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For two Americans in Saigon in 1963, the personal and the political combine to spark the drama of a lifetime Before it spread into a tragic war that defined a generation, the conflict in Vietnam smoldered as a guerrilla insurgency and a diplomatic nightmare. Into this volatile country stepped Frederick “Fritz” Nolting, the US ambassador, and his second-in-command, William “Bill” Trueheart, immortalized in David Halberstam's landmark work The Best and the Brightest and accidental players in a pivotal juncture in modern US history.Diplomats at War is a personal memoir by former Washington Post reporter Charles Trueheart—Bill's son and Nolting's godson—who grew up amid the events that traumatized two families and an entire nation. The book embeds the reader at the US embassy and dissects the fateful rift between Nolting and Trueheart over their divergent assessments of the South Vietnamese regime under Ngo Dinh Diem, who would ultimately be assassinated in a coup backed by the United States. Charles Trueheart retells the story of the United States'headlong plunge into war from an entirely new vantage point—that of a son piecing together how his father and godfather participated in, and were deeply damaged by, this historic flashpoint. Their critical rupture, which also destroyed their close friendship, served as a dramatic preface to the United States'disastrous involvement in the Vietnam conflict.Winner of the American Academy of Diplomacy Douglas Dillon Award

“This is hard to put down.” ~ Publishers Weekly Starred ReviewA top negotiator in countless high-stakes missions to free Americans captured abroad and held in the world's scariest prisons takes readers inside the dramatic and shadowy world of international hostage rescue. Brittney Griner, Danny Fenster, Otto Warmbier, Trevor Reed, Paul Whelan, Kenneth Bae…When an American citizen is unjustly imprisoned overseas, that's when Mickey Bergman's phone starts to ring. Who else are their desperate loved ones supposed to call? Mickey and his tight team of savvy negotiators at the Richardson Center for Global Engagement are the go-to rescuers of last resort, carrying on the high-stakes, round-the-world mission of master negotiator Bill Richardson. Mickey and his team do what U.S. government officials are often unable or unwilling to do: sit down with America's toughest adversaries and find creative ways to bring our people home. That's life In the Shadows. This is the heart-pounding story of these urgent negotiations, what it's like to climb inside the minds of some of the world's most notorious strongmen, where the clear divisions between good and evil are replaced by a thousand shades of gray. The hard work is done far from the glare of media publicity. The negotiations don't follow traditional diplomatic rules. As innocent Americans sit behind bars in hellhole foreign prisons, Mickey and his colleagues stop at nothing to get our people home. And these cases almost never go as smoothly as they should, as the independent negotiators navigate between U.S. government officials and some of the world's most headstrong leaders. And as soon as one American is freed, Mickey is off on another dicey mission to Moscow, Caracas, Naypyidaw, Pyongyang, or some other complex foreign capital. These painstaking campaigns require creative thinking, hardball pressure tactics, excruciating patience, and a genuine sense of compassion for the anxious families whose lives are thrown into turmoil when a loved one is imprisoned abroad. In Mickey Bergman's own words, In the Shadows tells the hidden story of these high-drama rescue campaigns. The crafty negotiating strategies. The strong-willed foreign leaders. The emotional rollercoaster of being responsible for innocent American lives. The exhilaration when another American is released from a foreign prison—and the terrible letdown when a promising effort hits another maddening roadblock. Mickey recounts his unique relationship with his mentor, the late, great Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico, ambassador to the United Nations and legendary negotiator. He shares the wrenching closeness he develops with the desperate families he serves, who often have nowhere else to turn. He offers a detailed account of his one-on-one interactions with Washington's top power players, both Democrats and Republicans, and some of the world's most isolated and misunderstood heads of state. For readers who want the full, searing story of these life-or-death rescue missions and the fascinating people behind them, it's all In the Shadows. As Mickey Bergman and New York Times bestselling author Ellis Henican make clear on every page, international diplomacy isn't just for government officials anymore.

Young American Foreign Service officers are accustomed to being teased by friends and relatives as to what they do in the “Foreign Legion” or the “Forest Service.” In the United States, unlike in many countries, the role of a professional diplomat is little known or understood. In A Professional Foreigner Edward Marks describes his life as an American diplomat who served during the last four decades of the twentieth century, from 1959 to 2001. Serving primarily in Africa and Asia, Marks was present during the era of decolonization in Africa (but always seemed to be at the opposite end of the continent from the hottest developments), was intimately involved in the early days of the U.S. government's antiterrorism programs, observed the unfolding of a nasty and tragic ethnic conflict in one of the most charming countries in the world, and saw the end of the Cold War at UN headquarters in New York. Along the way Marks served as the U.S. ambassador to two African nations. In this memoir Marks depicts a Foreign Service officer's daily life, providing insight into the profession itself and what it was like to play a role in the steady stream of history, in a world of quotidian events often out of the view of the media and the attention of the world. Marks's stories—such as rescuing an American citizen from a house of ill repute in Mexico and the attempt to recruit mongooses for drug intervention in Sri Lanka—are both entertaining and instructive on the work of diplomats and their contributions to the American story.

