US special envoys have ‘the luxury’ to focus on a single diplomacy issue, former envoy says

Kurt Volker: The difference is the function. An ambassador to a country — take Ukraine, where I was the special representative for Ukraine negotiations — the ambassador to the country is responsible for all aspects of the bilateral relationship, manages the mission, is resident in that country, oversees the operations of the embassy staff, political, economic, commercial, military attache and so forth. That’s a very important function and it does require Senate confirmation. For a special envoy, it is to be tasked with a particular role that is not necessarily limited to presence in that country.

And in the case of Ukraine, my responsibility was to coordinate policy toward Ukraine with France and Germany, which ran the Normandy process, to negotiate with Russia about their ongoing aggression in Ukraine, to seek support from the European Union, from NATO, and also to coordinate policy within the administration. So, I would meet regularly at a very senior level with the secretary of state, secretary of defense, national security adviser, in order to make sure that we were well-grounded in policy so that in representing that to others, we had a single point of view.

Yeah, it depends on the issue. Sometimes a special envoy will have higher-level credentials and access in the administration. They’ll be meeting at a cabinet level or even with the president, as compared with an ambassador on the ground, resident in another country. Sometimes, the officials in the State Department, such as an assistant secretary of state, could perform the same duties performed by a special envoy. But the challenge in doing it that way is that those people at a senior level in the administration have many, many other responsibilities, as well. A special envoy has the luxury of focusing on one thing and trying to elevate that issue. 

It does concern me, not as a juxtaposition against their being special envoys for particular issues or particular functions. But we need ambassadors on the ground. We go through this at the beginning of every administration, and it is taking longer and longer. The Trump administration is heavily criticized for being slow, and we’re now seeing that the Biden administration is also rather slow here. We really do need to get names out there and get those people on the ground.

Well, difficult to navigate at times simply because of the nature of it. But that being said, I felt that I had a lot of top cover from the secretary of state, secretary of defense, national security adviser, and I was able to be quite vocal in support of Ukraine and pushing back on Russian aggression. And during that time, we were able to lift the ban on sales of lethal arms to Ukraine so they could defend themselves better. We increased the amount of security assistance there. So, I think we were able to make quite a bit of progress despite the complexities.

Yeah, I don’t agree that it was murky and I don’t agree that it was outside of any channels because it was an appointment made by the secretary of state. That’s who I reported to. Plus, I did directly stay in contact with the secretary of defense, national security adviser, in order to really be representing the administration. And this is not unusual. We have, as you said, special envoys in a lot of other areas. And we have other cabinet officials who have interests that are intersecting with various countries, as well. So, I think that there is a role for the ambassador on the ground and there’s a channel of reporting for that. But I have the opportunity to range across diplomatic relationships in ways that probably would have been more difficult to do had I not been focused only on that issue.

No, not at all. You’re working inside the US government. You have a president. You have a secretary of state. These are the elected leaders who set our policy. And that’s who you work for.

I think John Kerry, former secretary of state, and on a priority issue for the administration, climate change. I think his role is important. I’ve seen Jeff Feltman playing a role in Middle East and Africa, which I think is also important. This is a source of serious potential conflicts there. Thinking back to the Trump administration, I think Elliott Abrams played a very important role on Venezuela, getting our policy together. It didn’t produce change in Venezuela, but I think that’s something that the Biden administration is going to want to come back to at some point, as well.