The Last Great Diplomat Of The 20th Century Has A Lesson For Future Democratic Presidents.

[elleng]

'Democrats are looking for a new foreign policy. A voice from the 20th century may help.

The American diplomat Richard Holbrooke was trying to talk Joe Biden into making women’s rights a priority in Afghanistan when the vice president lost his temper.

“When I mentioned the women’s issue, Biden erupted,” Holbrooke wrote in his diary. “Almost rising in his chair, he said, ‘I am not sending my boy back there to risk his life on behalf of women’s rights, it just won’t work, that’s not what they’re there for.’”

Holbrooke said in the 2010 meeting in the vice president’s office that he wasn’t for sending in troops to enforce women’s rights, just for pushing the issue with the Afghan government as troops departed.

“He thought it was bullshit, and this spiraled into a much larger discussion concerning the whole course of what would happen, and this was quite extraordinary,” Holbrooke wrote. “Joe took the position, plain and simple, that we have to get out of Afghanistan.”

The exchange between Holbrooke and Biden appears in George Packer’s stunning new biography of the diplomat, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century (Knopf, May 7). If you’re one of the dozens of people running for president, the book is probably the best guide you can find to navigating a transitional moment in American leadership and foreign policy. . .

And if you’re thinking about what American foreign policy will look like with a Democratic president, Our Man offers a glimpse at an old way that nobody in particular wants to go back to. Seth Moulton, the congressman and former Marine who is considering a White House campaign and is the toast of the Democratic foreign policy establishment, recalled this year that he had once sought “to rebuild the foreign policy that we had before this administration.

“But now I realize that that's not possible. And inherent in this disaster is an opportunity. When your old house gets damaged by a bad renter, or in this case, a terrible president, you don't just restore it to look like it was built in 1950, you take the opportunity to renovate it. You don't just rebuild, you build something new, something more relevant, something better.”

What that becomes is wide open, and will likely be hashed out in unexpected crises and half-baked debate answers over the course of the next year of campaigning. Aside from a vague sense that we should be tougher on Russia and, in a hazy way, more sympathetic to the Palestinians, Democrats are stuck reacting to Trump’s odd mix of bluster and caution, and are mostly matching it by being against it. Tulsi Gabbard positions herself the candidate of peace, with vicious dictators if necessary; Moulton is the candidate of modernizing the art of war; but the leading candidates are all major figures in domestic policy without much record of acting in, or really being much interested in, the world abroad.'>>>

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/bensmith/richard-holbrooke-joe-biden-democrats-2020-foreign-policy?

[Karadeniz]

1. Interesting read.

[Sherman A1]

2. Heard Holbrooke speak years ago

and really enjoyed listening to him.