Road Runner Converted into Secretary of State

If there is one adjective to describe U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, that word is “tireless.” That is what President Barack Obama called him after the Iran nuclear agreement. It was also the compliment Kerry heard the most last week when he was honored as Foreign Policy’s Diplomat of the Year.

Kerry, 71, is on track to be the most-traveled U.S. secretary of state. There is rarely a conflict for which he has not wanted to be a mediator. For his supporters, his hyperactivity is a reflection of his abilities. His most obvious success was the pact in June among five world powers to limit Iran’s nuclear capacity.

According to his detractors, the former Democratic senator is guilty of naivety and a desire for glory after his failed presidential bid in 2004 and not being Obama’s first choice for secretary of state in his second term. In September 2013, Kerry’s dubious response at a press conference was a contributing factor for the United States halting its plan to bomb the Syrian army and instead dismantling the army’s chemical weapons stocks. Another example: the Israeli minister of defense branded Kerry as “obsessive” and “messianic” for Kerry’s peace plan between Israel and Palestine, which sank in April 2014.

However, Kerry, the son of a diplomat, did not throw in the towel. In his speech at the dinner, he declared he was convinced the peace plan could be feasible in the remaining 15 months of Obama’s presidency. Kerry’s overall teaching: “The attempt creates a far stronger platform for future action than refusing to even try.”

A veteran of the Vietnam War, a war he later opposed, Kerry defends face-to-face diplomacy and prioritizes peacemaking. He refutes pessimistic criticisms that the world is collapsing. Kerry is, above all, an optimist. He has an advantage: He has no political ambitions beyond his current role at the Department of State. These four years will define his legacy, and he is determined to squeeze as much as possible out of them.