Diplomacy Lessons: Realism for an Unloved Superpower (review)

When senior diplomats disagree strongly about a policy decision reached by their governments, they have one surefire means of calling greater attention to the issue at hand and for ensuring a wider public debate about it: resigning in protest. Yet, in the broad sweep of American history, surprisingly few top officials have exercised that option, with Secretaries of State William Jennings Bryan and Cyrus R. Vance—each of whom resigned over a matter of principle—serving as the two most notable exceptions. On the other hand, when junior officials resign over a policy decision they find shortsighted, counterproductive, or immoral, the result is more akin to the proverbial tree falling silently in the middle of a forest.

John Brady Kiesling’s resignation from the State Department in February 2003, motivated by his staunch opposition to the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, broke that pattern. Although just the third ranking diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Athens, Kiesling managed to attract international attention when he announced his sudden resignation from the U.S. Foreign Service. He complained to Secretary of State Colin Powell, in an unusually thoughtful letter of dissent and resignation, that President George W. Bush “was doing grave damage to American interests by misunderstanding the nature of the world America aspires to lead and even ought to lead” (p. 4). That letter, sent directly to Powell through the State Department’s official “dissent channel,” soon found its way into the pages of the New York Times. It became a media sensation. Overnight, the former U.S. political counselor in Greece was transformed from obscure rank-and-file diplomat to the status of minor celebrity, especially within the ranks of the burgeoning antiwar movement in the United States and abroad.

Diplomacy Lessons represents Kiesling’s effort to build on that newfound fame. In it, he explains at length the context for and rationale behind his decision to leave the career he loved, one he had pursued with a passion for 20 years. He had become convinced that war with Iraq was totally unjustified, and that it would bring nothing but grief to the United States and to the people of Iraq. The seething anger of his Greek confidantes and acquaintances over the behavior of a superpower most considered as irresponsible as it was arrogant deeply influenced his thinking as well. “I was bitter,” Kiesling recalls, “that the America I served was becoming odious to Greek friends whose opinions I respected” (p. 23).

Kiesling’s recounting of his crisis of conscience, while gripping, occupies a mere chapter in the book. The bulk of the volume consists of a useful, if somewhat didactic, ground-level perspective on the conduct and art of diplomacy during the post-Cold War era, distilled into a series of lessons. Those range from dealing with journalists and coping with the clandestine side of foreign relations to the costs of America’s international unpopularity, and from the imperatives of understanding foreign nationalism and working with international institutions to the twin challenges of promoting democratization and preventing nuclear proliferation. Interspersed throughout are a series of blunt criticisms of what the author decries as the very antithesis of sound diplomacy; namely, the nationalistic, unilateral, and bullying foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration. It is an administration that Kiesling roundly indicts for violating nearly all of the diplomatic principles that he holds dear.

“By resigning instead of continuing to serve,” the author pontificates, “I took on a moral responsibility to the millions of Americans who embraced my resignation as an act of patriotism” (p. 1). He justifies his decision to resign as a way to “transmute my misery into something positive for the world” (p. 28). Readers who can get past the self-righteous and sanctimonious tone of statements such as these—and there are more than a few of them—will be repaid with a surprisingly lively, wise, and witty account of modern diplomatic practice in our inherently...