The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat by Vali Nasr Read Free Book Online Page B

counterpart at La Chaumière, his favorite French restaurant in Georgetown. It was December 6, 2010, less than a week before he died of a ruptured aorta. He looked haggard and not in his usual form, but he was about to pull another rabbit out of the hat, a diplomatic coup of serious consequence.
    His counterpart was intrigued. He asked Holbrooke, “How do you envision this happening?” Holbrooke replied, “It will have to be ‘variable geometry,’ some bilateral talks, sometimes three (including the U.S.), and at times a larger conference that would include Afghanistanand even others.” “Diplomacy,” he was fond of saying, “is like jazz, improvisation on a theme.” He was improvising himself, all on the paramount theme of reconciliation.
    At the end of the dinner his Indian counterpart said he would have to talk to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh directly and would have an answer for Holbrooke within a week. After dinner, I walked with him back to his apartment. He switched on the TV to see the Jets play the Patriots on
Monday Night Football
. He was pleased. The Indians seemed to be moving in the right direction. We talked through possible next steps. “Be ready to go to Delhi at the drop of a hat,” he said to me. “I may not be able to go, it draws too much attention. Then we go to Islamabad—I will have to work on Kayani—and then maybe back to Delhi. Tomorrow we will go see Hillary and brief her.” Clinton was pleasantly surprised with our account of the meeting and supportive of the hard-earned success. Holbrooke was worried that Christmas vacation could disrupt things. But he was energized and in his element. He intended to be involved every step of the way—in the room when possible, standing outside the door when not.
    Holbrooke had created momentum out of thin air. Even Pakistanis and Indians were surprised at how far he had managed to bring them along. But the India-Pakistan conversation never happened. Holbrooke collapsed at the State Department on December 10, and a few days later he died. Holbrooke was still fighting for his life when Clinton called his counterpart in Delhi to tell him that she would be personally seeing through what he and Holbrooke had agreed on. Shortly thereafter, a message came from Delhi that Singh had given the green light. But progress would be superficial. Both the Indians and the Pakistanis already knew that Clinton was too highly placed to get into the details of their nascent diplomatic opening. She could champion talks, but with the administration’s most tenacious champion of diplomacy out of the picture, the slim opening would close, not just between them but everywhere else the Venn diagrams intersected.
    The problem all along was that Holbrooke had been forced to freelance. He had never received the authority to do diplomacy. The White House failed to endorse his efforts. He pursued them anyway in the belief that diplomacy alone could save America from this war and itsaftermath. If he could lay the foundations and point the way, then perhaps the White House would warm to the idea, and when it did it would not have to start from scratch. But the White House—more so than the Indians and Pakistanis—remained resistant to diplomacy and blind to its potential in Afghanistan, and the region as a whole.
    Holbrooke thought that Iran was singularly important to the endgame in Afghanistan. Iran had played a critical role at the Bonn Conference of 2001, which gave Afghanistan a new constitution and government. Iranian support also accounted for that government taking root. Iran had become a surprising force for stability in Afghanistan by investing in infrastructure and economic development and supporting the Afghan government in Kabul and in provinces with ties to Iran. It was a counterweight to Pakistan’s destabilizing influence. Holbrooke thought that America should bring both Iran and Pakistan on board to successfully end the war and leave behind a peace that