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8521. Tijuana: First Assignment—The Good, the Bad, the Bizarre

Author:
Keith C. Smith
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
During my long career, I heard many colleagues reflect on their first Foreign Service assignment—usually recalling it as a highly positive experience. Unfortunately, my first post left me disillusioned by the Foreign Service and vowing to leave it as soon as feasible. Many of us who have served in Mexican border posts encountered work and management issues quite different from those who witnessed the full range of foreign service life in a large or medium-sized capital. For slightly more than one year (April 1963-May 1964) I decided the futures of large numbers of poor Mexicans anxious to move to the U.S., observed the human tragedy encountered by a duty officer on the border and participated in a sub-rosa rebellion by junior staff against the imperial management style of the Consul-General (CG). Fortunately, the following 36 years in the Foreign Service were very different. The people I worked with and the intellectual challenges offered were sufficient to keep me from walking away from what turned out to be a satisfying career.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Immigration, Borders, and Memoir
Political Geography:
North America, Mexico, and United States of America

8522. Pushing Cookies at the Coal Face

Author:
Bob Baker
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Nothing but a bunch of “cookie pushers” is an ancient slur against diplomats who are thus seen as simply sitting at fine tables sipping tea and offering cookies to equally insipid, wealthy and powerful guests abroad. In fact, diplomatic receptions, lunches, dinners, or simple wine and cheese works are intricate payoffs or seductions and very hard work. The pit face of cookie pushing is when the President visits. Everyone at the Embassy turns out to make sure he and his retinue meet or greet in the right order, time and place everyone of use to American interests. The Ambassador works hardest as any slipups are his responsibility. Even the wealthy, politically appointed Ambassador needs to make the President and his visiting staff happy. The career Ambassador’s next post may be in a steaming jungle if mistakes are made or in an important country if all goes well during the “king’s progress”.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Government, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Africa, United States of America, and North America

8523. Old Times on the Soviet Desk

Author:
Peter Bridges
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Back in the late 1950s, when Stalin was not long gone and the Soviet state remained our militarily powerful and dangerous adversary, the State Department’s basic office for dealing with the Russians was a Soviet desk composed of just four members of the Foreign Service and four from the Civil Service, the latter including an archivist and two stenographers. There were of course other Washington offices that had to do with the USSR, in State as well as in CIA, Commerce, the FBI, the Pentagon, and USIA; but we were the primary interface wth the two embassies, the Soviet in Washington and ours in Moscow. Shortly before Christmas in 1957 I became the junior Foreign Service officer on the Soviet desk, after completing the then three-month orientation course for new FSOs at the Department’s Foreign Service Institute.
Topic:
Cold War, Diplomacy, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Russia, Soviet Union, and United States of America

8524. Getting Sick in Africa

Author:
Bob Baker
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Malaria was like having a pain X-ray of all your bones, but after a fever bout, shaking chills diverted attention from your aching bones. I had taken all the anti-malaria pills but had evidently bumped into a new strain upcountry in Mali, West Africa. Catching bugs was also easy in Liberia, and Congo.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Health, Memoir, and Peace Corps
Political Geography:
Africa, Mali, and United States of America

8525. Communist Secret Police Unveil the Love of a Lifetime

Author:
Bob Baker
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia came to address a national convention of Australian lawyers. I had requested a top constitutional lawyer and was delighted when Washington headquarters at the U.S. Information Agency in 1986 told me Justice Scalia would spend a week on the program I had suggested. He gave a brilliant exposition on the origins of the American Constitution at the big lawyers convention. His close interpretation of how the Constitution should be read in contemporary America was impressive. The several hundred lawyers loudly applauded his scholarly, but lively lecture.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Law, Supreme Court, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Australia, North America, and United States of America

8526. Angola Terrorist Report

Author:
Robert Baker
Publication Date:
05-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Until I did my report on the March, 1961 terrorist uprising in Angola, I had done well at my job as an intelligence analyst, especially at the hard slog of scanning thousands of pages of reports to assemble a good picture of communist efforts in Africa. My reports helped guide where and how the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) directed its propaganda efforts. They also helped convince Congress that USIA needed more money to match the communists. They outspent us in propaganda by about ten to one, measured by their output of films, radio broadcasts, books, pamphlets, magazines and exhibits tailored for Africa. Communists also gave more equipment and mass media training to Africans than did the U.S., though the West got the best students and other trainees and had a head start in African mass media and education programs. Few top students really wanted to learn Russian or Czechoslovakian for example, nor to live in those countries and to study communist theory in addition to their technical or academic work. A handful of African students at communist universities were recruited for communist intelligence work when they arrived back in Africa.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Terrorism, Colonialism, Violence, and Memoir
Political Geography:
Africa, Portugal, Angola, and United States of America

