The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2023

92 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2023 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Contemporary resonances abound in Israel’s Moment . As in 1948, with the Arab attacks on Israel, in 2022 U.S. security officials underestimated the ability of Ukraine to withstand a multipronged attack by a seemingly much stronger aggressor. However, they proved ready to alter their views based on the realities on the ground, in contrast to their pre- decessors, who clung to the chimera of ultimate Arab victory even after Israel’s military successes of 1948. The high-level U.S. warnings issued to Russia in an attempt to deter the use of force against Ukraine had no parallels in 1948. When Truman wrote to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion citing “gen- erous support to the creation of Israel,” the Israeli leader responded tartly that he was “unable to recall any strong action by the U.S. … to prevent aggres- sion by Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq. … Had Jews waited on U.S. or U.N. they would have been exterminated.” The ending of the 1948 war pro- duced neither a peace treaty nor a clear resolution of the deep differences within the Truman administration over policy toward Israel. The void was filled by the country that had inflicted the Mufti on it. As Herf writes: “From 1948 to 1967 it was France, not the United States, that was Israel’s most important military ally.” French assistance included “crucial sci- entific expertise in the nuclear field.” A final ironic touch, then, underscores a central theme of Israel’s Moment , that “Israel came into existence and survived despite the policy and strategy adopted by the State Department, Pentagon, and CIA in the crucial months and years of its war for independence.” n Bob Rackmales’ 32-year Foreign Service career (1963-1995) included assignments in Lagos, Zagreb, Mogadishu, Trieste, Rome, Kaduna, Belgrade, and Washington, D.C. A member of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, he has written articles on John Paton Davies and Lucius Battle that have appeared in the FS Heri- tage series of The Foreign Service Journal . Why PRC Diplomacy Is What It Is China’s Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy Peter Martin, Oxford University Press, 2021, $27.95/hardcover, e-book available, 320 pages. Reviewed by Philip A. Shull Pushing uninvited into a foreign minis- ter’s office at an APEC summit, starting a fistfight at a diplomatic reception over a flag on a cake, walking out of a meeting to protest the order of speakers at a con- now widely used to characterize Beijing’s increasingly aggressive foreign policies, actions, and rhetoric. Though Martin never wavers from his core focus on the evolution of the Chinese Communist Party’s diplomatic style, his book offers the reader much more than the title suggests. This com- pact volume contains a good CliffsNotes overview of Chinese history since the end of the Qing Dynasty, including portraits of dozens of key officials. Starting with Mao’s successful hosting of Edgar Snow in the caves of Yenan fol- lowing the Long March, Martin artfully traces the history of the Chinese Com- munist Party’s diplomatic corps. It runs from Zhou Enlai’s vision of diplomats as a “civilian army” subject to the same dis- cipline and unity as the People’s Libera- tion Army and the decades-long struggle for legitimacy and recognition, to Deng Xiaoping’s “hide capabilities, and bide time” tactic of the 1980s and 1990s, to Xi Jinping’s current admonition to show “fighting spirit.” The author’s observation that China’s “Century of Humiliation” (1839-1949) is a scourge that all PRC leaders have sought to overcome—as well as a driver of its schizophrenic combination of diplo- matic arrogance and super-sensitivity to perceived slights—is, in this reviewer’s estimate, spot on. Martin describes how the PRC methodically worked its way back into the good graces of the international com- munity following the tragedy of Tianan- men in 1989. PRC leaders interpreted the 2001 selection of Beijing as the site for the 2008 Olympic Games as the epitome of this return, he notes. Dating the origin of the “wolf warrior” phase to 2008, Martin quotes PRC leaders contrasting the triumph of the Beijing Olympics and China’s roaring economy ference, and a consul general tweeting to a COVID critic: “You look like part of the virus, and you will be eradicated just like [the] virus.” These are but a few of the anecdotes Bloomberg political reporter Peter Martin uses to illustrate the assertive, even bul- lying tactics of the People’s Republic of China’s diplomats in his colorful, highly informative book, China’s Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy . Adopted from the 2015 blockbuster “Wolf Warrior” action movie about a Rambo-like hero who ventures abroad to rescue PRC citizens from foreign crimi- nals, the term “wolf warrior diplomacy” is