BOOK REVIEW: The Ambassadors: America’s Diplomats on the Front Lines
by Paul Richter
Reviewed by Ambassador Deborah K. Jones
Ambassador Deborah K. Jones retired from the U.S. Department of State in November 2016 with the rank of Career Minister following 34 years of service that included Presidential appointments as Chief of Mission (U.S. Ambassador) to the State of Kuwait (2008 – 2011) and Libya (2013 – 2015).
This has been an unusually visible moment for career Foreign Service ambassadors. Accustomed to working discreetly in the shadows of their political leadership, and more often than not declining to comment on the record, these “extraordinary and plenipotentiary” personal representatives of the President more recently have been thrust into an uncomfortable limelight testifying on American policy in Ukraine.
Paul Richter’s timely offering, The Ambassadors, adds welcome context to the uniquely challenging tasks of the career ambassador, specifically those serving on the frontlines of America’s overlapping counterterrorism and nation building efforts, as they deploy their extraordinary authorities to bring the instruments of national power to bear. He focuses on four of these envoys: Ryan Crocker, Robert Ford, Anne Patterson and Chris Stevens.
Richter’s narrative, based on a multitude of interviews with the friends and colleagues of his subjects, as well as his own proximity to the State Department as a diplomatic correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, provides a uniquely intimate insight into the efforts of four very different personalities and their approaches as they sought to advance American interests in difficult and dangerous places. We catch glimpses of what both [our] friends and rivals of the United States often identify as “typically American” traits: can-do pragmatism; a strong sense of duty; fairness; idealism; innocence; naivete; and occasional hubris.
On a personal note, this was not an easy book for me to read, harkening back as it did to the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when - as Director of the State Department’s Office of Arabian Peninsula and Iran Affairs - I had a front row seat to the intense bureaucratic friction between the offices of the Vice President (OVP) and Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the Department of State. Relations with our uniformed counterparts at desk level in the Pentagon remained cordial and even sympathetic as we collaborated to establish military bases in Qatar and organize “strategic dialogues” with our GCC partners, but at senior political levels, things were toxic. It was deeply unsettling for mid-level officers like myself to witness the profound fissures between State and OVP, aligned with OSD. Those of us who’d served under Jim Baker were accustomed to State taking the clear lead on foreign policy, with the full support of the President. Now we found ourselves in the deeply ironic position of having our senior leadership - Colin Powell and Rich Armitage - with military backgrounds opposed to a policy supported by leadership at OVP and OSD, none of whom had any uniformed experience.
Ryan Crocker, whom Richter writes about, was my direct supervisor and those of us who worked for him (proudly and loyally) could not help but notice the physical toll on Ryan of the relentless stress and increasing frustration with what he considered ill-conceived and potentially catastrophic policies, propounded by naïve policy wonks with limited knowledge of the region. We remarked on this amongst ourselves, knowing that any expression of sympathy would elicit a bark of denial and an order to get back to our jobs. Ryan made no secret of his disdain for Washington’s bureaucratic knife-fights and could not wait to get back overseas, where he personified policy discipline and loyalty to his country, something respected by allies and enemies alike, and which earned him the confidence of US Presidents. It is perhaps safe to say that Ryan enjoyed greater credibility as an emissary than did our fluctuating and inherently tactical policies in Iraq and Afghanistan; to quote Sun Tzu, “Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
US policy towards Syria and Robert Ford’s role there will be the stuff of diplomatic studies for years to come. I had never before read such a detailed account of Ford’s actions in Syria, where some would argue that he exploited his diplomatic accreditation to the government of Syria to operate, in effect, as a Fifth Column, signaling the opposition through his physical engagement to overthrow the government. It is one thing to have CIA operatives work covertly to influence national outcomes or to speak frankly, albeit privately, to governments in an effort to modify their behaviors, and quite another to claim diplomatic immunity while seemingly encouraging those groups who would overthrow the head of government. Ford’s participation in certain activities without the knowledge of the US government, as recounted by Richter, also raised my eyebrows: why not send a lower level political officer to observe political manifestations? Unless one was hoping for an uprising, which came. And then?
