JOHN KERRY SHOULD REALLY TRY AND GET SOME SLEEP / THE TELEGRAPH

John Kerry should really try and get some sleep

By Peter Foster

Last updated: May 23rd, 2014

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John Kerry has claimed that “only” America was helping to find the Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram. (Photo: Getty)

Even allowing for the fact that John Kerry was playing to the home crowd, his speech to mark the 90th anniversary of US Foreign Service really was a masterclass in 'Diplomacy: How Not To Do It'.

No doubt America is doing the bulk of the heavy military lifting in assisting the Nigerians in finding those kidnapped schoolgirls, but to say that everyone else was a no-show, indeed didn't even offer to lift a finger, was coming on a bit strong.

"Boko Haram, Nigeria," thundered Big John, the Dreadnought of Diplomacy, "only the United States is there offering the assistance to help find those young women. Other countries, not only aren’t they invited, but they didn’t even offer. That’s a difference, and I think it’s a difference worth dwelling on."

Respectfully, Mr Secretary, it is the facts that are worth dwelling on. There are three teams of British advisers in Nigeria: one at Nigeria's HQ, a second specialist advisory team of negotiators, and a third team (who may have needed a polite tap on the shoulder this morning) which is specifically tasked with "liaising" with our American friends and allies.

In so many respects this is classic John Kerry. A great lion of international diplomacy who, in his short tenure at State, has tended to roar first, think later. It's a strategy that works well on CNN, or particularly when posturing in the Senate, where Mr Kerry was long-time chair of the Foreign Affairs committee, but it can lead to difficulties on the international stage.

Who could forget John's moving declaration of war speech against Syria last year? It was a masterpiece of oratory, undercut only by Barack Obama going for a stroll around the Rose Garden with his chief of staff and changing his mind – pointedly without telling his Secretary of State.

Of course, knowing pretty much everyone and everything there is to know,  it is understandable that a man of Mr Kerry's experience and destiny should feel no obligation to stick to the script. It is this quality that leaves his officials at State semi-permanently in the "Brace! Brace! Brace!" position, anticipating the moment he next decides to veer off-piste.

(An Asia desk man of my acquaintance at State recalls spending several days on the phone trying to explain to officials of another government what Secretary Kerry really meant to say after one short meeting with his counterpart.)

But still, as we discovered over the Syria crisis, if you spray enough verbiage against the wall, some of it will stick.  Asked in London last September if there anything that Bashar al-Assad could do to avoid air strikes in reprisal for using chemical weapons, Mr Kerry fired a stentorian broadside straight off one of his heavily starched cuffs.

"Sure," he responded mockingly, "He can turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week." And just to make clear that he wasn't serious Mr Kerry added: "But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done, obviously."

Obviously. Except of course, Mr Assad did do just that, but only after an intervention by Vladimir Putin that saved face for an Obama administration that was in utter disarray and has had rings run around it by the crafty KGB man ever since.

Not that you'd know that listening to Mr Kerry last night. As it turned out, that Syria gaffe sowed the seed of his greatest triumph:

And if you just look at last year, I ask you to measure what our diplomacy is doing. I know I listen to the sort of political currents that people who try to drag you down by asserting that you’re not doing enough or you didn’t go to war where you should have or whatever it is, but we’re getting things done.

And we’re getting them done in the best traditions of what diplomacy is supposed to do. People are angry because we didn’t strike Syria at one instant. But guess what? Today, 92 percent of all the chemical weapons in Syria are out and being destroyed, and the other 8 percent will get out. That never would have occurred otherwise. (Applause.)

Even by the standards of American and British imperial history that is a gloriously one-eyed retelling of the shambles that this White House has presided over in regards to Syria conflict.

It also takes an utterly gratuitous side-swipe at the French, who actually did stand on principle over Syria and were swooned over by Mr Kerry as "our oldest ally", only days before Mr Obama changed his mind and Putin came up with his master plan to simultaneously keep Assad in power and further enfeeble America's standing in the world.

So while no one really likes or trusts the French, as America's chief diplomat, it probably isn't setting the best example to advertise the fact at a 90th anniversary dinner celebrating well, er, the achievements of quiet diplomacy.

Not that any of that will stop the Mr Kerry a man of almost perpetual motion who – however indefatigable – might sometimes be well advised to get a little more sleep.