John Kerry Appreciation thread

[karynnj]

19. I think he has been an outstanding Secretary of State in an extremely difficult time

His character, integrity, perseverance and brilliance have allowed him to find diplomatic openings that would not have otherwise happened. Both the Iran deal, which likely avoided a war, and the Paris climate change deal, which is a milestone, would not have happened without him.

As to the leak, here are my thoughts.

1) The NYT leaked the excerpts to back their own long stated view that John Kerry really agreed with their more hawkish position. It is telling that this is as close as they can get to making that weak claim. I suggest that this was not intended to say that Kerry was doing anything wrong - in fact, go back to their unusually strong praise of Kerry as a diplomat from roughly that time. Instead, it shows that they want to claim JK is with them.

His efforts have been daring and, at times, quixotic. He was no more successful than his predecessors in securing a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. But without his persistence, the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 and last December’s global climate change agreement in Paris would almost certainly have been unattainable.
. . .
. . .there has been something honorable, even heroic, about the persistence, hard work and faith in diplomacy that this decorated Vietnam veteran and former head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has brought to his search for peaceful solutions.
...
Mr. Kerry, who tried and failed to persuade president Obama to apply more military pressure in Syria, thus had to work with what he could, and it's a wonder he has any success at all. After Obama decided in 2013 against bombing Syria for using chemical weapons against civilians, Mr. Kerry managed to broker a deal with Russia to remove chemical weapons from the country. To get the current ceasefire, he warned Moscow if the violence was not halted, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States would send more weapons to the rebel groups.

Even as President Obama sought to keep America out of new military entanglements, Mr. Kerry has been determined to keep the nation engaged diplomatically and lead the world toward constructive results, despite times when the problems seem intractable. At 72, he is unlikely to run for office again, which gives him a certain freedom to swing for the diplomatic fences, although it may end in failure.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/opinion/americas-mr-diplomacy.html?ref=opinion&_r=1

2 The NYT is clearly giving only a small portion of the material that was recorded. They have about 5 clips all no more than about a half of one minute. Their own headline pushed the story that Kerry was at odds with Obama, but the ONLY quote that remotely backs that is speaking of 2013. Consider that Kerry himself has often said that without the threat of force, they would never have gotten the chemical weapons out. Additionally, he very publicly argued that given the Obama set a red line and because what Assad had done was unconscionable, a US response was needed. (Not to mention, this is a meeting with Syrian rebels where he is telling them things they do not want to hear - thus speaking of his history on this as SoS is a confidence building technique.)

3)From all clips speaking of the present time, Kerry is speaking to the Syrian rebels - telling them there is no possibility of the US intervening. From the quotes, he says they have no legal way to do so without a UN resolution. He says there is no support in the Congress and the administration to do so. In the last clip, he goes further, arguing that it would lead to everyone upping their role leading to utter destruction. Here, everything he is saying privately on this is very very consistent with what he said at the State Department the week before (http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2016/09/261776.htm ) and before the at the UN (http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2016/09/262235.htm ) Consider the difficulty of what he is doing at that meeting - he is honestly telling the Syrians very very difficult things and calling on them to make the very difficult choices to bring an end to violence. It is also incredibly important that what he was saying to them was what he was saying publicly.

4) The only thing I saw in any leaks that was new and not something I knew from having listed to Kerry's various comments was that the ceasefire agreement very likely anticipated that Assad could be included on the ballot had the ceasefire held and the political process developed to that point. This is a shift in US position and shows the degree to which he and Obama genuinely wanted a political resolution. It would - in fact - leave choosing the government up to the Syrians. This is a big deal and ignored by attacks from left and right. (In addition, if you listen or read the text of the State Department comments he made, there is a very very clear statement about separating from Al Nusra in a response where calls it crazy for the US NOT to fight them. )

5) Given all this, I suspect that the leak to the NYT, which the NYT said was not from a Syrian, was likely from one of our allies, who was leery that the deal had too many concessions. One possibility would be France which pushed for thr deal being public. I suspect that it might be the concession that Assad could run and specificity of separating moderates from Al Nusra might have been the reasons for US reticence for making everything public at that fagile point.

5) The attacks from the right are predicable and they make little coherent sense. Attacks from the allies of Syrian rebels and neocons want to both attack Kerry ... and then try to argue Obama is even worse.

6) The timing of this after the ceasefire has essentially failed is also fascinating. Had it been leaked before the ceasefire failed, it could have been considered disruptive. At this point, to me, what it shows is how much the Obama administration was willing to do to end the violence and to try to give Syria a chance. No one looking at that could come away saying there was not a genuine effort. Where there likely will be huge differences from pundits, statesmen and Congress is what should be our next step. What scares me is that a case can easily be made that, unlike in Iraq, we really did exhaust the diplomacy. However, using that to justify intervention doesn't change the situation Kerry described where he argued that US intervention would likely lead to everyone adding more and it getting worse.