The issue is one of the contributions political appointees to diplomatic positions are able to make. Or do such appointments fail to raise a nation's standards where a projection of foreign policy is concerned? Should there be phases in a country's history where professional diplomats ought to make way for individuals aligned to political parties in power or are in other professions, the better to give the government of the day the opportunity for one of its own to speak for it in the councils of the world?
In Britain, the new Labour government has appointed Peter Mandelson, an influential player in the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown administrations, as the next British ambassador to the United States. Mandelson will replace the accomplished Karen Pierce, whose departure from Washington already has observers of British diplomacy rather subdued. Many feel that Pierce, in light of the oncoming Trump 2.00 administration, should have been kept on in Washington. That is not happening, of course.
But with many regarding Mandelson as a powerful political hitter, the Keir Starmer government appears to feel he will be able to handle the Republican set-up in Washington to everyone's satisfaction. That remains to be seen. Kim Darroch, who served as the UK's envoy to Washington in Trump's earlier stint in power, is well aware of the pitfalls of being in the President-elect's path. Darroch is these days an analyst, not to say critic, of Trump. Obviously, Mandelson will get tips from him on what to avoid in dealing with the White House once he joins the embassy in Washington.
Mandelson is obviously a political appointee, which leads one to the question of how political appointees to high diplomatic positions around the globe have fared in our times. The instance of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan serving as India's ambassador to the Soviet Union in the era of Joseph Stalin has been a tale of a remarkable scholar-cum-philosopher being a respected voice for his country abroad. Radhakrishnan was later to become India's Vice President and then President. In a later era, Inder Kumar Gujral, after falling out with Indira Gandhi's ambitious son Sanjay Gandhi during the Emergency, was sent off to Moscow as ambassador.
Gujral was a decent man who subsequently served, rather briefly, as India's Prime Minister. Had he had a longer stint in office, he would certainly have stamped his image on his country's politics. Here in Bangladesh, there have been quite a few instances of political appointees serving as ambassadors and high commissioners for the country. The scholar-civil servant Khan Shamsur Rahman served in both Delhi and Moscow during Bangabandhu's time.
Years down the line, another scholar and former civil servant, Syed Najmuddin Hashim, served the nation with credit in Moscow and Yangon. The senior journalists K.G. Mustafa served in Iraq while Enayetullah Khan was posted in Beijing before being moved to Yangon. One remembers too a few other politically appointed envoys at different stages of Bangladesh's politics. Khan Sarwar Murshid and M.R. Siddiqui served Bangladesh admirably in Warsaw and Washington, respectively.
To what extent these political envoys enhanced the nation's image, indeed were in a position to deal purposefully with the governments of the capitals they were posted in, is for researchers of diplomacy to dwell on. But a factor which has always been part of diplomacy around the world is that political appointees bring to foreign policy the vitality which may not always be achieved by professional diplomats.
Political ambassadors have the advantage of being close to heads of government, which enables them to avoid the bureaucracy through which envoys are expected to operate. Besides, governments which host political ambassadors are quite aware of the clout such envoys exercise at home and therefore deal with them with deference.
One recalls here the stature which V. K. Krishna Menon enjoyed as India's envoy in Britain and at the United Nations. Opinionated he was, temperamental he was, but as one close to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru he commanded respect from broad sections of the global diplomatic community. Pakistan's Maleeha Lodhi, a journalist, served her country with distinction in such global spots as London, Washington and New York under various governments.
No questions were ever raised about her competence, evidence that diplomats who come from outside the foreign policy establishment are eminently qualified to speak for their country abroad. In the early 1970s, the Bhutto government appointed Mian Mumtaz Daultana, a former chief minister of Punjab and leader of the Council Muslim League, as Pakistan's ambassador to Britain.
Adlai Stevenson, twice presidential candidate against Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, expected to be appointed Secretary of State by President John F. Kennedy after the 1960 election. In the event, he was sent off to the UN as Washington's permanent representative. Other Americans, notably John Kenneth Galbraith and Daniel Patrick Moynihan served as ambassador in India with dignity. The Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar, imprisoned in Indira Gandhi's Emergency-driven India, was appointed high commissioner to Britain by the Janata Party government following the 1977 election.
Unfortunately, once Mrs Gandhi returned to power in 1980, Nayar had to come back home. A not so happy appointment to an ambassadorial position was that of the deposed Czechoslovak leader Alexander Dubcek after his Prague Spring reform movement was crushed by Warsaw Pact forces in August 1968. He was sent off to Turkey, where he was certainly in a state of the morbid. He was soon recalled to Prague, only to receive harsher treatment by being sent outside the city as a forestry officer.
In similar manner, the once powerful Soviet politician Vyacheslav Molotov was packed off to Mongolia as ambassador by Stalin's successors after the strongman's death in 1953. In the US, Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the assassinated President Kennedy, served as ambassador to Japan in the Obama administration. In the Biden administration, she has been ambassador to Australia. Walter Mondale, vice president under President Jimmy Carter and unsuccessful presidential candidate against Ronald Reagan in 1984, served as ambassador in the Obama administration.
How have political appointees to ambassadorial positions coped with their foreign policy establishments? One does not require much wisdom to suggest that all too often such appointments have caused sadness as well as resentment among career diplomats, which is quite understandable. Again, a good number of politically appointed envoys have felt that the degree of cooperation they expected from their foreign policy mandarins at home and their subordinate staff at the embassies was rather below their expectations. Henry Kissinger as US Secretary of State under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford ruffled feathers among diplomats with his arrogance and closeness to the White House.
For Mandelson, Washington will be a challenge, but not to the extent it was for Peter Jay, who served as envoy in Washington when his father-in-law James Callaghan was Prime Minister.
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