Coming on the heels of Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry’s nomination to become ambassador to Afghanistan, Amb. Chris Hill, most recently the Bush administration’s extremely-well-regarded North Korea troubleshooter, will succeed Ryan Crocker as ambassador to Iraq. With the voting still being tallied in this weekend’s provincial elections, this remains a time of upheaval in Iraq: new Sunni power blocs coalescing in disputed territories in the northern provinces of Ninewah and Tammim/Kirkuk herald friction with the Kurds, who want to annex part of those provinces to their autonomous area, that have long threatened to escalate. As Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post writes, Hill has deep experience dealing with intransigent negotiating partners — the North Koreans, Dick Cheney — and his persistence in part resulted in Pyongyang taking significant steps toward nuclear disarmament.

Hill doesn’t have experience in the Arab world, though, and doesn’t speak Arabic. My understanding is that the Obama team always wanted someone who was a career diplomat — but Hill wasn’t their first choice. An inability to immediately nail down candidates for both the Iraq and the Afghanistan envoyships prevented them from rolling out both new ambassadors during President Obama’s Jan. 22 visit to the State Dept., when both George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke were unveiled as Mideast and South Asian troubleshooters.

What’s more, some longtime Iraq hands have expressed frustration that the U.S. embassy in Baghdad seems overeager to act like a "normal" embassy — establishing bilateral political and economic ties — when Iraq still has 140,000 U.S. troops on its territory; violence continues, albeit "only" at 2004 levels; and its entire political structure is in flux. Hill will have a lot on his plate, and it’ll be interesting to hear how he conceives of the requirements of his job during his confirmation hearings.

Crossposted to The Streak.