An obvious sign of an empire, society, and profession in decline is the state of their trappings. It wasn’t that long ago that Ronald Reagan got the Soviets to resume arms talks by showing his backbone – and his authority with the American people – in a firm response to a strike by air traffic controllers. It took one phone call from him for Menachem Begin to call off Israel’s killing spree in Lebanon. Reagan made diplomacy look easy.
Today, Donald Trump is in full control of his Party and of the three branches of government. So much so that he’s able to bully the Congress into passing the most foolish and unpopular budget in recent memory. But all his power and influence is not enough to stop his putative best friend, Vladimir Putin, or his country’s most expensive client, Benjamin Netanyahu, from going out of their way to defy him in public. Most leaders now go out of their way to avoid talking with him at all. Reagan’s successors have made diplomacy look like nothing more than damage control.
It was Henry Kissinger, the great impresario, who translated diplomatic power and influence into cash in a way it hadn’t quite been before, or not to such an extent. He had a nice formula: set up a boutique office, hire your favourite lieutenants and scribes, charm handfuls of CEOs, and collect. Kissinger’s example let a hundred flowers, called ‘associates’ or ‘groups’, bloom.
Joe Biden administration officials have found happy sinecures but aren’t visibly promoting ‘Blinken Associates’ or ‘The Sullivan Group’. Anyway, they have already been there, done that. They are keeping busy writing strongly worded comments, or wagging their fingers (gently). For instance, Jake Sullivan was on television last week claiming that he and his administration did all they could to restrain the Israelis but could not stop giving them most armaments because that would have left Israel defenceless against Hezbollah and the Houthis. Meanwhile ‘we staved off a famine’ in Gaza. He also wrote an essay for the New York Times, ‘Trump is Playing a Cynical Game with Ukraine’. It’s hard to imagine any CEO paying top dollar to spend a few minutes with these people.