The Foreign Service Journal, November 2015

18 NOVEMBER 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL AFSA Scholarships AFSA.org/Scholar American Foreign Service Protective Association www.afspa/FESB www.afspa.org/dental CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield fepblue.org/2016bene ts Clements Worldwide Clements.com Embassy Risk Management Embassyrisk.com The Hirshorn Company Hirshorn.com/USFS McGrath Real Estate Services McGrathRealEstate.com Stanford High School Summer College summercollege.stanford.edu WJD Management wjdpm.com FSJ: While he was a great diplomat, your father was the first to admit he did not meet most people’s definition of “diplo- matic.” Do you think his personal style was better suited to some regions (Balkans) than others (Afghanistan)? DH: Well, we considered calling the film “Undiplomatic.” I do think he felt a lot of the niceties of the craft were unnec- essary, but making sure the interpersonal dynamics worked was essential to him. He once said, “diplomacy is a lot like jazz”—and I think for him a key element was being able to listen and then adapt and improvise to make sure the desired results were achieved. In Bosnia, that was tricky as hell, but he was able to achieve it because Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic understood toughness and force, two things my father used to his negotiating advantage. In Bos- nia, there was also a real effort to make sure that the approach was diplomacy backed by force, rather than the other way around. Afghanistan was a vastly different situ- ation. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani says in the film that my father pushed former President Hamid Karzai too far: “He could browbeat Milosevic, but you can’t brow- beat an Afghan.” I am not sure my father fully understood how his tactics and style needed to be changed for this part of the world; he really struggled with it. FSJ: What do you think your father would want Foreign Service members to understand about what he faced in his role as Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan? DH: I think he was most proud of cre- ating the deeply impressive SRAP team of people from all over the government. That diversity of backgrounds allowed them to work more dynamically as a group on this one big thorny problem. It is no secret that he had a rough go of it in the Obama administration. Yet he was eminently loyal to President Obama and very much believed in the chain of command. It was very clear to his staff that they had to respect this, despite their own frustration with the White House. He was looking for any opening to advance diplomatic relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan. When I inter- viewed Secretary Clinton, she mentioned the Transit Trade Agreement that he helped broker and pointed out that he was enormously excited about this fairly small deal. He felt that any progress and agreements, no matter howminor, could lead to bigger ones and that you had to celebrate these accomplishments. I would hope that Foreign Service members would be moved by his perse- verance. I also hope they will be inspired While my father had enormous respect for the U.S. military, he did not feel they should be setting political strategy in Afghanistan or, really, anywhere else. In Vietnam, the military took the lead, and that didn’t turn out so well.