The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2014 13 activity (e.g., how many times a post helped a U.S. firm or hosted a “Direct Line” call), we constantly looked for ways to measure impact (how helpful that “Direct Line” call was to the company). Of course, we must be mindful of the burdens such requests impose on posts, but these stretch targets were more than just an internal management exercise. In consultations with Capitol Hill and other stakeholders, we were able to back up our assertions of the importance of U.S. diplomacy with hard numbers. President Barack Obama has spoken of the need for smarter government. For his part, Secretary of State John Kerry, in remarks at the University of Virginia, emphasized that the State Department must demonstrate its value to the Ameri- can public. Toward that end, performance metrics are not the only tool we use. But in these tight budgetary times, good statistical indicators can be more precise and per- suasive than anecdotes. AdamMurray FSO Arlington, Va. U.S. Non-Membership in the UNWTO I congratulate the FSJ for scooping the Nobel Peace Prize by granting the October “Site of the Month” designation (Talking Points) to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Back in September I walked around the OPCW building inThe Hague, primarily in order to see the monu- ment there that the government of Iran donated to commemorate the victims of Saddam Hussein’s chemical attacks. It’s the OPCW’s only monument, in fact. Ironic, I think, that the country whose weapons of mass destruction we worry about most today is itself the nation which has been the most concerned (at least as evidenced by such monuments) with weapons of mass destruction of another kind. My primary reason for writing, however, is to comment on your Talk- ing Point item about President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, “Comrade Bob Moves to Rebrand Himself,” in the October issue. You write (no doubt cor- rectly) that Britain and Canada would not attend the “global tourism summit” of the United Nations World Tourism Organization, held at Victoria Falls on the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia, in protest of the UNWTO’s appointing the two presidents as “Global Leaders for Tourism.” Having brought up the UNWTO and the non-attendance of our two closest allies, I would have liked to see the FSJ point out that the United States does not belong to the UNWTO in the first place. I honestly do not know why that is the case, and would be grateful to learn the answer in your pages. And while you’re at it, how about reporting on the U.S. position on Presi- dent Mugabe and Zambian President Sata being named Global Leaders for Tourism, despite sanctions over Zimba- bwe’s human rights record? I recently learned this curious fact of U.S. diplo- matic history when the UNWTO invited me to contribute a chapter to its forth- coming International Handbook on Tour- ism and Peace . (Any interested readers are welcome to find my draft chapter at www.peacepartnersintl.net. ) Edward W. Lollis FSO, retired Knoxville, Tenn . Thanks for a Perceptive Review I have seen many reviews of my latest book, The Road to War: Presidential Com- mitments Honored and Betrayed (Brook- ings Institution Press, 2013). But none were better than the one Aury Fernandez did for your October issue. Too many book reviewers use their platform to write an essay about the subject that happens to absorb them that day, whether they’ve read the book or not. In contrast, Mr. Fernandez hit every important point, most especially Chapter Nine on U.S.-Israeli relations, which seems always to get lost in the rush to discuss Vietnam or Korea. I am deeply grateful. Marvin Kalb Chevy Chase, Md. ISO FSOs to Interview As a historian of international relations and the author of a forthcoming book, Reclaiming American Virtue: The Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s (Harvard University Press, 2014), I am interested in interviewing Foreign Service officers who were involved in human rights issues during the 1970s and 1980s. I am especially interested in hearing from FSOs who conducted public diplo- macy relating to human rights during the Carter years, and those who handled issues relating to torture, Amnesty Inter- national and the United Nations’ efforts to ban torture from 1973 through 1984, when the Convention Against Torture was adopted. Material submitted may be used in academic articles or in a new book about human rights diplomacy. I can be reached by e-mail at bkeys@ unimelb.edu.au. Thank you for your assistance. Barbara Keys Senior Lecturer in History University of Melbourne Melbourne, Australia n