# Interview with Ryan Crocker, Former Ambassador to... (well, lots of places)



## Marauder06 (Jul 10, 2013)

http://yalejournal.org/2013/06/12/diplomacy-in-a-non-polar-world/

excerpts:

*YJIA: After more than a decade of persistent conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere around the world, the United States seems understandably reluctant to assume a conspicuous leadership role in troubled areas such as Egypt, Syria, and Mali. Is “leading from behind” and providing covert/clandestine support effective policy? Under what circumstances might the United States intervene in another conflict in the Middle East or northern Africa?*

*Crocker: *Foreign policies, in any democracy, are driven by domestic concerns—it’s just the way it is. And the American people are tired of these conflicts, tired of the cost, and, clearly, the political leadership is aware of that. The recent State of the Union address was very Jeffersonian, very focused on what needs to be done at home and clearly that is where the concentration of this Administration is in its second term. At the same time, the President has announced he will go to the Middle East for his first visit next month. We have a very, very experienced Secretary of State who understands the importance of engagement and U.S. leadership and, the Senate willing, very shortly you’ll have an equally experienced Secretary of Defense. So we will not be absent.

That said, we cannot do it all. We should not try to do it all—we have to pick our interventions carefully. Where can we make a difference? Where will our absence make a negative difference? And then we have to work, as the President has repeatedly emphasized, very closely with our allies, both in the region and internationally. Mali is a great example. The French said, “We’ll do it if you can drive the bus”—they didn’t have enough air lift—so, you know, we flew them in. But the only armed Americans on that mission were those responsible for the security of the aircraft; it was a French fight which they prosecuted very ably because they’re darn good soldiers. So figuring out who may have the means and the desire to step in is part of our diplomatic mission.

*YJIA: Should the United States still be as heavily involved as it is in Iraq and Afghanistan?*

*Crocker: *Well the answer is yes, we should. Part of my mission in both countries was to negotiate the framework for that involvement over time (the Strategic Framework Agreement in Iraq and the Strategic Partnership Agreement in Afghanistan). Iraq, in its modern history—certainly since 1958—has existed in terms of enmity in the region and with the West, particularly the United States. We now have the opportunity to change that by implementing the framework agreement and have something we haven’t had since the fall of the monarchy in ’58: a western-looking Iraq that sees its interests as best fulfilled through a close relationship with the United States. That’s worth having, given what we in the region have suffered from, that is, an Iraq that was otherwise oriented. Oddly enough, it’s something we can agree with the Iranians on. There was a vicious eight-year war between Iraq and Iran that Saddam Hussein started. So yes, it is very much in our long-term interest to see that the relationship remains close, that we remain engaged, and the good news is—since Iraq has the potential to be the world’s second-largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia—it doesn’t really cost us anything. They can pay for it.

In the case of Afghanistan, with the very potent Taliban threat as we draw down, we’ve seen that movie. We know how it turns out. If we turn our back on Afghanistan and the Taliban retake control of significant swaths of the country, as they had in the nineties, al Qaeda’s coming back. And that’s where they want to be. They operated very effectively out of there, they planned 9/11 out of there, and they would do it again. So we have the strongest national security imperatives for seeing that that does not happen and that we modulate our force drawdowns in a way that insures the Afghan military can keep the Taliban from retaking control.

*YJIA: Do you think that one of the problems in achieving success in Afghanistan is that too many people tried to treat Afghanistan like Iraq?*

*Crocker: *I have kind of a counter-orthodox view on that. It wasn’t so much that we tried to treat it like Iraq, it’s that we tried to do too much. Afghanistan has a very traditional, very conservative society. You know, we think roads are great because populations can move, farmers and manufacturers can get goods to market, kids can get to schools, and so forth. Well that is not a universally accepted notion in Afghanistan. An absence of roads also keeps people out, and a lot of Afghan villagers prefer it that way. So, if you’re going to do major projects, be sure that you have full host country buy-in at the local as well as the national level. Don’t be building things people don’t want. You also have to be sure—and this is a lesson we learned painfully in Iraq and are doing a little better at it in Afghanistan—it’s something they can maintain. If you build it to U.S. standards and hand them the keys, chances are it’s going to be out of business in months because they simply don’t have the expertise or the budgets to operate it. Right now, where we have built major roads, the Ring Road that connects all the major population centers, where is the budget to maintain it? So that’s kind of a scramble. These were not issues in Iraq, because, again, the Iraqis have the money. It’s another reason why following the Chicago NATO Summit in May of last year we had the Tokyo Economic Ministerial in July, which resulted in international community pledges of about sixteen million dollars in the out year just to take care of these kinds of things. So I think we did learn a lot, certainly made a lot of mistakes, that, as painful as they were, I hope will help us the next time around because there’s going to be a next time around.


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