The odd utility of Richard Holbrooke

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Wednesday, October 21, 2009 - 4:17 AM Share

In light of Hamid Karzai's agreement to go forward on a run-off election in Afghanistan, I was curious about special envoy Richard Holbrooke's role in this denouement.  Jon Western links to this Nukes & Spooks McClatchy blog post chock-full of some inside dirt: 

Three administration officials, who asked not to be identified by agency, told us that, while Holbrooke is laboring away hard behind the scenes, he's received direct orders from the White House to cool it publicly while Washington desperately tries to unscramble the Afghan electoral mess between President Hamid Karzai and his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.

"This process is so sensitive. He'd love to deal with this. The White House thinks ... it's not the time for him" to be out front, one of the officials said of Holbrooke...

To be fair -- and we do try to be fair here at N&S, we're told that the White House orders are not directed at Holbrooke alone. Everyone involved in Af/Pak policy has been told to keep a lid on it while President Obama deals with the difficult decision of how to keep the situation there from dropping into the abyss and whether to send more American servicemen and women to Afghanistan.

Everyone did keep quiet... except Senator John Kerry.  The Wall Street Journal's Jay Solomon and Peter Spiegel explain why: 

According to one Western diplomat, the Afghan president was more comfortable dealing with Sen. Kerry than with U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry or the administration's special representative to the region, Richard Holbrooke. Mr. Holbrooke angered Mr. Karzai when he suggested shortly after the Aug. 20 election that a runoff might be needed.

I'm beginning to wonder if Hoobrooke is simply the exemplar of the bad cop in foreign affairs.  For his sake, I hope so.  Otherwise, he's stuck being an envoy to a region in which the Indians won't talk to him, the Afghans won't talk to hi, and the Pakistanis that will talk to him are feckless. 
EXPLORE:U.S. FOREIGN POLICY, BUREAUCRATIC POLITICS, FOREIGN POLICY COMMUNITY, FOREIGN POLICY PROXIES, STATE DEPARTMENT
 

ALEXEVANSUK

8:35 AM ET

October 21, 2009

"stuck being an envoy to a

"stuck being an envoy to a region in which the Indians won't talk to him, the Afghans won't talk to hi, and the Pakistanis that will talk to him are feckless" -

Sounds a lot like Tony Blair's Middle East envoy role after he left government: talking to the Israelis was ruled out by his terms of reference, he himself refused to talk to Hamas, so by default he just became the envoy to Fatah...

 

TBEAU85

12:44 PM ET

October 21, 2009

So, umm....

So, umm...what does Eikenberry do exactly? A lieutenant general on the consular line?

 

BRETT

5:25 PM ET

October 21, 2009

It sounds like Holbrooke

It sounds like Holbrooke being his usual self - an imperious jerkass. He could get away with that in southeast Europe, where the countries are small and can be bullied into a bad agreement, but not so much with bigger countries.

 

NORWEGIAN SHOOTER

10:27 PM ET

October 21, 2009

Small as in physical size?

Do you know what Afghanistan's GDP is and how much we pump into it each year? Check it out. We have more bully power in Afghanistan than any other country on Earth. Witness Karzai's "decision" to accede to a second round of voting. We could have used the DC non-voting member of congress as our messenger if we wanted to.

BTW - an imperious jerkass (like the improvisation) gets what he wants, if he has the power.

 

BRETT

3:40 PM ET

October 23, 2009

I was referring to India and

I was referring to India and Pakistan.

 

PAUL G

2:22 AM ET

October 22, 2009

Why is Obama even messing around with this?

This whole “legitimacy” thing is a sideshow. A runoff election will probably have a much lower turnout than the 30% turnout in August and the lack of election observers will mean that the vote will be even more open to manipulation. I can’t imagine that if Karzai wins again it will make any difference to Afghans who, as a whole, are more worried about the local cops shaking them down for a bribe than about which group of kleptocrats are in “power” in Kabul — which power does not appear to extend very far beyond Kabul’s city limits. And if Karzai loses, we’ll end up with Mr. Abdullah who, whatever his strong points are, is a Tajik, and won’t be accepted by the Pashtuns anyway. So whichever way this goes, how, exactly, does this make Obama’s hand stronger or his decision easier?

 

Daniel W. Drezner is professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

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