The Foreign Service Journal, May 2010

tivists who fought the lonely fight to support decolonization and majority rule. This coffee-table volume consists of photographs and remembrances that bring to life the American Com- mittee on Africa, various grassroots campaigns in support of African liber- ation organizations, and the U.S. anti- apartheid movement. A veteran acti- vist and scholar himself, co-editor WilliamMinter has urged researchers to dig into the story of what academ- ics nowadays term non-state actors. Tom Shachtman’s inspiring Airlift to America does exactly that by ren- dering the dramatic tale of 800 Kenyan students who reached Amer- ica with scholarships in the lead-up to independence from 1959 to 1963. A handful of Americans and Kenyans, acting privately and often with inter- ference from both the State Depart- ment and British colonial officials, arranged funding, visas and a support network that made possible the Amer- ican education of Barack Obama Sr. and many of the leaders of modern Kenya. The airlift became an issue in the 1960 presidential campaign. Sensing political fallout that would hurt him among black voters, Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican pres- idential candidate, pressed an unwill- ing State Department to find a way to assist the Kenyans. State’s Africa Bu- reau and powerful European Bureau opposed upsetting our closest ally, Britain, which clung to a policy of de- termining which Kenyans could go to universities. AF also preferred to stick with its established links, such as the African-American Institute, rather than do business with an operation that lacked any pedigree. The Kennedy family foundation stepped in at the last minute to keep the program afloat. So by rejecting Nixon’s proposal, State may have unin- tentionally contributed to John F. Kennedy’s narrow electoral victory a few months later. Though it is a good read, Airlift to America leaves out the scholarly appa- ratus that would assist the future re- searchers Minter seeks to inspire. Shachtman apologizes for this omis- sion in a bibliographical note, but there is carelessness to the writing. In a rare citation, he mistakenly attributes to an- other source words penned by this re- viewer in this magazine. Shachtman has since acknowledged the error, but it raises doubts about his research. Nevertheless, Shachtman and No Easy Victories have already accom- plished the biggest task by affecting the direction of future writing on this topic. Documenting this kind of citizen diplo- macy is hard work, much more so than writing about “policy” or government- to-government relationships. Yet it is impossible to understand the current Save Darfur movement without linking it to a long line of predecessor net- works. Additionally, bringing the story of non-official relationships to the fore means that professional diplomats will have fewer excuses to ignore what has become a central force of global poli- tics. More than 50 years ago, Eugene Burdick and William J. Lederer’s novel, The Ugly American, threw an intellectual dagger into the heart of the foreign policy establishment by highlighting the differences between Americans acting officially and those acting privately. It was the latter group, averred Lederer, who stood the best chance of doing good in a way that would enhance America’s lasting influence. However belatedly, these two books underscore that message. The deepest source of a democratic nation’s influ- ence lies in its own citizenry engaging citizens of other countries with dignity, respect and humility. Gregory Lawrence Garland is cur- rently a research fellow at the Defense Intelligence Agency’s National De- fense Intelligence College. A career Foreign Service officer, he has served with the U.S. Information Agency, the Board for International Broadcasting and the State Department in Maputo, Tijuana, Luanda, Conakry, Warsaw, Mexico City and Washington, D.C. The views expressed here are his own. A Record of Accomplishment Negotiating Environment and Science: An Insider’s View of International Agreements, from Driftnets to the Space Station Richard J. Smith, Resources for the Future, 2009, $27.50, hardcover, 163 pages. R EVIEWED BY T ED W ILKINSON As principal deputy assistant secre- tary of State for the Bureau of Oceans, Environment and International Scien- tific Affairs for an unprecedented nine years (1985-1994), Richard Smith presided over as heterogeneous a bu- reau as any in the U.S. government. OES work spans the interests of an al- phabet soup of agencies — EPA, NASA, NOAA, NSF, NRC, OSTP, the National Marine Fisheries Service, etc. — even Defense. As a veteran of five years of attend- ing office directors’ meetings in the OES conference room, I found it hard 64 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 1 0 B O O K S