Robert Trent Jones Jr., having spearheaded discreet White House back channels between the U.S. and its foreign friends and foes for 50 years, has figured out why America 2025 is no longer a country for wise men.
“Our collective consciousness for decency — what is moral and what is not — is evaporating,” says the celebrated 85-year-old golf course architect, who silently served President Jimmy Carter in the Middle East; George H.W. Bush in China; Bill Clinton in the Balkans, and Ronald Reagan in Russia and the Philippines.
Hype?
“Bobby helped me become President of the Philippines,” Philippine President Corazon Aquino told this reporter over lunch at her home in Manila shortly after she stepped down from office in 1992. “He put his life at risk for the Philippines more than once.”
Still don’t believe the New Jersey looper who rolled into Yale is the real deal, cherry-picked by America’s post-war foreign policy establishment to help them comprehend the Communist bloc, decode the Islamic sphere, and privately report on institutions and initiatives such as NATO, the World Bank, and the World Economic Forum.
Aquino’s brother, Jose “Peping” Cojuangco, has a story to tell about the golfer whose mentor was the eminent constitutional scholar Alexander Bickel.
Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos had put Manila under martial law. There were tanks rumbling the streets, tracer bullets flying and Jones was walking off a plane from San Francisco with sensitive information from Reagan that couldn’t be entrusted to official channels.
“Bobby gets in the car, and I hand him an AK-47 assault rifle,” Cojuangco recalls. “I told him that Marcos will torture us for the information you’re carrying. We must not be taken alive.”
Reaching for one of the clubs piled on the backseat floor atop golf balls and ammo clips, Cojuangco says Jones tapped him on the shoulder. “Peping, you got a 7-iron back here? I’d be much better with a 7-iron than an AK-47.”
Baloney?
“Bobby is an influential voice, a good and trusted back channel,” former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz reinforced over dinner a few years after Jones in 1986 helped the People Power movement oust Marcos. “He’s a really good golfer and very competitive in everything.”
Bipartisan, too.
“Bobby is one of our most important operatives,” former U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said in 2004, a few days before Jones was off to build a golf course in China and transmit a series of private verbal messages from then-President George W. Bush to China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.
But Jones, a member of the so-called Silent Generation raised on vacuum-tube radio broadcasts, says he understands the analog White House isn’t coming back.
At the same time, he adds, the current administration’s non-stop daily theatre of mixed messages, contradictory gestures and brash threats against allies and adversaries alike has crippled America’s reputation abroad.
“The days of the wise men are over,” Jones reckons, pointing to former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia and Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, along with four-term California Gov. Jerry Brown, as archetypes of the jettisoned caste.
“The acumen of these men was hard earned. They were patient; they followed instincts and truths, not the noise of the demagogues and their mob.”
Indeed, Jones labels Reagan’s shrewd and studied foreign policy team as a platinum standard now shattered by the clamor of social-media nativism and diplomatic memes orchestrated by individuals ill-suited to the task of bringing peace to the Middle East, ending the War in Ukraine, and forging a nuclear treaty with Iran.
“There’s a tremendous lesson here,” Jones recalls by phone from The Masters tournament in Augusta, Georgia. “Despite our many political differences, what bound us together was patriotism, love of the Constitution and the rule of law.”
As Jones tells it, a decade of toxic domestic political discourse has bled America of the empathy required for global leadership.
“My instructions were to report back on more than just what our perceived adversaries were telling me,” Jones says. “Recognize their feelings – and let me say in no uncertain terms that we can tell if an adversary is truly evil or if he has the capacity for discussion. Reagan understood that complex dynamic better than anyone.”
Jones fears America’s current crop of foreign emissaries and negotiators are sloppy, irresponsible, uneducated and — ultimately — hazardous to the country’s health.
“Dissent is not betrayal,” Jones says.
“Xi of China mocks us, Putin humiliates us and it’s clear our envoys have no idea how to even start negotiating the dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs,” Jones adds. “No other administration would have allowed this to happen.”
To fully appreciate the apolitical sobriety of Jones’s critique, one must go back to an icy January evening in 2005 at Switzerland’s Belvedere Hotel in Davos, where, it can be argued, Jones in his confidential ambassadorial capacity choreographed one of the most remarkable unofficial moments in U.S. diplomatic history over dinner at the World Economic Forum.
President George W. Bush and America’s allies had sweated out a long three years trying to figure out how to control the nuclear aspirations of Iran’s mullahs. Indeed, the WEF theme that night, with Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi, was, “Is Iran a supporter of civil and human rights, or a suspected friend of terrorists and a nuclear tiger?”
Jones and I were Kharazi’s dining companions at one of the eight tables filled with Iranian politicians and Western foreign policymakers. Although the menu identified then-Sen. Joe Biden as the top American in the room, pandemonium arrived before the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee stumbled into the food fight.
A waiter asked Kharazi if he preferred red or white wine. Jones told the young woman why the foreign minister didn’t drink alcohol. The master of ceremonies nonetheless declared protocol had been breached and that all wine be removed from the room, triggering the other guests to gasp, groan and then grab the bottles before the waiters could confiscate them.
Kharazi said the wine could remain, explaining that only Muslims are forbidden from consuming alcohol. The MC refused to rescind his ukase. The guests refused to hand over their wine.
Another waiter arrived with the first dish. Jones, who had built 10 golf courses in Islamic countries, pointed to the prawns in front of Kharazi.
“Makruh (strictly to be avoided as abominable)?” Jones said, hoping he’d whispered the correct phrase and properly pronounced the word. Thanking Jones for his courtesy, the Shiite Muslim’s shellfish were removed from the table.
But the other guests would not surrender their prawns.
All eyes were on Kharazi when the main course arrived. Whatever hopes WEF officials had for a coherent discussion about Iran’s nuclear and human rights policies were about to be sacrificed on a plate of pork schnitzel.
Then Biden showed up. He went directly to Kharazi, who was eating a salad garnished with a loud chorus of wine-soaked global leaders railing against Iran for ruining their supper.
Biden harshly wagged his right index finger in Kharazi’s face. The five other Iranian officials rushed to defend their foreign minister.
“Enough!” Jones roared. “I’m going to read a poem,” he swore at full volume as the crowd snarled back with displeasure — everyone, that is, except, Kharazi and his guardians, who like Jones, shared in the Persian affection for poetry.
Above the hubbub, Jones diffused the madness of mindless men by riffing Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” a sonnet about the inevitable decline of rulers and their hubris. Biden stepped back, humiliation apparent on his face.
The Iranian delegation gave Jones a standing ovation and, abandoning Biden, escorted Jones into another room for a private meeting, where Kharazi invited him to visit Iran’s religious leaders in Tehran.
“If there are any poets left in the current administration,” Jones says, “sending them to Iran would be a good way to start negotiations.”
A. Craig Copetas is an award-winning reporter, writer and author who has more than a half century covering news and politics for publications including Rolling Stone, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. He lives in Paris.
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