The Washington Post/Jennifer Rubin : A worldwide crisis of confidence, competence and charisma

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A worldwide crisis of confidence, competence and charisma
By Jennifer Rubin February 19 at 3:15 PM Email the author
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in 2017. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

Eliot Cohen, a veteran of the State Department and the international foreign policy community, writes poignantly from the Munich Security Conference:

    What has happened here is the same phenomenon that explains so many of the ills of the last couple of decades: the algae-like bloom of elites and their simultaneous loss of substance. A younger John McCain would not have been unique for his qualities of wisdom and character at the earlier iterations of this conference. He would have been met by acute thinkers like Thérèse Delpech of France, staunch public servants like Manfred Wörner, a German defense minister and secretary general of NATO in the 1980s, or politicians like Dennis Healey of Britain. Their successors are cautious functionaries, pallid experts, and colorless politicians who think carefully about domestic audiences before speaking up abroad.

This comes at an unfortunate time, when democracies are under attack and when courage and vision are sorely needed. (“Perhaps this is the inevitable price of the success of the West in creating societies prosperous beyond the dreams of 100 years ago,” Cohen writes. “Perhaps it is the result of a culture that admires military courage but only from a safe distance, that makes democratic political life such a course of humiliation that few sane people will endure it, that has replaced intellectual brilliance with a Henry Ford-style industrialization of the life of the mind. Whatever it is, it hung over the conference like the February fog rising from the city’s slushy streets.”)

It would be nice to think that we’ve tucked away our brilliant, creative minds in other quadrants of society, but if those figures shy away from public life, we’re at a disadvantage in combating aggressive authoritarians.

In watching Secretary of State Rex Tillerson come out of his protective shell to provide an utterly uninspiring and uninformative interview on foreign policy, one cannot but help think Cohen is right; we have weak leaders grossly unprepared for the challenges we face today. I suppose we can be pleased Tillerson was forced into public view, but had allies or foes been watching, they were not likely to have been impressed.

His rote answers will not encourage bold action. His thoroughly prosaic talking points don’t inspire confidence. (“What I think— we got a common understanding with China is that North Korea represents a serious threat to China as well.”) He offers no creative ideas. (“We’re not using a carrot to convince them to talk. We’re using large sticks. And that is what they need to understand.”) He demonstrated no particular insights or mastery of the fine points of current crises.

Worse, he insisted he has not damaged the State Department, even as morale is lower than at any time in recent memory and as lifelong diplomats have streamed out and critical positions go unfilled. He blithely declares that “there’s been no dismantling at all of the State Department. We’ve got terrific — people, both foreign service officers, civil servants, that have stepped into those roles around the world. . . . [on an] interim basis. So clearly, it is not with the same kind of support that I wish everyone had. But our foreign policy objectives continue to be met.” One has the sense he may not know what all these people do and how important the institutional knowledge at Foggy Bottom is.

The long-term damage to the department is something foreign policy gurus from both Republican and Democratic administrations worry about. “At the top, senior career officials have been shown the door,” says former Obama administration State Department veteran Max Bergmann. “Meanwhile, mid-level staff are looking for the exits, as Tillerson has cut off opportunities for career growth, by putting in place hiring freezes and preventing lateral movement. And at the lower end they’ve cut incoming officer classes and blocked new hires. State is experiencing a massive brain drain and morale — all across the department is pathetically low. ”

Former ambassador to Turkey Eric S. Edelman agrees. He tells me, “Tillerson has presided over an absolute hemorrhage of talent in the U.S. foreign service. It will take a long time, perhaps 20 years to recover from the damage to the U.S. platform for diplomacy.” He adds, “His diplomatic efforts are largely irrelevant since no foreign official can regard him as an authoritative spokesperson for the U.S. government since anything he says can be undone in an instant by a tweet.” In total, he sees the interview as “a pretty pathetic attempt to reassert his relevance, but it will do nothing to raise his standing.” He concludes, “As a retired diplomat with 30 years of experience and as a diplomatic historian, I am quite certain that he will be regarded as perhaps the least distinguished occupant of the office since the end of the Second World War.”

And how could it be otherwise? Most every serious foreign policy from center left to conservative opposed his candidacy and was then excluded from conversation. Those with high ethical standards and integrity in their foreign policy views did not line up to serve. The result is an unfit president with a mediocre, at best, State Department. And much as we would like to think other allies can take up the slack, Eliot Cohen reminds us the West isn’t exactly overflowing with talent.

We should pray we muddle through without serious damage until, perhaps, a more intellectually capable and eloquent generation is prepared to take the reins of power here and around the world. When they do, I shudder to think what they will find.