The Foreign Service Journal, April 2004

W arren Zimmermann was the kind of foreign affairs pro- fessional that our nation needs to produce and nurture in the coming generation. As we confront dangerous and exotic adversaries abroad, excellence will remain at a pre- mium in our foreign affairs communi- ty. Warren Zimmermann’s life exem- plifies the character and commitment required. Zimmermann abandoned promis- ing careers in teaching and then in journalism to join the Foreign Service in 1961, rallying to the newly elected President Kennedy’s inspiring appeal for vigorous American leadership in foreign affairs. He spent the next 33 years in assignments in Washing- ton and in Venezuela, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, France, Spain, Switzer- land and Austria. Zimmermann is best known as our last ambassador to Yugoslavia before its breakup, but throughout his career he was often at the epicenter of U.S. for- eign affairs. A gifted writer, he was a speechwriter for Secretary of State William P. Rogers. As the deputy and later head of the U.S. Delegation to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, in Vienna, he helped forge new standards for human rights behavior that contributed to per- estroika and, ultimately, to the collapse of the communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. As chief of staff of the U.S. Delegation to the Geneva Arms Control Negotiations, Zimmermann helped hammer out the arms reductions that were so impor- tant in reducing the risk of nuclear war. The Three Cs What was it that made Zimmer- mann so extraordinary? I call it “the three Cs”: curiosity, courage and com- passion. First, he had an intellectual curiosity that propelled him to the deepest expertise on every foreign assignment. He learned Russian and Serbo-Croatian as well as French, Spanish and German. He read deep- ly in the history and literature of his host countries. He also made sure to get around outside the official circles in his country of assignment. This preparation gave him extraor- dinary insight into the workings of the societies it was his job to analyze. His cables were often so engaging that they were passed around in the State Department. One cable, “Who Killed Cock Robin?”, gave a fascinating account of the factors—which he con- tinually argued were not inevitable — leading to the breakup of Yugoslavia. Another cable’s title, describing the various Yugoslav leaders and their blindly disastrous policies, quoted the six-foot-tall American actress Joseph- ine Baker’s expression: “I’m Up to My Ass in Dwarfs.” In recognition of his superb judgment, Zimmermann was often chosen for delicate assignments. For instance, he was the U.S. diplomat chosen to make contact with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s camp in Paris prior to Khomeini’s return to take power in Iran. Warren Zimmermann had a natural affinity for intellectuals, journalists and think-tankers, whom he cultivated in his various assignments — always with the same openness and command of U.S. interests and American culture that made him so attractive to his hosts as well as his diplomatic colleagues. In Paris, he made sure to keep the embassy door open to leftist opposition groups — with whom the U.S. had great differences — so that when the time came to deal with them as the majority, we would have strong rela- tionships. Then, when the French Socialists came to power, he saw more clearly than most that President Fran- cois Mitterrand, for his own purposes, might wish to distance himself from the communists in the government by closely aligning himself with U.S. secu- rity policies; e.g., regarding medium- 62 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 4 A PPRECIATION A N A MERICAN D IPLOMAT W HO M ADE A D IFFERENCE Warren Zimmermann 1935 – 2004 B Y R OSCOE S. S UDDARTH