The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2006

MIA: It’s still too soon to say and the country has this enormous unend- ing problem of Iraq. You have to keep in mind that President Bush’s first term was not impressive in foreign policy. It had one big achievement — there has not been a terrorist incident here for five years — but the country is in a massive hole, and has borne and continues to bear truly extraordinary costs. Rice wasn’t Secretary of State when Iraq happened; but as national security adviser, she was part of the team that produced the problem. She has made a start on recovering from that period, but there are very difficult problems and the results are not in. FSJ: Going back to your career: Your first ambassadorship was in Bangkok from 1978 to 1981. What were some of the challenges you faced as chief of mission there, and how did you handle them? MIA: I was there at an extraordi- nary time, with the Vietnamese inva- sion of Cambodia next door soon after I arrived and its massive impact on Thailand. It’s a sad thing to say, but in times of war, things get extremely interesting. Our primary task became to deal with a huge humanitarian crisis, to help the large numbers of Lao, Cambodian and Vietnamese trying to flee into Thailand in the wake of the invasion and the Vietnamese government’s crackdown in South Vietnam. We led an international effort to feed and shel- ter over a million refugees and create a safe haven for them in Thailand or in camps along the border. As part of that effort, President Carter did an extraor- dinary thing: he paroled into the U.S. almost half a million Indochinese refugees over a three-year period. As you might imagine, the Thais were not happy to suddenly have 300,000 to 400,000 Cambodian refu- gees on their border. One costly inci- dent taught me quite a lesson. Early on in the refugee flood, I called the Thai prime minister to obtain a pledge that some 30,000 refugees wouldn’t be forced back into a dangerously mined area in Cambodia. He assured me that wouldn’t happen but, sure enough, in a few days the Thai military forced them back. So I learned never to take anything for granted, no matter who it comes from. But we continued to praise the government and the Thai people for what was a deeply humani- tarian response, and that made a dif- ference in the pursuit of our objec- tives. My wife, Sheppie, probably spent as much time in border refugee camps as I did. Second, we had to keep reassuring the Thais that the U.S. stood ready to safeguard their security if Vietnam were to invade, which was considered a real possibility in Thailand at the time. Both of these efforts were an incessant preoccupation for the next couple of years. Third, it was crucial for ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, to step up to the crisis. I remember a variety of conversations with Southeast Asian leaders, particu- larly Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yu, soon after the invasion dur- ing which I hammered home that point. That message, more important- ly, was reinforced by Washington. And ASEAN did stand up and ultimately succeeded in ending the Vietnamese occupation with the help of its friends. I might also mention that the embassy was publicly attacked by many prominent Americans and oth- ers for supposedly undermining the new regime in Cambodia set up by Vietnam and hindering its relief effort by feeding people in western Cambodia from the Thai border. Our purpose was not to undermine the regime, although it was a rotten one, but to make sure people were fed, so we did not care who fed them or where the food came through as long as it served the purpose. If Phnom Penh could adequately deliver food to all of Cambodia amidst all the chaos, so much the better. FSJ: Do you see the current politi- cal turmoil in Thailand as worrisome or a sign of the country’s democratic vitality? MIA: Both. Prime Minister Thaksin is not a particularly admirable fellow. He has feathered his own nest, ordered extrajudicial killings and weakened Thailand’s political institu- tions. On the other hand, he has con- tinued Thailand’s economic growth and has sought to bring greater pros- perity to Thai farmers. The way the opposition moved to oust an elected leader on the streets isn’t healthy for democracy either. Sometimes democ- racies elect people we don’t want, as we’ve seen in Palestine and elsewhere. That’s one of the problems of democ- racy. We get leaders we don’t like. Happens here, too. FSJ: You were also ambassador to Turkey from 1989 to 1991. What were some of the challenges you faced as chief of mission there, and how did you handle them? MIA: Turkey was a great post and a wonderful place. I only had two years there because I left the depart- ment in 1991 to become president of the Carnegie Endowment for Interna- tional Peace. J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 33 “In hiring me, Under Secretary [Elliot] Richardson said he had a simple incentive plan: ‘One mistake and you are out.’”