Does The US Have A Secretary Of State?

Pakistan has finally reopened the road line of communication which has been providing a target rich environment for the rocket firers and trigger pullers of Taliban these past several days.  The reopening has come without any credit due the ever absent Hillary Clinton who holds the job title "Secretary of State" but only occasionally acts as if she believes it.

While matters have been accelerating from bad to worse in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, our low profile SecState has been busy preparing for her first trip to the Balkans.  Sure there are American interests in play there, and the frictions between Kosovo and Serbia are real and intractable, but the situation is neither dire nor even particularly worrisome.  There is no apparent requirement for a hands-on secretarial visit.

The mess currently described by the term, "American-Pakistani relations" is of a different breed.  It is a situation which cries out for a highly energetic and engaged secretary of state of the George Schultz or even Henry Kissinger sort.  Clinton should have been on the spot, in Islamabad, in the faces of President Zardiri and his chief henchmen.  It should have been Ms Clinton and not Leon Panetta, Ms Clinton and not Jim Jones, Ms Clinton and not Richard Holbrooke or any of the other reasonably high ranking US officials who carried the word to Pakistan's leaders.

Even if Ms Clinton had not felt personally up to the task, she should have gone as part of a Gates-Clinton tag team.  The presence of the American Defense Secretary at the shoulder of the SecState would have gone very far to convincing the ever reluctant Pakistanis that not only was the US mightily concerned about the lack of effective effort in the purportedly joint effort against the merchants of armed political Islam but, absent a mending of ways in Islamabad, there would be consequences.  Consequences which would not warm the hearts or charm the minds of the irresolute crew at the top of the Pakistani heap.

Using Jones, Panetta, and the others became even less effective the day after Woodward's new book on Obama's war hit the street.  The many, gratuitous insults attributed to these personalities and directed against both the Pakistani government and its counterpart in Afghanistan has rendered their representations in either Islamabad or Kabul risible at best and counterproductive at worst.  If Woodward's account is complete, Ms Clinton refrained from joining the abuse group.

Instead of doing the serious twisting of arms in either Islamabad or Kabul, Ms Clinton has been dining out on tales of how many foreign leaders she knows and just how much they all like her.  While being likable may be a minor requirement for the top US diplomat, it far less important than simply being there.  Being where the action is and where the muscle is most needed.  Being where the primary US national interest challenges are most immediately engaged and starkly threatened.

In Woodward's book, SecState Clinton is reported to have said during a strategy review meeting a year ago that a problem was "your problem."  She made that observation to the president, and it is telling that she did not say "our problem" even though she is reputedly the latest incarnation of what Al Haig once famously characterized as "the vicar of foreign policy."  In that one word, Ms Clinton appeared to be washing her hands of any responsibility for American policy in the AfPak region.

Go it alone is fine--if you resign first.  Unless and until she resigns, Ms Clinton is presumed to be the major player in formulating and executing American foreign policy.  The presumption is predicated in large measure on the simple fact that the president is situationally naive and fundamentally ignorant of the ways in which the game of nations is played.  In comparison Ms Clinton is both experienced and focused.

While presidents can fritter away time, energy, attention, and political capital as the current Guy in the Oval has done (and as Ms Clinton's husband did), this option is not open to the Secretary of State.  This is why able occupants of the office have dirtied themselves in the toe-to-toe slugfests which are so much a part of contentious diplomacy between states which have broadly coinciding national interests but differ markedly on the details.  This is precisely what is happening today in the relations between the US and Pakistan, the US and Afghanistan, the US and its partners in both NATO and the ISAF.

The American led effort has grown massively unpopular among the folks in each and every one of our associates now operating in Afghanistan.  The bad guys, Taliban et al, have resolved to raise the unpopularity level even more by inflicting casualties on the forces present.  The recent fatal attack on the Italian contingent gives one more indicator of both the Taliban operational concept and its effectiveness.

The American "partners" are wavering.  The degree of seriousness is such that Ms Clinton should have been working not only the phones but face time as well.  Unless the administration can keep these allies from "going wobbly" on us, the pressure for an even more precipitous withdrawal will be well nigh irresistible--particularly by a president whose commitment to the war is dubious at best.

Then there is the little matter of the Israeli-Palestinian Authority direct talks.  In a fit of generosity the Arab League has given the US a whole month to get Israel to agree to another freeze on "settlement" construction and restart the talks.  There can be no doubt that dealing with either or both Israel and the PA can be tedious and frustrating in the extreme.  Still there is no alternative, Ms Clinton has to board the shuttle and get on with it.  At this juncture, the stakes are too high (thanks to the ineptitude of Mr Obama) for the job of levering two reluctant (one only slightly and the other very much so) parties to look across a polished table at each other.

Of course, looming in the background is Iran.  Ms Clinton has shared the spotlight with the treasury secretary to announce more sanctions against the mullahs and their minions.  That isn't quite enough.  The US and its more of less allies have run out of options.  Despite tantalizing hints of readiness to come back to the P5+1 talks later this month or perhaps in November, there is no reason to believe this is other than a tactical ploy, a way of buying more time and sowing more uncertainty among some of the P5 group.

We are close to the point where only two options remain: Learn to live with an Iran having an intentionally ambiguous nuclear capacity with all the game changing features that implies or use the "military option" with all the risks and costs that course would mean.  Secretary Clinton once again must be in the very thick of the fray both in the rarefied circles of DC and around the capitals of the world.  Sure enough, talk of war or even consideration of a nuke owning Iran is both scary and productive of uptightness--but that is what SecStates are paid for.  (And what Hilary Clinton assured We the People in one of her most famed campaign ads that she was up to.)

It is a couple of minutes to midnight in much of the American foreign relations portfolio.  Ms Clinton for her own good and that of the country must choose between being a secretary of state or a vice presidential candidate in waiting.  Or, if she believes that Mr Obama will not let her function effectively, she has no honorable option but that of resigning.  If she is not up to the demands of the job, she must stand aside and let someone else take a whack at it.

She is out of choices.  And We the People and our country are running out of time--rapidly.