The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Diplomats

At the annual launch of the International Institute for Strategic Studies' (IISS) Strategic Survey, director general John Chipman said, the "authority, prestige and reputation of the US is not what it might have been four or five years ago."¹ He is only one of many to have expressed such sentiments.² The Pew surveys of recent years have shown a precipitous decline in global opinions of the US, particularly in the Muslim world.³ The Iraq conflict is one of the primary reasons cited for this sad state of affairs, leading many to hope that a new administration in 2009 will quickly be able to restore the United States' power and prestige. Undoubtedly the next president will enjoy a honeymoon of sorts and we will see an increase in favorable opinions of the US—for a time. But the US will still likely pursue some version of the War on Terrorism. Iran will still seek to establish regional hegemony in the Middle East. China will continue to grow, presenting challenges and opportunities for the world at large. Many challenges will remain.

Into this breach steps Dennis Ross, Counselor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former Middle East envoy under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. His new book's title puts him firmly in the camp of Bush administration critics, but his critique is a more tempered and even-handed one. While unflagging in his criticism of the Bush team, he also freely admits when they have gotten things right (although he finds few examples to trumpet). And he fully recognizes the challenges President Bush has had to face. The crux of Ross's argument is not that the Bush administration has necessarily been wrong in its policy choices, but that its execution has proven so poor.⁴ In fact, he steers well clear of the old chestnuts about an administration blindly charging forth, ignoring the warnings of friends and allies. He points out that the argument over unilateral versus multilateral behavior is more than a false dichotomy; the Bush administration has not followed the unilateral path much more than previous presidents have.

Ross's focus is on the implementation of statecraft, which he defines as "the use of the assets or the resources and tools (economic, military, intelligence, media) that a state has to pursue its interests and to affect the behavior of others, whether friendly or hostile."⁵ To make his case, Ross lays out four case studies (German reunification, the response to Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the Balkan wars—Bosnia in particular, and the toppling of the Saddam Hussein regime) and describes briefly how the US exercised statecraft. Of course the starkest comparison is the approach to coalition building to face Iraq as practiced by Secretary of State James Baker and George H. W. Bush on the one hand, and Bush W. Bush's team on the other.

The theoretical meat of the book lies in the chapters "Lessons of Statecraft for Today" and "Statecraft in a New World." Ross draws some simple, but concrete lessons from his case studies. His focus is on the practical, not the ideological. And so he ponders whether the United States can practice good statecraft without the constant attention and participation of the President and Secretary of State (yes, but it takes a strong interagency team with access to the senior leadership when needed); or whether even the best efforts at statecraft can fail (yes, when the objectives are wrong). Statecraft demands "hardheaded" assessments and the ability to "frame" the issue for domestic and foreign audiences. The US will need good statecraft to address the security challenges of the post-September 11^th era—from proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to weak and failing states.

The chapters on rules for effective negotiation and mediation are the most business-like. Ross does not promise success, but one can imagine eager...