Former ambassador advocates continued U.S. leadership role
Considering that he served as ambassador to six nations during nearly four decades in the U.S. Foreign Service, Ryan Crocker’s advice is something you may want to consider following.
“If you ever get cornered on anything having to do with the Middle East and you’re losing the argument,” he recommended, “blame it on the British.”
The closing statement of his April 4 presentation at Peters Township Public Library drew some chuckles from the packed audience, followed by a hearty round of applause.
But his take on the history of an area that has become synonymous with chaos shows that the United Kingdom laid the groundwork for the current situation, with a major assist from France.
And according to Crocker, if the United States would have been granted a greater role in shaping the region, everything may have worked out much differently.
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Ryan Crocker makes a point during his presentation.
His program “Middle East Meltdown: Causes and Consequences” – brought to the library by the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh, with financial support from Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 764 – provided a case for continued U.S. involvement in what transpires around the globe, based on precedent.
As it pertains to the Middle East, President Woodrow Wilson appointed a commission following World War I “to go out to the region and actually ask people who lived there how they wanted to be governed,” Crocker said. The top answer was self-governance, followed by a second choice of support for a unitary mandate for the whole region, managed by the United States. And of course, neither of those two things happened.”
Ryan Crocker was in the U.S. Foreign Service for 37 years, and after retiring was recalled to active duty by President Barack Obama in 2011 to serve as Ambassador to Afghanistan.
His previous appointments included service as Ambassador to Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Lebanon. He became dean of Texas A&M University’s George Bush School of Government and Public Service in 2010.
Crocker has received honors including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Presidential Distinguished Service Award, State Department Secretary’s Distinguished Service Award, Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award, State Department Distinguished Honor Award, Award for Valor, three Superior Honor Awards and the American Foreign Service Association’s Rivkin Award.
When he stepped down as ambassador in Kabul in 2012, Crocker was named an Honorary Marine by the U.S. Marine Corps.
Source: Middle East Institute
Instead, the United Kingdom and France followed a secret agreement they’d made in 1916 to partition the region into mutually agreed-upon spheres of influence, an extension of colonial policies of the time. The resulting map continues to be a source of strife.
Fast-forward a couple of decades to the end of World War II and a much different scenario compared with its global-conflict predecessor.
“The architecture for a postwar world was largely developed by the United States. We didn’t just develop it. We led it,” Crocker explained, with the legacy of an upcoming “75-year anniversary of no major European land wars under American leadership.
“Did we always get it right all the time?” he continued. “Of course, we didn’t. But there was a consistency that transcended parties, where presidents, whether Republican or Democrat, looked at a world that benefited from raw U.S. leadership.”
The two most recent presidents, he contended, seem to be bucking the trend.
“Without a lot of pronouncements or fanfare, President Obama saw a different world and a different role for the U.S. One of his mantras was, ‘We can’t do everything,'” Crocker said. “He kind of backed us out of places and issues, but our friends and adversaries out there in the world saw the difference.”
As for his successor:
“President Trump and President Obama are not known for their unfettered affection for each other, but in this area, they’re pretty close,” Crocker asserted. “In terms of broad philosophy, I would suggest to you that these two presidents, the former one and the current one, kind of look at it the same way: Let the others pick up the burden. We’re done being responsible for everything.”
As to why that might not be in the world’s bests interests, he cited Bill Clinton’s original position in the 1990s regarding the Balkan conflict: “This is a European issue. The Europeans have to solve it.”
When that failed to transpire, U.S. involvement eventually led to the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, reached in Dayton, Ohio, in 1995.
Six years later, American troops invaded Afghanistan in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the war there has persisted since. Its roots are with the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979-89, in which the United States provided support to those fighting its Cold War foe.
“We said in 1990, ‘Our work here is done.’ You could see that there was going to be a horrific civil war in Afghanistan, because the seven major Mujahideen groups that we had been training and financing and arming in Pakistan’s northwest frontier, the only thing that united them was a common enemy,” Crocker said. “Remove the common enemy, and it was going to be a hideous run for the roses, which is exactly what transpired.”
The Taliban took over leadership, welcomed Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda to relocate there, and the consequences are evident to this day.
“Those people have not become softer, gentler or milder with the passage of time. They are totally committed, totally tough, totally dedicated to their cause, far more so than was the case after 9/11,” Crocker explained. “So to hand the country back to them would be inviting – let’s face it – another 9/11.”
And so he does not advocate calls to pull U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
“If we can help keep the country together at this force level, we should probably do it, because the risk of ceasing to do it would be one I would not assume,” he said.
That opinion dovetails with Crocker’s overall viewpoint of the United States’ leadership role throughout the world:
“No one can quite do what we do, and I would suggest to you, that need for us to do it is still out there.”