I overheard a conversation recently where one of the three people talking said “Hillary accomplished nothing important as Secretary of State.”
And that got me to thinking: I can’t recall anything that any Secretary of State - Democrat or Republican - has accomplished that was worth bragging about.
Am I overlooking something obvious or are all Secretaries of State fairly … I don’t want to use the word “useless” … are they all … lacking?
The last Secretary of State who accomplished something noteworthy was Colin Powell, whose lying to the Security Council helped pave the way for Gulf War II.
Hey, you didn’t say it had to be a good noteworthy.
Colin Powell helped the Bush administration lie to the world about the dangers Iraq posed, directly leading to over 460,000 deaths (perhaps as many as 650,000); surely that’s noteworthy?
ETA: Ninja’d while I ate breakfast! Curse you, Northern Piper!
I would agree with this The Nation piece that John Kerry had quite a few noteworthy accomplishments. The Iran nuclear deal was a major accomplishment despite Trump’s disapproval of it. The reopening of relations with Cuba as well. Now much of what he accomplished is being undone but that is another matter.
And of course it is hard to really assess an SoS’s accomplishments because much of it is the disasters and conflicts avoided by steady steerage and measured responses. Possibly the best SoS is the one that had little seem to happen on their watch … all stayed quiet.
I totally agree. The Iran nuclear deal, whether it succeeds or fails, is a historically important agreement.
Alexander Haig tried to take over when Reagan was shot. Falls under the heading of noteworthy. No less stupid.
What about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was mostly negotiated during Hillary’s tenure?
I would say the Iran nuclear deal, the opening up to Cuba, the Paris climate deal and the TPP were all noteworthy diplomatic achievements, of which the Iran nuclear deal in particular was a personal achievement for Kerry. The Trump administration has exited Paris but it still matters elsewhere as a roadmap including state and cities in the US. Trump has also exited the TPP but it looks like the other countries will continue with it. There is a decent chance that the US will return to both in the long run. Iran and Cuba are up in the air but again I suspect that whatever happens in the short run they will matter in the long run. Overall Kerry has a solid legacy of achievement.
She transformed Libya.
Sad that Trump is working against all four of these.
The TPP was opposed by both radical left and radical right but was probably a good deal for both U.S. and the world. Who pushed for it? My impression is that GWB and Obama both supported it but only lukewarmly.
John Foster Dulles accomplished a lot. He convinced Eisenhower to send “advisors” into VietNam to help prop up the southern government and led more-or-less directly to the war. Of course, JFK and LBJ did the major share.
But for the most part the secretary of state does what the president tells them to do.
Henry Kissinger won a slew of awards, including sharing the Nobel Peace prize. Ford gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and his memoirs won the National Book Award. That’s just for starters.
He also was an honorary Harlem Globetrotter, and met the cast of the Brady Bunch. He wanted to impress his children, and being a Holocaust survivor-Secretary of State didn’t do it; introducing them to the Brady Bunch did.
There is something incongruous about Henry Kissinger as a father of children, particularly American children. It would make for a pretty funny sitcom of its own.
Rex Tillerson kicked the Palestinian delegation out of Washington DC …
I think that Secretary of State is one of those jobs that goes pretty much unnoticed unless something goes wrong. So saying that a given SoS “didn’t accomplish anything” is actually praise.
George Marshall and the Marshall plan is an obvious answer.
Actually it’s hard for some of us to think of recent, noteworthy U.S. foreign policy accomplishments. If asked this I would think of Kissinger’s opening to China and Carter’s Egypt/Israel peace treaty and Panama Canal treaty–and those are a long time ago.
I’m not sure how anyone with even a passing interest can overlook multiple major nuclear arms control agreements, the banning of landmines and chemical weapons, the expansion of NATO, the Iran nuclear deal, a series of free trade agreements (not the least of which was NAFTA) and the various climate change agreements in talking about noteworthy foreign policy achievements. Whether or not you agree with them, they are certainly historic pacts.
If I told you that I’m not aware of any noteworthy electric car that Tesla has made since the Roadster, then we’re in the ballpark of saying that there haven’t been any noteworthy foreign policy achievements since Carter.
Also, most of the foreign policy successes AND failures get attributed directly to the President.
Seward’s Folly is another.