Christopher Hill is a dinosaur of American diplomacy and I mean it in a good sense. Revolution of the last two decades brought to the upper echelons of the diplomatic/national security boys and girls with little experience in anything except campaigning and fundraising.
Of course, memoirs of a professional diplomat, Bismark included are always elliptic to the degree of secular mysticism; and what is omitted is frequently more important than what is there. But what is there is remarkable enough. Hill does not mention that almost all missions he was tasked by Washington were spectacular failures: one Iraq is sufficient to obliterate a career of anybody. But he earnestly tried to make bad situation (and even worse instructions) better and more palatable. Chris Hill more frequently than not was an honorable man in service of impossible and dishonorable cause.
For instance, Hill, in his capacity of Ambassador to Macedonia assisted Holbrook in dismembering Yugoslavia and creating one of European "black holes" of banditry and terrorism out of Kosovo. Yet, from his memoirs it is pretty clear that so-called Kosovo Liberation Army did not represent a significant fraction of Kosovo Albanians being cobbled together from disparate bands representing mostly Dranica clans. He writes in detail how Rugova, an obscure Albanian politician, was enthroned as a leader of Albanian independence movement. In fact, his "representatives" were not even allowed to enter talks of Albanian field commanders.
A wonderful passage mentions Cheney citing some "intelligence reports" and such in support of his position after Bush started to doubt superhuman wisdom and assurance of his Vice. After silent prodding by Condi Rice--hopefully not including leg kicking under the table--Bush proclaimed that he read that document and it contains nothing Cheney cited as fact. George Bush reading some obtuse foreign policy document is as inconceivable as Chernenko (senile Secretary General) but Cheney instead of arguing his position, just shut up. Psychopaths cannot be convinced by arguments, but, in my experience, they frequently cave in when forcefully confronted.
His characteristics of colleagues are mostly superlative, yet many make clear his real views. Joseph, an obscure neocon put by Bushies in charge of non-proliferation, always looked for situation where "coercive methods" (i.e. sanctions and war) have to be applied. So one can wriggle true meaning of his elliptic descriptions with no fault of his present. True diplomat!
2 comments:
There is little surprise Hill did not make it to Assistant Secretary of State or had to retire to U. Denver instead of Harvard Business School: he knows too much about foreign policy and art of diplomacy. For the Irish bimbos of the CIA/NSC/State Department--Samantha Power named by New Yorker as a current chief foreign policy ideologue, Evan Ryan, Meghan O'Sullivan, Eileen O'Connor--to name only a few, his admonishments sound like teaching advanced calculus to special ed first graders. Indeed, we observe dawn of the civil service and emergence of court where physical proximity to body of the monarch, 'body politic'--in premodern political theory the state was an extension of the physical body of the monarch--rather than capabilities and experience determine rank and position.
P.S. Kennedy School of Government rather than HBS should have been mentioned in above comment.
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