The relationship between Thomas Jefferson and William Short, the eldest son of an established Virginia family and relative of Martha Jefferson, began as a patron-protégé arrangement conventional for the era. Jefferson encouraged Short's legal career and gave him his first legal work. Thus began a bond of forty years that that both men characterized in paternal and filial terms and that sheds considerable light on the enigmatic Founding Father. In the aftermath of Jefferson's precipitous'flight from Monticello,'Short underwrote substantial short-term loans to him. Jefferson took the younger man to France as his private secretary in 1784 but, quickly concluding that his moral well-being and political judgment were at risk, he urged Short to return to America and settle down. Short, however, wished to pursue a foreign service career and a long affair with a French aristocrat. Jefferson wanted Short to embrace a Virginia way of looking at the world, even buying him a farm near Monticello. Short resisted--and rejected Jefferson's ideas about slavery, economics, marriage, the practice of democratic government, and republican morality, but without rejecting his'friend and father.'He showed little respect for Jefferson's political achievements, viewing him as a well-meaning'visionary,'yet he was conscious of living in the statesman's shadow. William Short was not Thomas Jefferson's intellectual equal, was not a political collaborator, and never became a neighbor, yet the elder man invested considerable emotional energy and time in his'adoptive son,'even during his vice-presidency and presidency. By efficiently managing the younger man's financial affairs Jefferson enabled his extended stay in France, but also diverted Short's money for his own use. Although he believed Short's political judgment had been clouded by his enjoyment of French society and savagely criticized his reaction to the French Revolution, he never gave up on Short the private individual. Heir through Hope reveals a figure who served as a unique sounding board to a Founder, while underscoring the distinct ways Jefferson envisioned the United States'destiny vis à vis Europe. Fascinating in its own right, their complex relationship highlights the tensions between the founding generation and its successors while illuminating the operation of political power in early national America and Revolutionary Europe.

For over twenty-five years John Dickson served the United States as a Foreign Service officer in North America, South America, the Caribbean, and Africa. In History Shock: When History Collides with Foreign Relations Dickson offers valuable insights into the daily life of a Foreign Service officer and the work of representing the United States. Dickson organizes History Shock around a country-by-country series of lively personal experience vignettes followed by compelling historical analyses of the ways in which his inadequate understanding of the host country's history, particularly its prior history with the United States, combined with his lack of knowledge of his own nation's history led to history shock: where dramatically different interpretations of history blocked diplomatic understanding and cooperation.John Dickson offers these “stories with a history” to highlight the interaction between history and foreign relations and to underscore the costs of not knowing the history of our partners and adversaries, much less our own. In both Mexico and Canada in particular we see how our lack of knowledge and understanding of how our long history of military interventions continues to complicate our efforts at developing mutually beneficial relationships with our two closest neighbors. In Nigeria and South Africa, Dickson experienced firsthand how the history of racism in the United States plays out on a world stage and clouds our ability to effectively work with key African nations. Perhaps the starkest example of history shock, of two nations with deeply conflicted views of their own histories and their shared history, is another country near at hand, Cuba. Not all of the gaps are too wide for bridge building; in Peru, Dickson provides an example of how history can be deployed to mutual advantage.The Foreign Service has long sought to improve its training, to provide some form of “playbook” or “operating manual” with systematic case studies for its officers. In History Shock Dickson provides not only a model for such case studies but also a unique contribution of an interpretive framework for how to remedy this deficit, including recommendations for strengthening historical literacy in the Foreign Service.

After graduation from Georgetown University in 1896, William Franklin Sands joined the US diplomatic corps as second secretary in Tokyo. His year there sparked his interest in East Asia, so when a position in Korea opened, he took it, with the help of his influential father, an admiral in the US navy. For two years he served under US Minister Horace Allen until a more powerful position opened as chief qdviser to the Korean government in 1900. As the most influential foreign adviser, Sands attempted to convince Emperor Kojong to undertake reforms and to promote Korean neutrality to keep the country independent. The author argues, however, that Sands was hampered by corrucpt officials who had the ear of the emperor, by the Japanese and the Russians who competed for influence and who tried to replace Sands with their own advisers, and, ironically, by Horace Allen. When he lost the confidence of Kojong and when the Russo-Japanese War broke out, Sands was forced out, having failed to maintain Korea's independence as Japan moved to take over. Although his subsequent activities included other diplomatic postings, teaching, and writing, he maintained an interest in Korea and offered his services as World War Two raged.

