The SAIS Review Interviews Ambassador Gordon Gray III
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- The SAIS Review Interviews Ambassador Gordon Gray III
August 21, 2020
Could you give us a brief background of your work in the Foreign Service and tell us how your experiences led to your position as the US ambassador in Tunisia and your current position at the Center for American progress?
Sure. I started my government career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco. I think that it's a wonderful country. I don't know if you've had the opportunity to visit, but I highly recommend it if you haven't. The Peace Corps got me interested in North Africa and the Middle East. So when I joined the Foreign Service, I tried to focus on my assignments on that part of the world. I had, I would say, a traditional career path. I had assignments in Washington and overseas—mostly in the Near East and North Africa. Those led to me becoming Deputy Chief of Mission of our Embassy in Cairo. I came back to Washington and was deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, including responsibility for the Maghreb. So when Tunisia opened up as a posting, I was in the zone, as they say, for consideration.
I haven't run into many former foreign service folks who've said they've ever had to compromise their values to advance US policies in the country. Was there ever a moment where you had doubt or ever questioned something you had to do and if so, how did you handle that adversity?
I would join the majority of people you've spoken with. I never felt that I had to compromise my values. And there are certain issues where one might not agree with US policy, but I think when you join the government, especially a democratic government, lowercase d, you need to take the long view. There [End Page 151] are going to be some policy decisions you agree with, there are going to be some that you disagree with, but assuming they are democratically arrived at, it's your duty to carry out the policy to the best of your abilities. So, I think when you go into the Foreign Service or the military, and probably in the corporate world, too, you have to realize that sometimes your position will prevail. Other times, it won't. For the sake of the organization's success, you need to move on.
Could you walk us through the earliest days of what would later come to be known as the Jasmine Revolution? What was the initial US reaction? And in the immediate aftermath, up to around the end of your tenure, how did US-Tunisian relations differ from US-Tunisian relations pre-Revolution?
To answer the second part of your question first, it was like night and day. We had a fairly cool relationship with the Ben Ali government. I arrived in Tunisia on September 10, 2009. Six weeks later they had elections where Ben Ali was reelected with 89 percent of the vote and allegedly 90 percent turnout. We recommended to Washington that [they] not send the routine congratulatory message upon presidential reelection on the basis that President Obama's picture would be shown on front pages of the state-controlled media. No one would read the finely worded, nuanced statement that said we hope for more democracy and more democratic elections or anything like that. All they'd see would be the two pictures and the headlines saying President Obama congratulates Ben Ali on stirring reelection.
That seemingly minor withholding of a congratulatory message really got under the skin of the palace. They blamed their ambassador in Washington and ended up recalling him permanently to Tunisia. That's just one example. "Cool but correct" is the way I would describe the relationship. But once there was a change and Ben Ali left, it was much easier to interact with Tunisians. They no longer felt that the Ministry of the Interior was looking over their shoulder, and it was a wonderful time to be there and to see the transition.
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