The Decline of American Diplomacy

From Galbraith and Moynihan to...whatever this is.

A few years ago at a panel discussion at Washington DC’s venerable Tabard Inn, I spotted a face I hadn’t expected to see. But Thomas R. Pickering, even at 90 years of age, stood out. A legend in the annals of American diplomacy, Pickering had served as US Ambassador to the UN, Russia, Israel, and India, among a number of other countries. He retired as the third-ranking member of the State Department at the end of the Clinton administration. So formidable a diplomat was Pickering that, according to longtime New York Times diplomatic correspondent Leslie Gelb, Pickering was seen as "arguably the best-ever senior U.S. representative" to the UN. And that list included the likes of Adlai Stevenson, George Ball, and George H.W. Bush. Gelb's report was occasioned by Pickering’s sudden transfer from Turtle Bay to New Delhi. Why was he being moved? Well, as Gelb told it, "It is widely believed by Washington cognoscenti that Ambassador Pickering is being posted to India for the worst of reasons: Secretary of State James Baker feels that the career diplomat is casting too big a shadow on the Baker parade."

Nevertheless, Pickering’s appointment to India was in keeping with a tradition that US presidents had of sending among the most capable men available to New Delhi. During the Cold War, it was a particularly sensitive post given India’s role as a leader of the non-aligned bloc-in other words, those countries that refused either Washington or Moscow’s tutelage. In 1961, John F. Kennedy sent his friend, the famed Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith to New Delhi. In addition to running point on the war that broke out between India and China in 1962, Galbraith offered sagacious advice to Kennedy before, during, and after the Bay of Pigs and October Crisis. He was also among the few to see the problems ahead in Vietnam.

Following Galbraith some years later in New Delhi was another habitué of Harvard Yard, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan would also serve as UN Ambassador and then later, for a quarter century, as the senior Democratic Senator from New York. Moynihan, a Democrat who had in the 1950s worked for New York Governor Averell Harriman, was sent by President Richard Nixon to help reset relations with India in the aftermath of Nixon's "tilt" toward Pakistan. While in India, Moynihan proposed, and then carried out, a creative debt write-off program that helped to improve relations with the world's most populous democracy.

Recent US administrations (Bush, Obama, Trump) have often decided to send career foreign service officers to New Delhi—which is all to the good, after all, Pickering was a career foreign service officer. Such men and women often bring a deft touch in confronting nettlesome problems.

President Joe Biden’s (or the person who was actually making the decisions for Biden) choice for Ambassador to India was, for reasons that remain obscure, the nepo-mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti. The downward trend in quality seems set to continue. Last week, President Trump announced that a former errand boy for Sen. Rand Paul’s office (an office that seems to attract self-important types who think that plagiarizing Wikipedia is a substitute for speechwriting) who somehow parlayed that role into a publishing partnership with the Trump sons (the partnership produced the imaginatively titled Letters to Trump—available for a cool $100 at trumpstore.com) will be his nominee to head the diplomatic mission in New Delhi. Sergio Gor, a 38 year old native of Malta with zero diplomatic or foreign affairs experience (but, as it happens, ample experience as an amateur wedding DJ) will take the reins in New Delhi pending Senate confirmation (or, more likely, a recess appointment). It is said that for the last 7 months Gor has been the Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, but there is little evidence of his time there, as scores of political appointments remain unfilled.

From Galbraith, Moynihan and Pickering to Garcetti and Gor. The long decline of American statecraft continues.

James W. Carden is editor of TRR.