Chris Stevens’ tenure as ambassador to Tripoli was all too brief; he arrived in late May 2011 and by September it was over, a terrible tragedy with huge personal and institutional impact. Many of us understand why he believed it important to maintain his contacts in Benghazi, the epicenter of the 2011 revolution against Gaddafi; none of us will ever know why he chose to travel on 9/11, an anniversary when US missions traditionally lock down. No one could have predicted the events of that fateful evening, but Benghazi had experienced a string of violent events in the six months preceding the ambassador’s visit, leading to the departure of several missions. Richter’s description of the ambassador’s security team cracking open a bottle of premium whiskey to welcome him the evening he arrived is emblematic of both the deep affection they felt for Chris and how inured to persistent threat those serving at expeditionary posts can become. When everything is a critical threat, nothing is a critical threat. That said, the ambassador is the senior security officer at post and his or her posture sets the tone.
In contrast to the high-risk, occasionally maverick bravado that infuses Richter’s narratives of the “expeditionary” experiences of Crocker, Ford and Stevens, Arabists operating almost as modern-day Proconsuls in post-conflict settings , Richter’s portrait of Anne Patterson, a diminutive straight shooter from Arkansas who led our embassies in Islamabad and Cairo and later served as Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, highlights traditional diplomacy and bureaucratic maneuvering as conducted by one of the Foreign Service’s most skillful practitioners. Patterson is the polar opposite of an Arabist: the cultures hold little fascination for her. There’s no romance here, no desire to embrace or transform, no assumption that others will subordinate existential interests out of gratitude for US aid. She maintains a dispassionate focus on managing complex and often prickly bilateral relationships, advancing US interests through finding space for agreement with necessary partners whose competing agendas are matched only by their persistent belief that the US is both the cause and the solution for everything. Patterson’s success was in understanding both the sensitivities of her counterparts and the way to approach her political bosses at home.
Patterson served five consecutive years, in Islamabad and then Cairo overseeing two huge, high threat posts having very different relationships with the US: both countries vital to our CT interests; both less than stellar performers on human rights; both recipients of significant US aid. Patterson’s pragmatism and dogged persistence in pursuing US objectives, while overseeing the running of these multi-agency missions with all the attendant security and personnel responsibilities, is perhaps the most accurate portrayal in Richter’s book of the job of a “front line” ambassador.
Richter’s book raises important questions about US policy and the role of its diplomats and ambassadors in states undergoing upheaval, particularly those - like Libya - lacking clear governing structures. After dealing with a decapitated and deconstructed Iraq of our making, consecutive US administrations struggled with the popular uprisings of 2011 in a region notable for its reliable authoritarianism.
Those of us then serving in Washington remember well the agonized discussions around what to do in response to the popular calls for Mubarak to step down, as though in the end we had any real control. The singular characteristic of the 2011 uprisings was the absence of identifiable leaders. In this environment, should ambassadors withdraw? Stay in traditional “official” lanes? Or encourage righteous rebellion, gambling on the success of the rebels?
Richter captures well this conundrum and our perhaps overblown sense (and that of our adversaries) of our ability to control things. His narrative also illuminates the militarization of US foreign policy and cites great examples of the dynamic between generals and ambassadors and the understanding of their roles. Both Anne Patterson and Ryan Crocker managed this uneasy task with dexterity and respect.
It is gratifying to find a champion for the Foreign Service and those who lead its ranks in dangerous places. Without wishing to be churlish, I do have some quibbles with the author, most minor, others less so.
Richter takes some artistic license with comments allegedly made by individuals with whom he has not spoken. I know because I checked with the individuals in question when I read quotes attributed to them I found out of character. He’s also a bit careless with dates and gets small facts wrong. For example, he cites the use within the Near East bureau (NEA) of the phrase “indoor Arabists” and “outdoor Arabists.” I worked in NEA since 1984 and never once heard that phrase. There are “field officers” and “Washington officers,” or “policy wonks,” and not one true Arabist is a Washington officer. Since I was the one with the Twitter account in Libya, I can say (as I did in the podcast Richter quoted from, incorrectly) that I had over 200,000 followers, not 20,000, which gave us tremendous outreach, one could argue more than ever before, and a greater understanding of just how fragmented the country was. (His colorful recounting of the attack on the mission facility in Benghazi also contains some hearsay not borne out by the CCTV video I’ve seen.) I was also taken aback by his use of a loaded word like “savagery” when describing the Near East region. What would he call brutal murders and kidnappings in Latin America and elsewhere, or school massacres in the USA, one wonders.
The Ambassadors earns a rating of 3.5 out of four trench coats.
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