Hailed by the New York Times as “one of the best soldiers this country has produced,” Frank Ross McCoy was, throughout his distinguished career, much more than just a good soldier. As friend and confidant to such leaders as Theodore Roosevelt, Leonard Wood, and Henry Stimson, he disproves the standard view of the military before 1940 as having no role in American foreign policy. Instead, as A. J. Bacevich ably demonstrates, McCoy was intimately involved in the development of U.S. foreign relations from McKinley's administration to Truman's.McCoy began his military career with Leonard Wood in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. After the war, he and Wood (who became military governor) worked together to establish democratic reforms in Cuba. There followed for McCoy a succession of difficult and sometimes dangerous assignments: The Philippines (during the Moro uprising), Mexico, France (as combat commander during World War I), Turkey and Armenia, the Philippines again, Nicaragua (during the Sandino's guerrilla campaign), Bolivia and Paraguay, and China (with the Lytton Commission investigating Japan's invasion of Manchuria). Following a series of stateside appointments, McCoy served finally as chairman of the Far Eastern Commission, an international body created to determine the fate of postwar Japan.Based on exhaustive research in McCoy's personal papers and official records, Bacevich shows that McCoy's career provides a unique perspective both on American foreign policy and on civil-military relations. Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program.

A young diplomat's account of her assignment in South Sudan, a firsthand example of US foreign policy that has failed in its diplomacy and accountability around the world.In 2017, Elizabeth Shackelford wrote a pointed resignation letter to her then boss, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. She had watched as the State Department was gutted, and now she urged him to stem the bleeding by showing leadership and commitment to his diplomats and the country. If he couldn't do that, she said,'I humbly recommend that you follow me out the door.'With that, she sat down to write her story and share an urgent message.In The Dissent Channel, former diplomat Elizabeth Shackelford shows that this is not a new problem. Her experience in 2013 during the precarious rise and devastating fall of the world's newest country, South Sudan, exposes a foreign policy driven more by inertia than principles, to suit short-term political needs over long-term strategies. Through her story, Shackelford makes policy and politics come alive. And in navigating both American bureaucracy and the fraught history and present of South Sudan, she conveys an urgent message about the devolving state of US foreign policy.

“A masterful diplomatic memoir” (The Washington Post) from CIA director and career ambassador William J. Burns, from his service under five presidents to his personal encounters with Vladimir Putin and other world leaders—an impassioned argument for the enduring value of diplomacy in an increasingly volatile world. Over the course of more than three decades as an American diplomat, William J. Burns played a central role in the most consequential diplomatic episodes of his time—from the bloodless end of the Cold War to the collapse of post–Cold War relations with Putin's Russia, from post–9/11 tumult in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Middle East to the secret nuclear talks with Iran.In The Back Channel, Burns recounts, with novelistic detail and incisive analysis, some of the seminal moments of his career. Drawing on a trove of newly declassified cables and memos, he gives readers a rare inside look at American diplomacy in action. His dispatches from war-torn Chechnya and Qaddafi's bizarre camp in the Libyan desert and his warnings of the “Perfect Storm” that would be unleashed by the Iraq War will reshape our understanding of history—and inform the policy debates of the future. Burns sketches the contours of effective American leadership in a world that resembles neither the zero-sum Cold War contest of his early years as a diplomat nor the “unipolar moment” of American primacy that followed.Ultimately, The Back Channel is an eloquent, deeply informed, and timely story of a life spent in service of American interests abroad. It is also a powerful reminder, in a time of great turmoil, of the enduring importance of diplomacy.

•Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography••Winner of the Los Angeles Times Prize for Biography••Winner of the 2019 Hitchens Prize•'Portrays Holbrooke in all of his endearing and exasperating self-willed glory...Both a sweeping diplomatic history and a Shakespearean tragicomedy... If you could read one book to comprehend American's foreign policy and its quixotic forays into quicksands over the past 50 years, this would be it.'--Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review'By the end of the second page, maybe the third, you will be hooked...There never was a diplomat-activist quite like [Holbrooke], and there seldom has been a book quite like this -- sweeping and sentimental, beguiling and brutal, catty and critical, much like the man himself.'--David M. Shribman, The Boston GlobeRichard Holbrooke was brilliant, utterly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites. Admired and detested, he was the force behind the Dayton Accords that ended the Balkan wars, America's greatest diplomatic achievement in the post-Cold War era. His power lay in an utter belief in himself and his idea of a muscular, generous foreign policy. From his days as a young adviser in Vietnam to his last efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, Holbrooke embodied the postwar American impulse to take the lead on the global stage. But his sharp elbows and tireless self-promotion ensured that he never rose to the highest levels in government that he so desperately coveted. His story is thus the story of America during its era of supremacy: its strength, drive, and sense of possibility, as well as its penchant for overreach and heedless self-confidence. In Our Man, drawn from Holbrooke's diaries and papers, we are given a nonfiction narrative that is both intimate and epic in its revelatory portrait of this extraordinary and deeply flawed man and the elite spheres of society and government he inhabited.

From Sadat to Saddam offers a fresh perspective on the politicization of the U.S. diplomatic corps and the militarization of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. This book begins with the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, continues through two Gulf wars, and ends with the U.S. withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq in 2011. This firsthand account of thirty years in the diplomatic trenches of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East addresses the basic questions of how and why we find ourselves today in endless military conflict and argues that it is directly related to the decline in reliance on our diplomatic skills. From Sadat to Saddam offers an in-depth look by a career diplomat at how U.S. soft power has been allowed to atrophy. It chronicles three decades of dealing not just with foreign policy challenges and opportunities but also with the frustrations of working with bureaucrats and politicians who don't understand the world and are unwilling to listen to those who do. The book makes clear that the decline of our diplomatic capability began well before the election of Donald Trump. It recommends that instead of trying to make soldiers into diplomats and diplomats into soldiers, we invest in a truly professional diplomatic service.

The riveting story of many of the most dramatic international crises and conflicts of recent years, including everyone from presidents, warlords and'the noble, the brutal, the cunning and the just-plain unhinged'. The Back Channel recounts with vivid detail and incisive analysis some of the seminal moments of a legendary diplomatic career--from the bloodless end of the Cold War to relations with Putin's Russia, and from post-9/11 tumult in the Middle East and secret nuclear talks with Iran to America's rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific and its deepening strategic partnership with India. Career diplomat William J. Burns draws on his treasure trove of newly declassified cables and memos to offer a rare peek at US diplomacy in action. He illuminates the back channels of his profession, and its value in a world that resembles neither the zerosum Cold War of his early career, nor the'unipolar moment'of American primacy that followed. His dispatches from war-torn Chechnya and Qadhafi's camp in the Libyan desert, and his memos warning of the'perfect storm'unleashed by the Iraq War, will profoundly reshape both our understanding of history and the policy debates of the future. The Back Channel is an eloquent, deeply informed and impassioned argument for renewing diplomacy as the tool of first resort in American statecraft.

An insider's account of Romania's emergence from communism controlIn the 1970s American attorney Alfred H. Moses was approached on the streets of Bucharest by young Jews seeking help to emigrate to Israel. This became the author's mission until the communist regime fell in 1989. Before that Moses had met periodically with Romania's communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, to persuade him to allow increased Jewish emigration. This experience deepened Moses's interest in Romania—an interest that culminated in his serving as U.S. ambassador to the country from 1994 to 1997 during the Clinton administration.The ambassador's time of service in Romania came just a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. During this period Romania faced economic paralysis and was still buried in the rubble of communism. Over the next three years Moses helped nurture Romania's nascent democratic institutions, promoted privatization of Romania's economy, and shepherded Romania on the path toward full integration with Western institutions. Through frequent press conferences, speeches, and writings in the Romanian and Western press and in his meetings with Romanian officials at the highest level, he stated in plain language the steps Romania needed to take before it could be accepted in the West as a free and democratic country.Bucharest Diary: An American Ambassador's Journey is filled with firsthand stories, including colorful anecdotes, of the diplomacy, both public and private, that helped Romania recover from four decades of communist rule and, eventually, become a member of both NATO and the European Union. Romania still struggles today with the consequences of its history, but it has reached many of its post-communist goals, which Ambassador Moses championed at a crucial time.This book will be of special interest to readers of history and public affairs—in particular those interested in Jewish life under communist rule in Eastern Europe and how the United States and its Western partners helped rebuild an important country devastated by communism.

