It’s Not Poor Baroness Ashton’s Fault

Catherine Ashton has recently been blasted in the press for many things, and apparently is the subject of some ‘controversy’ (scare quotes because I suspect it’s just a media thing and nobody else cares at all).

One of the things she has been criticized for is her “failure” to fly to Haiti after the earthquake. I have no particular interest in Ashton one way or the other, but this business about her not going to Haiti seems to me quite inexplicable.

Writing in the Times, Agnès Poirier says:

It would seem that the Labour peer spends more time on the Eurostar commuting home to London than in her office, where nobody answers the phone after 8pm.

Too bad when the caller is Hillary Clinton saying that she’s on her way to Haiti. Was Catherine en route? No. On Friday January 15, she had cancelled all appointments to go home earlier. José Manuel Barroso had to send Karel De Gucht, the Development Commissioner.

A few days later, Lady Ashton tried to defend herself. Her arguments fell decidedly flat: “I’m neither a doctor nor a fireman.” Indeed, but surely she must know that diplomacy at this level implies symbolic gestures and fast action. The EU has committed four times more in aid to Haiti than the US, so it would have been logical, if not crucial for Europe’s image that its Foreign Affairs Minister stood alongside the Secretary of State.

It’s not clear how Poirier came to the determination that Ashton’s arguments fell flat. I find them entirely reasonable. Of course diplomacy requires symbolic gestures, but that does not mean it always requires the symbolic gestures suggested by a commentator in the Times. It is not obvious how a visit by Ashton would have helped anything or anybody – Haiti or Haitians, or the EU or Europeans, via symbolic gesture or otherwise.

Poirier’s argument (to use the term loosely) is that because the EU donated more money than the US, Ashton should, by “logic”, have “stood alongside” Clinton. Poirier would need to develop that argument a little, it seems to me – fill in the many missing steps of “logic”. Poirier evidently believes that an Ashton photo-op in Haiti would have done the “image” of the EU some good. I very much doubt that it would have had any impact at all.

Hillary Clinton is an international political star. Everybody knows who she is. If she goes to Haiti, it means something. It means, to Haitians, that their plight is being taken seriously. It means, to the world, that the US is on the case. It’s comforting to Haitians, and it’s reassuring to governments and private people donating their own money all over the world.

Catherine Ashton is, and came into office as, a nobody – at least by the standards that apply at this level of things.

All the more reason, one might perhaps say, for her to start getting herself seen in the right place at the right time.

But it wouldn’t help. Who, outside of Brussels and governments in national capitals, knows who Javier Solana is? He was Ashton’s predecessor. For ten long years he was the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy; before that he’d been the Secretary General of NATO – during the Balkan war, which was a very high-profile moment for NATO – and before that he’d been Foreign Minister of Spain. Not exactly a nobody to begin with and, as I happen to know from a friend of mine who worked very closely with him on a daily basis at NATO, a highly image-conscious and almost compulsive publicity-seeker.

At NATO, during the Balkan war, he’d been a global player, right up there with President Bill Clinton. But by the time his tenure as High Representative of the EU came to an end, he’d become a nobody.

No, it’s not Ashton, and a Haitian publicity stunt would turn neither her nor the EU into players. Poirier writes that a diplomat “confided” that Ashton had killed the job. (Diplomats talk all the time and at great length. It’s always in confidence, and if the confidence were broken, they’d simply deny having said whatever it was.) Well, that diplomat’s assessment is quite mistaken. Ashton didn’t kill the job; it was dead on arrival. It was killed by the Member States of the EU, who underlined just how dead they wanted the High Representative job to be by creating a competing position, President of the European Council, and then putting nobodies into both.