were not there to be a voice of reason and truth, but to make the President look good and feel happy with the choices he made with regard to any number of situations going on in the world.
The problem is, those Secretaries were also overwhelmed by the presidents' trust and confidence in the information and choices given by the CIA and the Pentagon - generals were increasingly taking over foreign policy and diplomatic relations. Generals also saw everything through the sights of M16 and so every situation called for combat (drone strikes, Special Ops, etc). The generals had no knowledge of the history and culture of a region/country, so there clumsy, sometimes deadly talks with people who could manipulate the US into agreeing with their side.
What did those egg-headed nerds back at State know? Well, for one thing, they had a deep knowledge of the region and traditional cultures. For another, some have worked on nuclear de-escalation for decades. For others still, they had ties with NGOs that worked in the area and could fund important projects and knew how to work anti-drug trafficking into NGO work to stabilize villages in Latin America.
And for one State worker, Richard Holbrooke, they also knew that climate change would alter diplomatic relations and tried to work on the climate problem from a diplomacy angle. The presidents didn't see the correlation between climate change and foreign policy, and the Pentagon wouldn't care about climate change and how it alters the fighting force, much less foreign conflict, until about 2018. But Holbrooke raised just this in regards to Pakistan-India relations regarding water sources early in Obama's first term; Obama's "team" (made up of generals and retired generals and a young, inexperienced NSA Ben Rhodes) thought he was delusional - Obama took the side of the generals and Rhodes. What happened? It turns out Holbrooke was right to worry and work on just that area of climate change as this article from 2019 shows. Too bad Holbrooke died of a heart attack in 2010 and couldn't get the apology from Rhodes or Obama or Sec Clinton.
But nothing to worry about, because as the US influence dies at the hands of State budget cuts and a dearth of institutional knowledge, China is taking its place. Good times.
Highly recommend reading this book in conjunction with Michael Lewis' The Fifth Risk for all those civic minded readers.
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