Hugh Gibson, US Minister to Poland from 1919 to 1924, recorded his involvement with the rocky first years of Polish statehood in this collection of official dispatches and personal letters.This book presents the writings of Hugh S. Gibson, who served from 1919 to 1924 as the first US Minister to the new Second Polish Republic. Crucially involved with world-shaping events, Gibson faithfully recorded his eyewitness impressions and interactions with the nascent Polish state, bickering Allies, and increasingly isolationist Americans. The selected material draws from both State Department dispatches and personal letters, most of it appearing in print for the first time. Editor Vivian Hux Reed, working with experts M. B. B. Biskupski, Jochen Böhler, and Jan-Roman Potocki, provides historical context through a comprehensive introduction and series of annotations. Reminiscences by Gibson's late son Michael Francis Gibson provide personal context. With a flair for pertinent analysis, Gibson records the rocky first years of Polish statehood. He advocated for American support of the young democracy and emphasized to both Polish and US government officials the need for a strong state to protect the rights of all Polish citizens. His words are prophetic, accurately assessing the need for strong state structures to protect all citizens and predicting the danger posed especially to minority groups should such structures fail. VIVIAN HUX REED has an MA in history from Western Oregon University. M. B. B. BISKUPSKI is professor of history, Central Connectictut State University. JOCHEN BÖHLER is a research associate, Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena at Friedrich Schiller University. JAN-ROMAN POTOCKI has an MPhil in International Relations from Cambridge University.

Today, diverse women of all hues represent this country overseas. Some have called this development the “Hillary Effect.” But well before our most recent female secretary of state there was Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve in that capacity, and later Condoleezza Rice. Beginning at a more junior post in the Department of State in 1971, there was “the little Elam girl” from Boston.Diversifying Diplomacy tells the story of Harriet Lee Elam-Thomas, a young black woman who beat the odds and challenged the status quo. Inspired by the strong women in her life, she followed in the footsteps of the few women who had gone before her in her effort to make the Foreign Service reflect the diverse faces of the United States. The youngest child of parents who left the segregated Old South to raise their family in Massachusetts, Elam-Thomas distinguished herself with a diplomatic career at a time when few colleagues looked like her. Elam-Thomas's memoir is a firsthand account of her decades-long career in the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Service, recounting her experiences of making U.S. foreign policy, culture, and values understood abroad. Elam-Thomas served as a United States ambassador to Senegal (2000–2002) and retired with the rank of career minister after forty-two years as a diplomat. Diversifying Diplomacy presents the journey of this successful woman, who not only found herself confronted by some of the world's heftier problems but also helped ensure that new shepherds of honesty and authenticity would follow in her international footsteps for generations to come.

This memoir attempts to capture the humor and sheer incongruity of working across cultures in an international career spanning diplomacy and education. Written in a light hearted tone, it also delves into tragic consequences in countries such as Somalia, Libya and Greece. While critical in many respects of US foreign policy, it also hopes to attract adventurous young men and women of today's generation to possible careers in diplomacy. The author uses humor and anecdote to highlight the monumental changes in the world environment and practice of diplomacy in the short space of a single career. The book features cover art and interior sketches by Eliza Jackson.

The Dust of Kandahar provides a personal account of one diplomat's year of service in America's longest war. Ambassador Addleton movingly describes the everyday human drama of the American soldiers, local tribal dignitaries, government officials, and religious leaders he interacted and worked with in southern Afghanistan. Addleton's writing is at its most vivid in his firsthand account of the April 2013 suicide bombing outside a Zabul school that killed his translator, a fellow Foreign Service officer, and three American soldiers. The memory of this tragedy lingers over Addleton's journal entries, his prose offering poignant glimpses into the interior life of a U.S. diplomat stationed in harm's way.

Judith M. Heimann entered the diplomatic life in 1958 to join her husband, John, in Jakarta, Indonesia, at his American Embassy post. This, her first time out of the United States, would set her on a path across the continents as she mastered the fine points of diplomatic culture. She did so first as a spouse, then as a diplomat herself, thus becoming part of one of the Foreign Service's first tandem couples.Heimann's lively recollections of her life in Africa, Asia, and Europe show us that when it comes to reconciling our government's requirements with the other government's wants, shuttle diplomacy, Skype, and email cannot match on-the-ground interaction. The ability to gauge and finesse gesture, tone of voice, and unspoken assumptions became her stock-in-trade as she navigated, time and again, remarkably delicate situations.This insightful and witty memoir gives us a behind-the-scenes look at a rarely explored experience: that of one of the very first married female diplomats, who played an unsung but significant role in some of the important international events of the past fifty years. To those who know something of today's world of diplomacy, Paying Calls in Shangri-La will be an enlightening tour through the way it used to be—and for aspiring Foreign Service officers and students, it will be an inspiration.Published in association with ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series

