Secretary of State John Kerry is engaged in "shuttle diplomacy" as he travels from crisis to crisis around the Middle East, says former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra.
"In America, we're used to seeing our secretaries of states being involved in shuttle diplomacy — flying in between Cairo and Jerusalem, Cairo and Tel-Aviv and those types of things and working on an issue," Hoekstra told John Bachman on "America's Forum" on
Newsmax TV on Friday.
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"What you've now got with Secretary Kerry — he's doing shuttle diplomacy, but he's going from the crisis in Afghanistan to the crisis in the Middle East to the crisis in Libya to the crisis in Ukraine and then the crisis in Iraq and the crisis in Syria," he explained.
"There's just way too many issues out there today," he added.
The former Michigan Congressman said that it's a sign of "the disarray that we have in foreign policy — how American influence and diplomacy has been scaled back and it shows what the result of a receding America is — is that you got chaos in the world today."
One of the main reasons for the "shuttle diplomacy," Hoekstra explained is due to the fact that we don't have the allies in the region that we used to have that could play a role in handling these problems.
"In the past, we would've had very strong relationships with our allies in Europe," he said. "Egypt would've been a key player in the Middle East, but all those relationships have become frayed so it has become the responsibility of the secretary of state to handle each one of these crises because there is no other place to go."
"We don't have the partners in foreign policy that we used to have who could handle another crisis while the secretary of state was involved in the key negotiations," he added.
Hoekstra gave Kerry credit for "offering a constructive role" in the conflict between Israel and Hamas by helping to negotiate a cease-fire, but he questions how long that cease-fire will last.
"He and the United States should get some credit for getting to a final deal," he said "But what is a final deal? How long is it going to last?
"We are really trying to patch the world back together in some kind of stability, but we are doing it on a day-to-day basis without any long term strategy for getting stability back on a global basis," the Michigan Republican contends. "That's the problem."
"I think we'll get a cease-fire. I don't know if it'll happen today, but it'll happen in the next 48-hours," he said.
However, Hoekstra asked "where are we going to be in 10 days? Where are we going to be in two weeks?"
"We might be back to exactly the same spot," he added.
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