The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2004

fessor at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisc. (a fellowship set up by the parents of a student who had been killed in an accident; I don’t know where he was killed or how). I taught courses on the Middle East there, which was fun. Then I came back and for one semester taught a course at the School of Advanced International Studies (part of Johns Hopkins University) in tandem with Bill Zartman. FSJ : Tell us about your new book, Uncle Sam in Barbary: A Diplomatic History (University Press of Florida), that is about to come out. You’ve been working on that for what, six years? RP : Even longer than that: since 1990. It’s really been a retirement project, but during that period I did three other books before concentrat- ing on this one. FSJ : What in particular drew you to writing about America’s early diplomatic relations with North Africa two centuries ago? Is it the fact that the topic isn’t well known? RP : Well, a lot of American histo- rians have written on it, particularly the war with Tripoli, but not much has been done from the point of view of an area specialist. Only one of these historians, to my knowledge, has ever been to the area, and that briefly; most of them have known almost nothing of the local language and culture. So Carl Brown at Princeton sug- gested that I write the history of those early relations from the perspective of a practitioner who is knowledgeable about the area to see if it made any difference in the interpretation. FSJ : In your introduction to the book, you write that, to the extent anyone does know about that episode, they’ve drawn the wrong lessons from it. RP : Yes, they do not understand what really happened. They think that “Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute,” is what it’s all about. They don’t realize that we paid almost a million dollars to get our men out of Algiers in 1796 — which would be about $15 million in today’s money — at a time when our total annual federal revenues were about $6 million or $7 million. And force did not settle anything there, at least initially; one could argue that it did later, in 1815, but these initial prob- lems with Algiers were solved by negotiations. FSJ: But wasn’t that at least par- tially because we didn’t really have any navy to speak of at that stage? RP : Well, yes, but even if we’d had greater forces to bring to bear, what difference would it have made? All our prisoners there would simply have been sacrificed; we would not have been able to rescue them mili- tarily. In the end, we still would have had to negotiate. My other preoccupation has been Joel Barlow, an American diplomat from that period. In fact, I was up in his hometown of Redding, Conn., last weekend to give a talk on him. I helped raise funds to erect a monu- ment to him in 1998 in Zarnowic, Poland, where he died. It’s near Krakow. FSJ : As someone who has written extensively about U.S. diplomacy and taught it, in addition to being a prac- titioner, you’ve obviously seen a good many changes in it over the course of your career. How has diplomacy changed over the past 50 years or so? Are you optimistic about the future of the profession? RP : In the old days, 50 years ago, when an assistant secretary came out to your post, that was really some- thing. The trumpets would blare. Today, someone at that level visits every three months or so, and they sneak in and out. Communications have so multi- plied that I sense we no longer have the control we once did. Dean Acheson talks about this in one of his books: when he was Secretary of State, there was a woman named Mrs. Halla who ran the correspon- dence review branch up in S/S. She looked at every telegram that went out of the department and corrected the grammar — “You can’t do this, Mr. Parker.” Those days are long gone, and I’m sure our writing has gotten a lot sloppier as a result. E- mail also encourages sloppiness. The deterioration in the security situation has really affected diplo- mats’ ability to do their jobs, as well. In places like Beirut, personal con- tact is so important. And if you’re sit- ting up on a hill and you can’t go out without a guard, even for junior per- sonnel, I think that’s decreased our ability to influence events. But diplomacy is still necessary. Sometime back, I heard Newt Gingrich speaking at Georgetown about how the Foreign Service was becoming irrelevant. But I don’t think he understands anything about how diplomacy is conducted, or how important it is to have people on the ground in these places. Personality is everything. FSJ : Whenever you talk to bright young people today, college gradu- ates, do you recommend the Foreign Service to them as a career? RP : Yes, I have given talks on that quite a bit. And I always tell them that I can’t think of anything I would rather have done with my life than be in the Foreign Service. There was never a dull moment. I was some- times troubled or unhappy with what I had to do, but I never wished I were doing something else. FSJ : Thank you very much. J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 59