After World War II, American statesman and scholar Lincoln Gordon emerged as one of the key players in the reconstruction of Europe. During his long career, Gordon worked as an aide to National Security Adviser Averill Harriman in President Truman's administration; for President John F. Kennedy as an author of the Alliance for Progress and as an adviser on Latin American policy; and for President Lyndon B. Johnson as assistant secretary of state. Gordon also served as the United States ambassador to Brazil under both Kennedy and Johnson. Outside the political sphere, he devoted his considerable talents to academia as a professor at Harvard University, as a scholar at the Brookings Institution, and as president at Johns Hopkins University.In this impressive biography, Bruce L. R. Smith examines Gordon's substantial contributions to U.S. mobilization during the Second World War, Europe's postwar economic recovery, the security framework for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and U.S. policy in Latin America. He also highlights the vital efforts of the advisers who helped Gordon plan NATO's force expansion and implement America's dominant foreign policy favoring free trade, free markets, and free political institutions.Smith, who worked with Gordon at the Brookings Institution, explores the statesman-scholar's virtues as well as his flaws, and his study is strengthened by insights drawn from his personal connection to his subject. In many ways, Gordon's life and career embodied Cold War America and the way in which the nation's institutions evolved to manage the twentieth century's vast changes. Smith adeptly shows how this'wise man'personified both America's postwar optimism and as its dawning realization of its own fallibility during the Vietnam era.

Diplomat DeWitt Clinton Poole arrived for a new job at the United States consulate office in Moscow in September 1917, just two months before the Bolshevik Revolution. In the final year of World War I, as Russians were withdrawing and Americans were joining the war, Poole found himself in the midst of political turmoil in Russia. U.S. relations with the newly declared Soviet Union rapidly deteriorated as civil war erupted and as Allied forces intervened in northern Russia and Siberia. Thirty-five years later, in the climate of the Cold War, Poole recounted his experiences as a witness to that era in a series of interviews. Historians Lorraine M. Lees and William S. Rodner introduce and annotate Poole's recollections, which give a fresh, firsthand perspective on monumental events in world history and reveal the important impact DeWitt Clinton Poole (1885–1952) had on U.S.–Soviet relations. He was active in implementing U.S. policy, negotiating with the Bolshevik authorities, and supervising American intelligence operations that gathered information about conditions throughout Russia, especially monitoring anti-Bolshevik elements and areas of German influence. Departing Moscow in late 1918 via Petrograd, he was assigned to the port of Archangel, then occupied by Allied and American forces, and left Russia in June 1919.

A “candid, behind-the-scenes” (The Dallas Morning News) memoir from one of our most distinguished ambassadors who—in his career of service to the country—was sent to some of the most dangerous outposts of American diplomacy.Christopher Hill was on the front lines in the Balkans at the breakup of Yugoslavia. He participated in one-on-one meetings with the dictator Milosevic and traveled to Bosnia and Kosovo, and to the Dayton conference, where a truce was arrived at. He was the first American Ambassador to Macedonia; Ambassador to Poland, in the cold war; chief disarmament negotiator in North Korea; and Hillary Clinton's hand-picked Ambassador to Iraq. Outpost is Hill's “lively, entertaining…introduction to the difficult game of diplomacy” (The Washington Post)—an adventure story of danger, loss of comrades, high stakes negotiations, and imperfect options. There are fascinating portraits of war criminals (Mladic, Karadzic), of presidents (Bush, Clinton, and Obama), of vice presidents including Dick Cheney, of Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and of Ambassadors Richard Holbrooke and Lawrence Eagleburger, among others. Hill writes bluntly about the bureaucratic warfare in DC and expresses strong criticism of America's aggressive interventions and wars of choice. From the wars in the Balkans to the brutality of North Korea to the endless war in Iraq, Outpost “is a personal story, filled with the intricacies of living abroad, coping with the bureaucracy of the huge US foreign-policy establishment, and trying to persuade some very difficult people that America really does want to help them” (Providence Journal).

In his new book, Lessons from a Diplomatic Life: Watching Flowers from Horseback, retired State Department official and career diplomat Marshall P. Adair recounts and reflects on his time in the US Foreign Service. The story of his assignments throughout the world reveals important details about significant foreign policy issues and historic events, including Bosnia, American policy toward Tibet, the 1988 Burmese uprising, and the foundations of the current US-China relationship. It provides the reader with an inside look at the history of the US State Department, US diplomacy, and US foreign policy of recent decades, during what was often an unstable and uncertain time. This first-hand, detailed account of the author's work with foreign governments and populations provides a unique outlook on US relations around the world that has critical policy implications for the situations we face today. Through this retelling, Adair illuminates how the depth and accuracy needed of diplomats and Foreign Service agents requires a close and intimate understanding of the cultures and governments they work with.

