For Donald Trump, he is "my envoy", the man who has apparently been appointed as the former US president's roving ambassador as he prepares to return to the White House. Critics consider him an "online pest" and a "national embarrassment" — and most importantly, a dark embodiment of what foreign policy would look like in another Trump administration.
Meet Richard Grenell, a vocal proponent of Trump's "America First" doctrine and the man widely mentioned as the future secretary of state should the likely Republican nominee defeat Joe Biden in the November presidential election.
One of the executives at the right-wing Newsmax cable channel, Grenell, 57, has built himself up as a typical Trump man, eager and always ready to challenge liberals, allies and foreign statesmen in public forums and on social media.
Grenell — who served as the renegade ambassador to Germany and interim director of National Intelligence during Trump's first term — built his place as a leading proponent of the Magus approach to global affairs.
Seasoned analysts fear that his hyperactivity is already troubling American diplomats even though Trump is not in office.
In recent months, he has appeared in Guatemala, where he tried to block pleas from the U.S. State Department for a peaceful handover by backing a right-wing effort to block the inauguration of the liberal president-elect, Bernardo Arevalo, based on alleged vote fraud that international observers had previously declared "fair and free".
Arevalo subsequently took office, but not before Grenell criticized American diplomats for "trying to ask conservatives" for "false concerns about democracy."
Also visited the Balkans on several occasions - building on his previous role as the Trump administration's special envoy for the region and working on real estate deals in Serbia and Albania with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.
He tried to arrange a meeting between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at last year's UN General Assembly in New York at a time when the Turkish leader blocked Sweden's efforts to join NATO, although the proposal was later rejected on security grounds.
Grenell's influence has a chilling effect on current US diplomats, said Fulton Armstrong, a senior fellow at the US University Center for Latin American Studies.
Grenell has become a fierce advocate of abandoning negotiations on decades-old territorial disputes in the Middle East and the Balkans in favor of trade and economic agreements that he hails as circumventing political problems by creating jobs.
"Grenell is very cunning and efficient. "Because he penetrated both the intelligence and political worlds, he knows who can be misled, intimidated and destroyed," said Armstrong, who is a former CIA analyst.
"The State Department eventually did the right thing in Guatemala, but after a lot of stalling that sent a message to Grenell that there were commitment and loyalty issues (that he could exploit).
"Weak people in the State Department are afraid of angering the right wing because they want to be ambassadors and fear for their careers, which makes them vulnerable. Someone like Grenell knows how to use that to Trump's advantage."
On the other hand, Grenell accuses the State Department of "playing politics" and "advocating left-wing ideas" in Latin America.
Addressing the influential CPAK gathering of conservatives in February, he said that American politics is crying out for a "SOB (son of a bitch) diplomat," a role he has apparently earmarked for himself.
"What we need right now is diplomacy with muscle," Grenell said during an online debate last summer on the Balkans hosted by the America First Policy Institute. "We need to stop making fun of tough diplomats. In Ukraine, we saw that when diplomats mislead, we get war and conflict".
Grenell has become a fierce advocate of abandoning negotiations on decades-old territorial disputes in the Middle East and the Balkans in favor of trade and economic agreements that he hails as circumventing political problems by creating jobs.
"The success of Donald Trump is that he avoided politics and concentrated on the economy," Grenell told CPAK. "Young people leave a region because they have no help and no jobs. Therefore, part of our foreign policy, if we want to solve problems, is to avoid the political story and come up with ways to improve trade".
To critics, the story is code for a transactional foreign policy tailored to Trump's personal and business interests at the expense of America's traditional democratic alliances — as well as a signal to Ukraine that it will be pressured to cede territory to end its war with Russia.
"There are many aspects to what Grenell is doing," said Dzo Ćirinćone, a veteran specialist in Washington's foreign policy and arms control. "One is fraud, looking for business deals, especially in Serbia, where Trump has long-standing business interests, and Grenell seems to be helping him realize them." "The second aspect is more dangerous. It looks like Grenell is trying to build an authoritarian network of right-wing leaders to form an authoritarian axis that Trump can manage - from Putin to Orban and Erdogan.
"All these are anti-democratic forces and they use a simple book on how to use democracy to overthrow democracy".
Grenell's statements do not give much cause for concern to advocates of existing American alliances.
An unrelenting critic of Germany's financial contributions to NATO, he provoked Sweden's prime minister, Ulf Kristerson, when he attended Biden's State of the Nation address in January to mark his country's accession to NATO, which Grenell opposed, allegedly because he would not pay his share.
"Sweden's leader, who is not currently paying his share of NATO obligations but has promised to do so later, is running to applaud Joe Biden and the far-left spending policies Biden wants to implement," Grenell posted on the X network.
The comment recalled Grenell's loud outbursts as ambassador to Berlin, where he infuriated his hosts immediately upon arrival by demanding they reimpose sanctions on Iran after Trump pulled the US out of the nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration - even though Germany still adhered to the agreement.
He also kicked up a storm in Germany when he told Breitbart that part of his ambassadorial role was to "empower other conservatives across Europe," comments that some saw as a quiet offer of peace to the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD).
For people like Ćirinćone, such rhetoric is only a harbinger of things to come.
"If Trump becomes president and Grenell becomes secretary of state, it would set back American interests for decades, destroy the development of the democratic West and help the rise of the global right, there is no doubt about that," he said.
The text is taken from "The Guardian"
Translation: NB
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