The Foreign Service Journal, May 2010

ian environmental movement; and • Agreeing with fishing states to control measures for the collapsing pollock stock in the “donut hole” of in- ternational waters between U.S. and Russian exclusive economic zones in the Bering Sea. Among the lessons from these dis- parate experiences, Smith stresses the importance for lead negotiators of stay- ing close not just to the U.S. agencies involved, but also to their constituencies (e.g., environmental organizations, fish- ery groups, etc.) and to the legislators who listen to them; and to begin the contact work early in the preparatory phase, well before the negotiations begin. As in so many cases, the toughest negotiation is all too often the intera- gency struggle just to develop a U.S. position. As one case in point, Smith cites the Defense Department bomb- shell late in preparations for the space station directing the U.S. team to insist on recognition that undefined “na- tional security activities” be permitted on a station that had been billed as “peaceful.” Our allies’ dismay about this was eventually buried in an ex- change of side letters. Perhaps most instructive for our current climate change dilemma is Smith’s discussion of theMontreal Pro- tocol. Like the Kyoto Protocol, which was negotiated after his departure from OES, the initial agreement to curtail emissions was reached even without complete understanding of the science involved, and without commit- ments from major developing coun- tries. Unlike Kyoto, however, there was broad public and congressional support for the new protocol, and the lead U.S. negotiator had been working hard to cement support before the ne- gotiations began. When and if the United States is ready to go beyond the limited climate change understandings reached in Copenhagen last December, lead U.S. negotiator Todd Stern and his col- leagues can profit from reviewing Smith’s lessons — as, indeed, can all readers with an interest in the increas- ingly important role that science and environmental negotiations play in the preservation of our planet. Ted Wilkinson, a Foreign Service offi- cer from 1961 to 1996, is the chairman of the FSJ Editorial Board. Manifest Destiny, Pacific Style The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War James Bradley; Little, Brown and Company, 2009, $29.99, hardcover, 387 pages. R EVIEWED BY F RED D ONNER This year marks the 100th anniver- sary of the annexation of Korea by Japan, so The Imperial Cruise is a well- timed book. Anti-Japanese demon- strations in Korea are already likely but, if many Koreans read this work, the demonstrations could take on an anti-American tone, as well. Author James Bradley specializes in historical nonfiction chronicling action in the Pacific theater during World War II. Perhaps his best-known pre- vious book is Flags of Our Fathers (Bantam, 2000), which Clint Eastwood adapted into an acclaimed 2006 film. Bradley’s thesis is that President Theodore Roosevelt, a product of the Anglo-Saxon Christian ruling class, viewed the Pacific as the logical exten- sion of Manifest Destiny. Just as the U.S. Army had settled the American West, the U.S. Navy would do the same in the Pacific. In essence, Bradley says, Roosevelt chose the Japanese as American proxies, consid- ering them “honorary Aryans,” to counter Chinese and Russian spheres of interest in the region. Toward that end, on July 8, 1905, the USS Manchuria left San Francisco for Tokyo, carrying Secretary of War (and future president) William How- ard Taft, seven senators and 23 repre- sentatives. The delegation’s mission was to conduct secret negotiations on behalf of the United States with Japan, Korea, China and the Philippines. Bradley persuasively argues that the resulting treaties, while never ratified by the U.S. Senate, set the stage for a century of needless wars and American misadventures in East Asia. Or to put it another way: Teddy Roosevelt had as much to do with World War II in the Pacific as Franklin Roosevelt. Washington had already been in- volved in Japanese foreign affairs long before Tokyo’s enthusiastic welcome of In 1906, Roosevelt had the word “Korea” deleted from the U.S. government’s Record of Foreign Relations, placing it under the heading “Japan.” 66 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