Can John D. Negroponte be described as'The Last American Diplomat'? In a career spanning 50 years of unprecedented American global power, he was the last of a dying breed of patrician diplomats - devoted to public service, a self-effacing and ultimate insider, whose prime duty was to advise, guide and warn - a bulwark of traditional diplomatic realism against ideologue excess.Negroponte served as US ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, the Philippines and Iraq; he was US Permanent Representative to the UN, Director of National Intelligence and Deputy Secretary of State to George W. Bush. His was a high-flying and seemingly conventional career but one full of surprises. Negroponte opposed Kissinger in Vietnam, supported a'proxy war'but opposed direct American military action against Marxists in Central America - facingbitter Congress opposition in the process. He swam against the floodtide of George W. Bush'sneocon-dominated administration, warning against the Iraq war as a possible new'Vietnam'and criticising aspects of Bush's'War on Terror'. He disconcerted the administration by arguingthat the re-establishment of Iraq would take as long as five years. And he was influential in international social and economic policy - working for the successful re-settlement of millions of refugees in Southeast Asia following the Vietnam War, issuing early warnings about the scourge of AIDS in Africa and successfully launching the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).George W. Liebmann's incisive account is based on personal and shared experience but it is nohagiography; beyond the author's discussions with Negroponte, this book is deeply researched in US state papers and includes interviews with leading actors. It will provide fascinating reading for anyone interested in the inside-story of American diplomacy, showing personal and policy struggles, and the underlying fissures present even in the world's last remaining superpower.

This book reveals the interplay between official government channels, covert intelligence agents and others, who acted largely behind the scenes of the peace process between Egypt and Israel that began in1978 and is still holding. The world leaders: Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, were driven by deeply held faith and conviction. Others were military hawks who, later saw peace as the only viable option. Still others saw peace and stability in terms of business and prosperity. Covered are the confluence of events that led to the Camp David Accords, the powerful personalities involved as well as the secret liaisons, communications, and third-party world leaders who played important yet seldom understood roles in forging that peace agreement.

The amazing true story of a businessman-adventurer who changed the world.

Richard Holbrooke, who died in December 2010, was a pivotal player in U.S. diplomacy for more than forty years. Most recently special envoy for Iraq and Afghanistan under President Obama, Holbrooke also served as assistant secretary of state for both Asia and Europe, and as ambassador to both Germany and the United Nations. He had a key role in brokering a peace agreement among warring factions in Bosnia that led to the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995. Widely regarded to possess one of the most penetrating minds of any modern diplomat of any nation, Holbrooke was also well known for his outsized personality, and his capacity to charm and offend in equally colossal measures. In this book, the friends and colleagues who knew him best survey his accomplishments as a diplomat, activist, and author. Excerpts from Holbrooke's own writings further illuminate each significant period of his career.The Unquiet American is both a tribute to an exceptional public servant and a backstage history of the last half-century of American foreign policy.

Winner of the Pulitzer PrizeWinner of the National Book Critics Circle AwardSelected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the YearDrawing on extensive interviews with George Kennan and exclusive access to his archives, an eminent scholar of the Cold War delivers a revelatory biography of its troubled mastermind. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, this extraordinary biography delves into the mind of the brilliant diplomat who shaped U.S. policy towards the Soviet Union for decades. This is a landmark work of history and biography that reveals the vast influence and rich inner landscape of a life that both mirrored and shaped the century it spanned.

There is much discussion these days about public diplomacy—communicating directly with the people of other countries rather than through their diplomats—but little information about what it actually entails. This book does exactly that by detailing the doings of a US Foreign Service cultural officer in five hot spots of the Cold War - Germany, Laos, Poland, Austria, and the Soviet Union - as well as service in Washington DC with the State Department, the Helsinki Commission of the US Congress, and the National Endowment for Democracy. Part history, part memoir, it takes readers into the trenches of the Cold War and demonstrates what public diplomacy can do. It also provides examples of what could be done today in countries where anti-Americanism runs high.

