The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2004

B OOKS Deys of Diplomacy Uncle Sam in Barbary: A Diplomatic History Richard B. Parker, University Press of Florida, 2004, $59.95, hardcover, 285 pages. R EVIEWED BY C HARLES D UNBAR Uncle Sam in Barbary marks a tri- umphant return by the American scholar-diplomat Richard Parker to his old North African stomping grounds. Following the publication of his 1984 study on the contemporary politics of the Maghreb, Ambassador Parker absented himself from Barbary to write books on the 1967 and 1973 Middle East Wars. Now he has moved on to the Western Mediter- ranean and back in time to the first contacts of the young American republic with the Muslim world. The book has three dimensions, each offering insights into the modern Maghreb and the wider Muslim world and Uncle Sam’s current role therein. First, it explains who the “Barbary pirates” were and why parallels should not be drawn between them and the Islamist terrorists who are the major concern of contemporary American foreign policy. Unlike today’s terror- ists, the warships that seized American merchant vessels and made hostages and slaves of their crews sailed under the flags of four states — Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli — that were recognized, if troublesome, members of the Mediterranean state system in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The European powers relied on trib- ute, ransoms and large “gifts,” backed as necessary and possible by force, as the principal instruments of their diplomacy in Barbary. So did the Americans. Second, the checkered history of U.S. diplomacy in Barbary offers lessons entirely relevant to the prob- lems Washington faces today. Some things have changed, to be sure. Modern communications would con- ceivably have overcome some of the monumental misunderstandings bet- ween headquarters and the field that stymied diplomatic efforts, and today’s media would not have permitted the enslaved hostages in Algiers to lan- guish for 11 years. Thomas Jefferson’s willingness to cut the daily subsistence being paid to the Algiers hostages from something over six cents per day to three as part of a negotiating strate- gy would not have played well on the 7 o’clock news. But other things remain the same, most notably the need for a professional diplomatic service with area and linguistic competence, and the importance of determined presi- dential leadership like that of George Washington in finally securing the freedom of the Algiers hostages. Lastly, Amb. Parker is right to stress that military might is an essen- tial, but not the predominant, compo- nent of foreign policy. Having been cut loose from British protection fol- lowing the end of the American Revolution, the United States was unable to protect its shipping. Its generally inept efforts to free the hostages taken by Algiers in 1785 and 1793 desperately needed the back- bone that only the Navy, finally com- missioned by Congress in 1794, could provide. Stephen Decatur’s defeat of the corsair Rais (Captain) Hamidou in 1815 and subsequent show of force ended America’s 30-year conflict with Algiers. The threat and even the use of military might not backed by deter- mined diplomacy — such as the cam- paigns of Commodores Edward Preble and John Rodgers on Tripoli and before Tunis — are still as coun- terproductive today as they were then. Beyond the lessons it imparts, Uncle Sam in Barbary is a really good read. Parker devotes most of the book to Algiers, where he was ambassador for three years in the mid-1970s, and uses his languages, area knowledge and painstaking research to tell a com- plicated, tragicomic story from all pos- sible perspectives. His prose is as bright and fluid as it was when I worked for him in Rabat and Algiers, and he brings to life Algiers and those who peopled it — from the deys (heads of state) to the horse-trading diplomat manqué John Lamb to Parker demonstrates that the checkered history of U.S. diplomacy in Barbary two centuries ago offers lessons for today. 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 71