The Foreign Service Journal, June 2017

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2017 41 D iplomacy is the art of letting the other guy have your way. Ryan Crocker arrived in Baghdad as the new U.S. ambassador in 2007 with General David Petraeus. Petraeus saw his command grow to more than 150,000 troops during the surge, while Crocker headed a much smaller (though large by State Department standards) mission with perhaps 2,000 diplomats, provincial reconstruction team members and support staff. In addition to a huge advantage in terms of personnel, Petraeus’ commanders had piles of their own money to spread around without embassy or USAID over- sight, giving them even more influence in the field. Despite working from a disadvantaged position, Ambassa- dor Crocker skillfully established himself as Petraeus’ supporting peer, leading the gen- eral to proclaim Crocker his “wingman.” Rather than take offense at the imagery of being the junior partner, Crocker communicated to his deputies, who included at least five former ambassadors, that the embassy would follow the military’s lead given that it was bearing the brunt of beat- ing back the al-Qaida-led insurgency. Amb. Crocker thus developed wasta (clout, in Arabic) with the military. He understood that Petraeus’ success increased his own political leverage with Iraq’s lead- ers—something every diplomat should understand and try to replicate. This wasta devolved to his country team and FSO PRT heads, enabling them to influence what the military was doing in areas normally the purview of the embassy, such as engaging with Iraqi provincial councils. Among other things, Crocker drew on his wasta to block a ploy proposed by members of Petraeus’ staff to hijack control over how U.S. money was being spent by replicating the embassy’s economic assistance and tran- sition office. Initially operating on its own in Iraq, Defense had begun improvising. One outcome was the DOD Task Force for Business Stability Operations—not exactly a military skill set, and known in Iraq as the Brinkley Group, after its first leader. In May 2007, The Washington Post highlighted the State-versus-DOD controversy over this small organiza- tion, noting that TFBSO had its own view of how to restart Iraq’s economy (get the moribund state-owned enter- prises going), which was diametrically opposed to what Embassy Baghdad was doing, and worked independent of embassy or USAID oversight. This became an example of a failure of unity of effort across all elements of national power. If one believed TFBSO press state- ments of the day, Ameri- cans would be buying Iraqi-made toilets in Walmart today. How- ever, one would be hard pressed to find any evi- dence that TBFSO was ever present in Iraq, much less find an Iraqi toilet in an American store. Amb. Crocker politely informed Gen. Petraeus that the embassy had this setting on the smart power dial covered, and TFBSO went away. (It later migrated to Afghanistan, where it also succeeded in provoking controversy.) Crocker’s tenure in Iraq is a textbook case study of developing a personal relationship that rebalances the diplomatic-military relationship. The postscript to this is the strained relationship that Crocker and Petraeus’ suc- cessors had to endure, with the U.S. effort in Iraq going off the rails for a year until it was reset when another strong State-DOD team arrived in the form of Ambassador Jim Jeffrey and General Lloyd Austin. —Larry Butler Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s Country Team in Iraq Crocker’s tenure is a case study in developing a personal relationship that rebalances the diplomatic- military relationship.