The Foreign Service Journal, June 2008

The Wildest View I was very disappointed to see Tim Wirth’s article “A Call to Action” in your February issue focusing on the diplomacy of global climate change. I realize that the Journal correctly encourages divergent views to be expressed in its pages, but I would cer- tainly hope to see a line drawn well before the propagation of the largest hoax of the 20th century and, poten- tially, the 21st: “manmade global warming.” The debate on that subject is not over, no matter what Al Gore claims. Indeed, it has never really begun. The mainstream news media refuse to carry dissenting views by real scien- tists. Meanwhile, American academics, seeking lucrative grants, and many states, for whatever reason, have ruth- lessly sanctioned scientists working in the field of climatology, for daring to expose the falsehoods and incon- sistencies surrounding this myth. What is truly monstrous is the attempt to erode American sovereign- ty by turning over regulatory authority on the matter to an organ of the United Nations. The willingness of our politicians of both parties to pander to the far left by participating in the needless drain of trillions of dollars from the American public purse goes far beyond the out- rageous, as well. I sincerely trust that readers of Wirth’s article have placed it under the rubric of “even the wildest views occa- sionally slip into the FSJ .” Robert B. Richardson FSO, retired Daniel Island, S.C. NSDD and All That Ambassador Tibor Nagy has issued a much-needed call for a reality check on the National Security Decision Directive process in his recent letter to the Journal (March). But his con- clusion that NSDD-38 is the only tool an ambassador needs to deal with other agencies is too rosy. In the real world there have always been NSDD end-runs. But with counterterrorism and intelligence- gathering occupying center stage in Africa policy, we can expect to see what are really NSDD faits accomplis. I’ll cite a homely example or two. What do you do when a high-level director of international programs at the FBI, in your country to visit his Peace Corps Volunteer son, tells you in a courtesy call that he had a good meeting about training with the minis- ter of the interior, whom he had met and started to do business with in Washington? Or suppose there is a rumble in the jungle, some missionaries are taken hostage, and you get a cable from the State Department telling you that, by golly, there just happens to be a coun- terterrorism exercise under way at Fort Bragg, and the participants would like to get some hands-on expe- rience by working with local forces to help you resolve your crisis. In fact, the aircraft are practically already in the air. (In such an episode from the early 1980s, I was a DCM and Ed Marks, whose excellent letter in the March FSJ bears importantly on the NSDD issue, was the State represen- tative on the exercise.) What ambassador is going to say no? Or, more to the point: What ambassador, blindsided and confront- ed with a 24-hour fuse at this point in the “process,” can? Another example is that of State’s seventh floor visibly scrambling, in the wake of Amb. Joe Wilson’s uranium mission to Niger, to find out how the heck he got out there in the first place. Such episodes suggest that the NSDD process is moribund for sensitive mis- sions — and, in fact, risks becoming something of a joke. New resources and more U.S. per- sonnel are on the horizon under the aegis of the Africa Command. Yet AFRICOM projects will have to be intensely bilateral if they are to deal seriously in intelligence and smart counterinsurgency cooperation in the very different, and differing, environ- ments presented by West Africa and other regions. More personnel, in- cluding contractors, will probably be operating at the grassroots — a tall order. This will obviously require effective ambassadorial oversight. But what one can glean from afar about ensuring that the department is 6 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 8 L ETTERS