(The Center Square) – Retired Ambassador Ryan Crocker, a career diplomat, spoke to a hometown audience on Monday evening at a regular meeting of the Republicans of Spokane County.
Crocker, who was born in Spokane, Wash., and now lives in Spokane Valley, noted that the big events of the day – the presidential inauguration, Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations, and Notre Dame’s participation in the college football national championship game – were all overshadowed by two remarkable and related events.
One was the first full day of the Gaza ceasefire, and the second was the unanimous vote of the U.S. Senate to confirm Marco Rubio as secretary of state.
“The guns are finally silent and there is a hope of peace,” Crocker said, calling this “the most momentous year in the Middle East since the 1979 revolution in Iran. Very bad actors have had some very heavy blows dealt them.”
Crocker, who served in the Middle East under both Democrat and Republican administrations, sees Rubio paired with U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz as a strong team to build on the successes of the first Trump administration.
“The Abraham Accords increased the number of Arab states at peace with Israel from two to five overnight, and those diplomatic relationships have remained strong in spite of the war,” Crocker observed.
He praised the ceasefire as a truly bipartisan effort.
“Trump was clearly instrumental in moving the ball the final few inches, as I hope Notre Dame does,” Crocker said. (The Notre Dame Fighting Irish lost to the Ohio State Buckeyes 34 to 23 in the championship game.)
He credited the hard work of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, for his work behind the scenes, and Brett McGurk, the lead U.S. negotiator on the Israel-Hamas hostage deal, on behalf of the previous administration, for making it happen.
Crocker said he knows McGurk, and “he has one interest only, America’s national interests.”
He hopes it will be part of a new spirit in America moving forward to support “the health, well-being and security of the greatest nation on Earth.”
Crocker joined the Foreign Service in 1971, serving six times as a U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon.
He warned that America’s enemies have come to rely on American impatience to pivot away from the Middle East.
“Hostile powers are still out there and they’re not all governmental,” Crocker noted. “I’d like you to remember two words – strategic patience. Our enemies have come to rely on our impatience, our allies to fear it.”
“Iranians know about strategic patience,” he continued. “I watched them work with the Syrians to drive us out of Lebanon.”
Crocker survived the 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed 49 embassy staff and injured 34 others.
After retiring in 2007, President Barack Obama recalled him to active duty to serve as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in 2011. His career has also included assignments in Iran, Qatar, Iraq, Egypt, and Washington, D.C.
He calls himself a committed internationalist, rejecting the term globalist, which he characterized as a belief that technology will “smooth out all differences in the world and we’ll have global peace. No we won’t. We’ll have the opposite. I’m a believer in U.S. international leadership,” not large-scale occupation and military conquest, but “having a diplomatic presence, people on the ground who understand the culture and language and can make recommendations … the capacity and the focus to exercise responsible international leadership.”
He described the August 2021 pullout from Afghanistan as “catastrophic at every level.”
Croker currently serves on the Afghanistan War Commission, established by Congress in 2021 as “an independent body to review U.S. decisions pertaining to the war in Afghanistan from June 2001 to August 2021,” according to the commission’s website.
“Under U.S. leadership we had an unprecedented period of peace,” Crocker said. “I think that U.S. leadership remains as important now as in the aftermath of World War II. The world does not run by itself. Without U.S. leadership some very negative forces gain traction.”
Crocker’s list of honors and awards is lengthy, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the VFW Eisenhower Award in 2014. He was named an honorary Marine in 2021, only the 75th civilian to be granted the honor since the Marine Corps was founded in 1775.
“Career diplomats, like our career military, are steadfastly apolitical and serve the American people, full stop,” he said. “I’ve had no trouble doing that, and it’s why that unanimous vote for Secretary of State Rubio is important.”