This book brings together the remembrances of Ambassador John W. McDonald, a veteran diplomat whose life serves as a model to those people of vision and action who wish to make a difference in a world that is desperate for the end of conflict. Beginning his career in international diplomacy in post-WWII Berlin and under the Marshall Plan, Ambassador McDonald's 40 years of working with the U.S. government and the United Nations_as well as with various academic institutions and NGOs_offer the reader both inspiration and hope for the future of international peace and cooperation. This international civil servant of extraordinary vision and courage has devoted his life to the successful resolution of conflict through communication. The Shifting Grounds of Conflict and Peacemaking contains the professional life lessons of Ambassador McDonald and offers his insight into international issues, providing frank and informed discussion on the environment, women's rights, the global water crisis, sustainable resources, international development, and, above all, peace. Those looking to be inspired into action should read this book to receive guidance about how one person can make all the difference toward building a lasting peace.

“Apartheid South Africa was on fire around me.” So begins the memoir of Career Foreign Service Officer Edward J. Perkins, the first black United States ambassador to South Africa. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan gave him the unparalleled assignment: dismantle apartheid without violence. As he fulfilled that assignment, Perkins was scourged by the American press, despised by the Afrikaner government, hissed at by white South African citizens, and initially boycotted by black South African revolutionaries, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu. His advice to President-elect George H. W. Bush helped modify American policy and hasten the release of Nelson Mandela and others from prison. Perkins's up-by-your-bootstraps life took him from a cotton farm in segregated Louisiana to the white elite Foreign Service, where he became the first black officer to ascend to the top position of director general. This is the story of how one man turned the page of history.

John Brady Kiesling, a twenty-year veteran of the foreign service, publicly resigned his position as political counselor of the U.S. Embassy in Athens in February 2003 to protest the Bush administration's impending invasion of Iraq. He believed that the security, economic, and moral costs of this war, including the blackening of America's image abroad, would far outweigh any benefit to the American people. In Diplomacy Lessons, Kiesling reminds readers that U.S. power does not rest on military might alone and that anger at America has real consequences for U.S. national interests.The security and prosperity of the American people depend on efficient cooperation with foreigners on a range of issues, not only terrorism and nuclear nonproliferation but also trade policy, environmental protection, and even public health. The policy decisions of America's foreign partners are driven by domestic politics, just as they are in the United States, and effective U.S. diplomacy requires understanding these political realities. An unloved superpower faces significant costs, both economic and strategic, in the pursuit of its interests. Kiesling calls for a return to realist policy making that recognizes the limits of U.S. power and uses thoughtful diplomacy to legitimize our security requirements in the eyes of our international partners.This book is, at heart, an argument for how to best achieve America's goals abroad. Kiesling's passionate critique of current U.S. foreign policy and his prescriptions for restoring American influence and legitimacy will interest anyone concerned about the future of U.S. and world affairs.

Wilson Wyatt was Jack Kennedy's presidential emissary to Sukarno in a crisis that might have cost the West the oil of the East Indies and lost Indonesia to the Communist orbit. He headed a mission to North Africa during World War II, managed Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign, and played varied roles on stage and behind the scenes at seven Democratic conventions. He helped guide Kentucky's quiet governmental revolution in the Combs-Wyatt administration, served as wartime mayor of Louisville, launched the nation's postwar housing program under Harry Truman, and today is a leader in Louisville's renaissance.Wyatt's candid and informal memoir offers many revealing vignettes of the public figures of the past fifty years—Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Alben Barkley, Sukarno of Indonesia, Trygve Lie of the United Nations, and a variety of others on the state and national scene. Three chapters are devoted to Adlai E. Stevenson—the man, the public figure, his presidential campaigns, and his place in the political life of America.

In 1969, Henry Catto was selling insurance in San Antonio, Texas. Just twenty years later, he presented his credentials as ambassador to the Court of St. James's to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, at Buckingham Palace. In this engaging memoir, he retraces his journey from Texas outsider to Washington insider, providing a fascinating look at the glamour, day-to-day work, and even occasional danger that come with being a high-level representative of the United States government. Catto's posts brought him into contact with the world's most powerful leaders and left him with a wealth of stories, which he recounts amusingly in these pages. He was the official host for Queen Elizabeth's visit to America during the Bicentennial year—and one of José Napoleon Duarte's protectors after his failed 1972 coup attempt in El Salvador. Catto accompanied Richard Nixon on his historic trip to Russia, sparred with Bill Moyers and the producers of'60 Minutes'as Caspar Weinberger's spokesman at the Pentagon, and hosted George Bush's planning meeting with Margaret Thatcher at the beginning of the Persian Gulf War. In telling these and other stories, he offers behind-the-scenes glimpses into how political power really works in Washington, London, and other world capitals.