The song is about "trouble in the Middle East." For our purposes, we can assume he meant Middle East-North Africa, but made sacrifices for scansion. The Syria-Lebanon theater is tense, Israel has nuclear weapons, Morocco is presumably run rampant over Western Sahara, and "Baghdad does whatever she please." Into this mess comes the president/Kofi Annan's envoy, James Baker.
I'm hoping James Baker played "The Envoy" on a boombox when he jetted between Tindouf, Algiers, and Rabat. If not, the next envoy to the Maghreb should.
This clip of the song is the best I could find on the internet, but it captures the general coolness of disinterested international mediation nicely.
Warren Zevon-The Envoy