The Foreign Service Journal, June 2011

been involved in high-level arms con- trol negotiations. Against those ad- vantages, he was a carryover from the Ford administration and was not close to the new president, Jimmy Carter, or to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. He was also detested by the Soviets, who had prevented his nomination in 1973 for his alleged “hardline” views. Within days of reaching Moscow, and weeks before his nomination was confirmed in Washington, Toon held his first briefing on Jan. 21, 1977. Asked what he thought his role in Moscow should be, he replied, “I think my job is to teach these guys how to act like a great power instead of some two-bit banana republic.” To say that the reporters in the room sat up is an understatement. Clearly, we were in for an interesting ride. Seven weeks later, still awaiting con- firmation, Toon noted that at a meeting with Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet for- eign minister had “acidly” commented on his indeterminate status and said that “if he heard anything from [Soviet Ambassador to the United States Ana- toly] Dobrynin, he’d let me know.” The message to Washington was loud and clear: stop prevaricating! Mac Toon’s core attitudes regard- ing the USSR and communism were always clear and acerbic, yet ultimately offset by innate diplomatic caution. At his first briefing, he put it like this: “I think I’m a realist. I find the philoso- phy and the system repugnant. I don’t agree with what they’ve done to their own people and to Eastern Europe. But we have to do business with them.” On occasion his comments verged on the provocative, as when he an- nounced: “The Soviets are the worst racists in the world — anti-Jew, anti- black, anti-Asiatic.” After a trumped- up incident involving an American businessman, he noted sardonically: “It should be understood that the So- viets can dig up ‘evidence’ against any- one — mostly phony.” At other times he claimed that “Russian people are notoriously with- out taste,” that Pravda was “a lousy paper,” and that Mikhail Smirnovsky (a foreign ministry official, later a Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom) was “the only smart Soviet I’ve ever dealt with.” In reference to suggestions that policymakers back in Washington knew best, he once parried: “There’s no substitute for being here on the scene and dealing firsthand with these scoundrels in this benighted city.” On the reasonable assumption (given the many lapses of embassy se- curity in this period) that the briefings were listened in to by the KGB, there really was no excuse for Toon’s hosts to misunderstand the man. But the strain on the correspondents to main- tain the anonymity of these illuminat- ing, not to say undiplomatic, observa- tions proved to be considerable. Certain topics cropped up time and again in these sessions — negotiations over SALT-2, détente, dissent and human rights, the Mideast, the Soviet leadership, the role of Amb. Do- brynin, Toon’s own role and incidents involving Embassy Moscow. Space does not permit an account of the ambassador’s take on all these matters. It is, perhaps, sufficient to say 40 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 1 1 Already a three-time ambassador by the time he arrived in Moscow, Toon displayed consummate tactical and strategic skills during his tenure there. T HE NEW EDITION OF Inside a U.S. Embassy IS NOW AVAILABLE . Visit www.afsa.org/inside for details. Looking for Additional Reading Suggestions? You can find the AFSA and State Department reading lists in our online bookstore, offering a wide selection of books on the Foreign Service. AFSA earns a royalty for every purchase you make on Amazon.com when you enter via the AFSA Bookstore. Visit www.afsa.org/ fs_reading_list.aspx