Deep Crisis: A Review of War on Peace by Ronan Farrow

 

War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence by Ronan Farrow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Despite its role in shaping the post-war liberal world order, American diplomacy is at a crossroads. With the end of the Cold War, the State Department and its dedicated diplomats have had their work maligned by politicians of both parties and their budgets slashed by a skeptical, even hostile, Congress and Executive branch. The hollowing out of the State Department under Pres. Trump and his two Secretaries of State, Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo, is just an acceleration of trends that have been in place for decades now. In this wonderful and critical read, Mr. Farrow use both his own personal experience in the State Department as well as hundreds of interviews, including with all the living Secretaries of State from Henry Kissinger to Rex Tillerson, to chart American diplomacy's declining reliance by policy makers at the highest level. It also charts the disastrous consequences of America's hand over of diplomacy to the military and is a not-so subtle plea for reinvestment in American world leadership and diplomacy.

Before Mr. Farrow was writing articles about Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault allegations that would launch both the #MeToo movement and Mr. Farrow's own reputation into the journalistic stratosphere, he was a young Foreign Service Officer under legendary diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who negotiated the famous Dayton Accords ending the war in Bosnia in the 1990s and died tragically while trying to negotiate an end to the war in Afghanistan under Pres. Obama. The first half of the book is Mr. Farrow's eyewitness account of Mr. Holbrooke's Afghanistan negotiations and its unrealized potential. He makes a compelling case that, had Mr. Holbrooke lived and the Obama administration given more support to his efforts, the U.S. could have negotiated a deal with the Taliban and exited the conflict instead of being militarily bogged down for nearly two decades now. The rest of the book is a charting of how years of budget cuts and neglect has allowed the military to dominate spaces in foreign policy normally reserved for the military and how that has contributed to endless military confrontations and violence. Mr. Farrow also charts how the Trump administration's total lack of interest in diplomacy under Sec. of State Rex Tillerson has accelerated these trends. Though the book was published in 2018 and, thus, does not include Mike Pompeo's tenure nor the Trump administration's overtures to North Korea nor Pres. Trump's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal has not happened yet, the picture Mr. Farrow paints in this book is one of American diplomacy and world leadership in a state of deep crisis.

This is perhaps one of the best and most accessible books to date on the current state of affairs in American foreign policy. Mr. Farrow's research and interviews are incredibly thorough and he has a journalist's nose for a great story. I greatly enjoyed this book and my only critique is that it needs an updated edition in 2021 now that Joe Biden is the President-elect and the full story of the Trump administration's approach to foreign policy can be fully told. Foreign policy is just one of many areas that need to be rebuilt in the future Biden administration and I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in foreign policy and and America's continued role as a world leader.

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