If you ever wondered who becomes an American ambassador and why, this is the book for you. It describes how Foreign Service officers become ambassadors by rising up through the ranks, and why they typically make up about 70 percent of the total number of ambassadors. It also covers where the other 30 percent come from—the political appointees who get the job because they helped elect the president by supporting him as a campaign contributor, a political ally, or a personal friend. It explains why, despite being illegal and a threat to national security, selling the title of ambassador remains a common practice that is also unique to the United States. It considers why some suggestions for reform are misguided, what might be done, and why who the president is matters so much in determining how well the United States will be represented abroad. This updated and revised edition of Jett's classic book not only provides a timely overview of American ambassadorship for Foreign Service Officers, aspiring diplomats, and interested citizens, but also calls for much-needed reform, describing the dire implications of failing to change our ambassadorial appointments process for the future of American diplomatic practice and foreign policy.
Inside a U.S. Embassy is widely recognized as the essential guide to the Foreign Service. This all-new third edition takes readers to more than fifty U.S. missions around the world, introducing Foreign Service professionals and providing detailed descriptions of their jobs and firsthand accounts of diplomacy in action. In addition to profiles of diplomats and specialists around the world-from the ambassador to the consular officer, the public diplomacy officer to the security specialist-is a selection from more than twenty countries of day-in-the-life accounts, each describing an actual day on.
The story of Joseph Clark Grew (1880-1965) is the story of the modern American diplomatic tradition. Grew served the U.S. government for over forty years, with an impressive career that included two ambassadorships, two secretaryships, two ministerships, and every junior rank in the service. Grew was in Berlin when the U.S. went to war with Germany in 1917, was American Ambassador to Japan during the years leading up to Pearl Harbor, was Undersecretary of State during the war, and was instrumental in planning U.S. postwar strategy in the Far East. In this rich and intimate biography, Heinrichs draws on Grew's vast diary, correspondence, and several private and official collections to reconstruct the life of an extraordinary career diplomat. Here, Joseph C. Grew emerges as a man of peace who used both skill and insight to slow the world's progress toward World War II.
Veteran diplomatic correspondent Paul Richter goes behind the battles and the headlines to show how American ambassadors are the unconventional warriors in the Muslim world—running local government, directing drone strikes, building nations, and risking their lives on the front lines. The tale’s heroes are a small circle of top career diplomats who have been an unheralded but crucial line of national defense in the past two decades of wars in the greater Middle East. In The Ambassadors, Paul Richter shares the astonishing, true-life stories of four expeditionary diplomats who “do the hardest things in the hardest places.” The book describes how Ryan Crocker helped rebuild a shattered Afghan government after the fall of the Taliban and secretly negotiated with the shadowy Iranian mastermind General Qassim Suleimani to wage war in Afghanistan and choose new leaders for post-invasion Iraq. Robert Ford, assigned to be a one-man occupation government for an Iraqi province, struggled to restart a collapsed economy and to deal with spiraling sectarian violence—and was taken hostage by a militia. In Syria at the eruption of the civil war, he is chased by government thugs for defying the country’s ruler. J. Christopher Stevens is smuggled into Libya as US Envoy to the rebels during its bloody civil war, then returns as ambassador only to be killed during a terror attach in Benghazi. War-zone veteran Anne Patterson is sent to Pakistan, considered the world’s most dangerous country, to broker deals that prevent a government collapse and to help guide the secret war on jihadists. “An important and illuminating read” (The Washington Post) and the winner of the prestigious Douglas Dillon Book Award from the American Academy of Diplomacy, The Ambassadors is a candid examination of the career diplomatic corps, America’s first point of contact with the outside world, and a critical piece of modern-day history.
A helicopter ride to visit troops in the Afghanistan war zone, a tense meeting with the newly elected Prime Minister, and…a wild boar hunt! Eleni Kounalakis was forty-three and a land developer in Sacramento, California, when she was tapped by President Barack Obama to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Hungary under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. During her tenure, from 2010 to 2013, Hungary was a key ally in the U.S. military surge, held elections in which a center-right candidate gained a two-thirds supermajority and rewrote the country's constitution, and grappled with the rise of Hungarian nationalism and anti-semitism. The first Greek-American woman ever to serve as a U.S. ambassador, Kounalakis recounts her training at the State Department's “charm school” and her three years of diplomatic life in Budapest—from protocols about seating, salutations, and embassy security to what to do when the deposed King of Greece hands you a small chocolate crown (eat it, of course!). A cross between a foreign policy memoir and an inspiring personal family story—her immigrant Greek father went from agricultural day laborer to land developer and major Democratic party activist—Madam Ambassador draws back the curtain on what it is like to represent the U.S. government abroad as well as how American embassies around the world function.
