The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2011

eve of President Ronald Reagan’s visit to Ottawa. I was asked to take that issue on, and we managed it success- fully. FSJ: You handled a lot of different issues during your career, but I think probably most people would say you’re best known for working in Eu- rope and dealing with those issues. Do you consider yourself a specialist in European affairs? RR: Well, people may think of me as a Europeanist, but, in fact, I was a negotiator. My fisheries activities were very extensive, including negotiations with Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan and Mexico. FSJ: You and your team negotiated something like 26 bilateral fisheries agreements, I believe. RR: Something like that. I was a problem-solver: when something had to be untangled and fixed and put back together again in a way that served U.S. interests, that’s what I did. And it tends to look European, but it is really negotiations. FSJ: Obviously you became a sub- ject-matter expert. Is that the way you tended to approach those assign- ments? Or did you rely on people who knew all the details? RR: Both. You had to know the subject yourself, because your coun- terpart across the table was probably the national principal for whatever that issue was. But I also always tried to surround myself with a team of people who knew even more than I did and worked together well. FSJ: Forgive me if this is trying to read too much meaning into it, but do you think female FSOs tend to be more oriented to teamwork and shar- ing credit and getting the job done as opposed to ego? Or is it just a matter of personality? RR: Well, I’d be hard put to say that — think of people like George Vest and Ron Spiers and George Shultz. All of them had that same quality of work- J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 61 “When something had to be untangled and fixed and put back together again in a way that served U.S. interests, that’s what I did.”