8527. Too Quick on the Draw: Militarism and the Malpractice of Diplomacy in America

Author:
Chas W. Freeman Jr.
Publication Date:
05-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
The late Arthur Goldberg, who served on our Supreme Court and as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, once said that “diplomats approach every question with an open… mouth.” No doubt that’s often true at the U.N., where parliamentary posturing and its evil twin, declaratory diplomacy, rule. But the essence of diplomacy is not talking but seeking common ground by listening carefully and with an open mind to what others don’t say as well as what they do, and then acting accordingly. Diplomacy is how a nation advances its interests and resolves problems with foreigners with minimal violence. It is the nonbelligerent champion of domestic tranquility and prosperity. It promotes mutually acceptable varieties of modus vivendi between differing perspectives and cultures.
Topic:
Cold War, Diplomacy, War, and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

8528. The Ineffectiveness of American Covert Regime Change Operations During the Struggle Against Islamist Terrorism

Author:
Jason Cooley
Publication Date:
05-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Following the September 11th terrorist attacks, the United States government embarked on a campaign to weaken the Islamic extremist organizations that were present in the world. Some of the steps that this lone superpower took to accomplish this objective could be easily detected. However, there were others that went undetected until investigative reporters wrote about them in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other reputable newspapers. Once these covert initiatives were exposed, certain parties began to conduct inquiries to ascertain whether or not they were helping the United States prevent terrorist attacks by Islamist networks. Two initiatives, which received a considerable amount of attention in the post-9/11 era, were the Central Intelligence Agency’s drone and enhanced interrogation programs. In 2009, the members of the United States Senate Intelligence Committee revealed that they would be conducting a thorough review of the latter. Approximately five years after this announcement, the committee released a report to the public that said sleep deprivation, waterboarding and other forms of torture did not lead to actionable intelligence. In other words, they did not produce any information that enabled the CIA to foil terrorist attacks which were on the verge of being carried out against the United States (Klapper and Dilanian 2014). A lot of the analyses of the CIA’s drone program were conducted by prominent academics like Fawaz Gerges. At one point in The Rise and Fall of Al Qaeda, this professor at the London School of Economics mentions how drone strikes often killed innocent civilians in Muslim countries. When civilians did perish, extremist organizations would see a rise in the number of recruits who were interested in executing terrorist operations (Gerges 2014, p.25).
Topic:
Intelligence, Regime Change, 9/11, and Islamism
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Iraq, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

8529. The Conduct of Foreign Policy in the Information Age

Author:
Walter R. Roberts
Publication Date:
09-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
When Benjamin Franklin represented the new American government at the court of Louis XVI, he received his instructions by sailing ship. One story has it that after not hearing from Ambassador Franklin for a year, President George Washington mused: “Perhaps we should send him a letter.” There is no doubt that in his negotiations with the French government, Franklin actually exercised, in that now archaic phrase, “extraordinary and plenipotentiary powers.” As sail gave way to steam and then to internal combustion and jet engines, the time required to carry the written and printed word physically from place to place was progressively shortened. Franklin, as a pioneer scientist, would have appreciated even more the use of electricity to transmit messages via telegraph and telephone. But neither he, nor most of my generation, just a few short decades ago could have foreseen how electronics, satellite television, fax, email, fiber optics, the Internet, and other digital technologies would transform diplomacy. Those in charge of foreign policy, be they the president of the United States or the prime minister of Great Britain, face situations their predecessors never experienced. Literally every important event around the globe is instantaneously reported, most of the time on television, and reporters, whose numbers have increased enormously in recent years, expect immediate reactions from policy makers, who in turn often feel it necessary to comment when silence and quiet consideration would be preferable.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Science and Technology, and Media
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

8530. SITREP: What We Talk About When We Talk About Brazil

Author:
Dick Virden
Publication Date:
05-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Just a few years ago Brazil was a feel good story. Its economy was soaring at a rate to rival China’s. Its charismatic president, Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva, was among the most popular leaders anywhere, a rags-to-riches phenomenon. In 2014, when the Council on Foreign Relations chose its “Great Decisions” topics for the next year, one was “Brazil in Metamorphosis.” Unfortunately, the country has slipped back into its cocoon. The Samba music has stopped. Instead of being on a roll, Brazil is mired in an awful slump. Or as Frank Sinatra put it, riding high in April, shot down in May. What sort of country is this anyway?
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Corruption, Government, Economy, and Domestic politics
Political Geography:
Brazil, South America, North America, and United States of America