Today Vietnam is one of America’s strongest international partners, with a thriving economy and a population that welcomes American visitors. How that relationship was formed is a twenty-year story of daring diplomacy and a careful thawing of tensions between the two countries after a lengthy war that cost nearly 60,000 American and more than two million Vietnamese lives. Ted Osius, former ambassador during the Obama administration, offers a vivid account, starting in the 1990s, of the various forms of diplomacy that made this reconciliation possible. He considers the leaders who put aside past traumas to work on creating a brighter future, including senators John McCain and John Kerry, two Vietnam veterans and ideological opponents who set aside their differences for a greater cause, and Pete Peterson—the former POW who became the first U.S. ambassador to a new Vietnam. Osius also draws upon his own experiences working first-hand with various Vietnamese leaders and traveling the country on bicycle to spotlight the ordinary Vietnamese people who have helped bring about their nation’s extraordinary renaissance. With a foreword by former Secretary of State John Kerry, Nothing Is Impossible tells an inspiring story of how international diplomacy can create a better world.
"An "inside the room" memoir from one of our most distinguished ambassadors who--in a career of service to the country--was sent to some of the most dangerous outposts of American diplomacy. From the wars in the Balkans to the brutality of North Korea to the endless war in Iraq, this is the real life of an American diplomat. Hill was on the front lines in the Balkans at the breakup of Yugoslavia. He takes us from one-on-one meetings with the dictator Milosevic, to Bosnia and Kosovo, to the Dayton conference, where a truce was brokered. Hill draws upon lessons learned as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon early on in his career and details his prodigious experience as a US ambassador. He was the first American Ambassador to Macedonia; Ambassador to Poland, where he also served in the depth of the cold war; Ambassador to South Korea and chief disarmament negotiator in North Korea; and Hillary Clinton's hand-picked Ambassador to Iraq. Hill's account is 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 and vice presidents (Clinton, Bush and Cheney, and Obama), of Secretaries of State (Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Clinton), of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and of Ambassadors Richard Holbrooke and Lawrence Eagleburger. Hill writes bluntly about the bureaucratic warfare in DC and expresses strong criticism of America's aggressive interventions and wars of choice."--
When Edward P. Djerejian arrived in Beirut for his first Foreign Service assignment, the city was a thriving metropolis, a nexus for a diversity of religious beliefs, political ideas, and cultural practices. More than forty years since, the broader Middle East region is undergoing significant change in the face of a deep-rooted con-frontation between the forces of reaction and modernity in the rapidly growing Muslim populations. Serious deficits in education, political participation, economic progress, and human rights are exacerbated by unresolved conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kashmir, and between Arabs and Israelis. Djerejian, an American diplomat who served eight presidents, both Democratic and Republican, from John F. Kennedy to William Jefferson Clinton, publicly shares for the first time intimate details and colorful anecdotes of his service in the Middle East. During his tenure, he developed close professional relationships with many of the region's secular and religious leaders and was a key advisor to Washington's highest-ranking officials and political leaders. He was instrumental in formulating U.S. policy in the region, and participated actively in Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon, and the formation of the U.S.-led coalition against Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. A leading expert on the Middle East, Djerejian asserts that Americans are confronted with one of the most important challenges of our time: the struggle of ideas between the forces of extremism and moderation in the Arab and Muslim world. Mistakenly assuming that radical political ideologies fell with communism at the end of the Cold War, policy makers are employing insufficient strategies to promote the important political, economic, commercial, cultural, and security interests that the United States -- and the rest of the world -- have in the region. Djerejian explains what has gone wrong with U.S. policy and suggests a way forward for future admin-istrations. The United States must learn to deal with the complex religious, ethnic, and cultural factors at play in the Middle East. We must not impose our own political structure on the Arab and Muslim world, but we can help marginalize the radicals and champion a democratic way of life in conformity with the cultural context of the region's own mainstream values and ideals. In his captivating and illuminating book -- the only one of its kind to address the full scope of issues that U.S. leaders face in the Middle East -- Djerejian outlines specific coherent strategies necessary to respond effectively to the imminent danger and dynamic opportunity presented by the struggle within the Islamic world.
