The Ambassadors

The President of the United States often really seems to be a kind of elected Priest-Monarch. One area in which this is obviously apparent, is his ability to reward cronies and fundraisers with agreeable Ambassadorships overseas. Matt Yglesias, who is too wise to buy the wisdom himself, offers the official justificatory fig-leaf for this patronage:

I had always just thought of this is a kind of casual, widely accepted corruption. But recently I did learn the official story as to why this is good practice, namely that an important political supporter or a friend of the president is likely to have a much easier time of getting access to the Oval Office than any mere foreign service officer would. Thus, it’s arguably better for the host country to have a political appointee than a career FSO. Therefore, this practice helps build good-will and so forth.

Up to a point Lord Copper! It's true, for instance, that Jean Kennedy-Smith, appointed Ambassador to Ireland by Bill Clinton, found it easier to get a line to Tony Lake and the White House arguing that State should support an entry visa to the US for Gerry Adams in 1994, whereas Raymond Seitz, the first career diplomat to be Ambassador to the Court of St James in London, opposed the notion not least because Adams had not renounced violence. Seitz, mind you, further suffered from the fact that he'd originally been appointed by George HW Bush. (Seitz was accused, if memory serves, of "going native"; not an accusation ever levelled at one of his predecessors, Joe Kennedy.)

However, there are times - and they've been plentiful in recent years - when appointing Presidential Chums to plum posts has proved disastrous. Consider William Farrish, for example. In the years after 9/11, when the US needed an Ambassador prepared to explain and defend US policy, Farrish was an invisible man.

As The Economist noted Farrish almost never bothered to appear on the BBC's flagship political programmes. Given the sales job required to convince British opinion over Iraq this might be considered a pretty flagrant dereliction of duty. Not that his deputies were much better, mind you. And it wasn't just in Britain that this was a problem: US Ambassadors hid in their Embassies in Berlin and Paris and other european capitals. Doubtless they enjoyed the fine houses and the finer cellars, but they weren't doing their job. Of course, in some of those cases matters weren't helped by their inability to speak the native language. German is difficult you know?

You might say that the importance of the ambassador is less than once it was (though Charles Crawford might quibble with that) but there still remain times, even in lovely Paris and London when it matters that the ambassador be prepared to do their job. Even better, of course, is they're capable of doing so. That shouldn't be too much to ask.

UPDATE: In the comments, Anthony makes the excellent point that across large parts of the world foreign policy is really conducted by the US military. Robert Kaplan has written about how US generals act as "proconsuls" across the globe, from CENTCOM and West Africa to the Phillipines and Latin America. And so, yes, here too State is often bypassed. One imagines that HR Clinton, with her experience on the Armed Services committee, is likely to want, with Bob Gates, to have State and the Pentagon working more closely together. Still, the diplomatic corps retains an important PR and, well, ambassadorial role.

UPDATE 2: Commenters are smarter than me. Nadezhda correctly points out that Dana Priest's The Mission is actually the best book on the proconsular role of US generals. I don't know why I forgot that since not only have I read the book, but I reviewed it. Flatteringly, I think.

Comments

[Anthony]

Alex, you are, of course, quite right. I think it's important that the point regarding ambassadorial appointments should be linked to the startling militariation of US foreign policy. By which I don't mean an American propensity for making war, so much as the fact that large swathes of the American diplomatic effort is now effectively conducted by senior militry officers attached to the various regional commands. The broader point is not just that American diplomats are appointed in a bizarre fashion, it's that American diplomacy, at least as conducted through State, looks pretty moribund. If anything really important is going on, Washington will often go above the ambassador's head (or around him) anyway.

Oddly, the major voice for revitalising American civilian diplomacy and for giving it the funding it currently lacks is probably the SecDef, Bob Gates.

[Anthony]

Incidentally, on the "official" explanation for US practice, one wonders why, if it's all about having the ear of the President, we didn't see the Ambassadorial post in London going to, say, James Baker, consigliere extraordinaire, rather than the cash-flush non-entities we actually got under Bush 43.

If it's so very effective, one also wonders why it isn't standard practice internationally. It rather puts one in mind of a particular episode of the second series of Blackadder when he's trying to sail to France:

BLACKADDER: "No need to panic, somebody in the crew will know how to steer us to France."
CAPTAIN REDBEARD RUM: "The crew, my lord?"
BLACKADDER: "Yes, the crew."
RUM: "What crew?"
BLACKADDER: "I was under the impression that it is common maritime practice for a ship to have a crew."
RUM: "Opinion is divided on the subject."
BLACKADDER: "Really?"
RUM: "Yes. All the other sea captains say it is, I say it isn't."
BLACKADDER (resigned): "Oh, God. Mad as a brush."

[Sam G]

It's also a reflection on (and an explanation for) how little influence the State Dept actually has on diplomacy at the highest levels. When your top person in another capital has no ties (and quite often an antipathy) to their own staff and the back-room folk back in Washington, it's unsurprising that there's not much communication going on. Which translates to much less leverage and profile in that capital for all of the State Department's priority messages, at the expense (presumably) of those set directly by the Ambassador's circle back in Washington.

Of course he's an elected monarch - one dreadful mistake in the Constitution is the failure to separate the Powers of the Monarch and the CEO.

[nadezhda]

I think the best work on US militarization of foreign policy is Dana Priest's terrific The Mission. Anthony Zinni's memoir (written by Tom Clancy), Battle Ready, is also excellent on this. Zinni was the ultimate proconsul as CIC of CENTCOM -- proud of the job he did, but ultimately very critical of a system that put him in the position of having to play a proconsul role given the vacuum elsewhere.

Anthony is right that it's striking how vocal Gates has been on the need to rebalance the roles of DoD and State, including giving State the resources it needs to do the jobs that it rather than DoD should be doing. I'd guess that's one (of several) reasons why Obama decided he'd be comfortable with Gates remaining on the job -- a shared vision that he doesn't have to force down Gates' throat. Of course, extracting funds from DoD's budget to go to State is another kettle of fish. But at least there's agreement that a rebalancing of roles is essential, if for no other reason than for the long-run health of the US military itself.

There's a growing "movement" that's not exclusively on the Left to redefine "national security" by the 3Ds - defense, diplomacy, development. We'll be hearing a lot more of this, especially with Hillary playing a highly visible role at State.

[Anthony]

"...written by Tom Clancy..."

I believe it was actually written in large part by Tony Koltz (previously best known as an author of "Choose Your Own Adventure" books...) and then badged as one of Clancy's themed series. Well worth a shufti, though. General Zinni is a very wise man.

[nadezhda]

@Alex - Happy to be of service.

@Anthony - That makes more sense re authorship, since Zinni's book is certainly not Clancyesque. Provides a useful perspective. What I like about Zinni is that he asks the right, difficult questions and doesn't pretend he's got all the answers.