The Foreign Service Journal, March 2005

there, as some blamed him for look- ing the other way at human rights violations. Still, Negroponte went on to serve as ambassador to Mexico and the Philippines, where he bur- nished his reputation as a superb manager and discreet diplomat. From the start of the postwar peri- od, Foreign Service officers, current and former, had expressed skepticism about the military’s pre-eminent role in the reconstruction. Before the embassy opened, many State officers working under the CPA confided in colleagues their frus- tration that they were not reporting first to State. The military did dominate the initial reconstruction efforts, agrees Princeton Lyman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former ambassador to Nigeria and South Africa. But, frustrated by the lack of progress of the military leadership under CPA head Paul Bremer, the administration belatedly returned to traditional diplomacy last summer in the hope that Foreign Service offi- cers, with their persuasive skills and long-term commitment to solving problems, would help move Iraq toward democracy and peace. “The Foreign Service, having been largely shut out of the process, now has an opportunity to demonstrate what the State Department can do,” Lyman points out. Negroponte’s top advisers clearly have the background and training for the task. Among the diplomats who’ve taken posts in the embassy are Jim Jeffrey, former ambassador to Turkey and Albania; Steve Browning, former ambassador to Malawi; Ron Neumann, former ambassador to Bahrain; and Bob Ford, Neumann’s former deputy there, who’s consid- ered one of the department’s smartest Middle East F O C U S M A R C H 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 19 Projections are that by the end of 2005, whoever is ambassador will oversee a mission of about 1,500 employees.