The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2011

ing through teams. So it just depends on the person, not the gender. FSJ: When you went to Nassau in 1973 as Ron Spiers’ deputy chief of mission, you commented that you found the DCM course really valu- able. What made it so useful? RR: At that time the department had a very high casualty list of promis- ing officers going out as DCMs, only to fall victim either to misunderstanding their role within the embassy or not un- derstanding the DCM’s relationship to the ambassador. And so Dr. Harry Wilkinson, who is now at Rice Univer- sity, put the DCM course together. And I was one of those who went through one of its first iterations. The phrase that still stays with me from it was “establishment of the so- called ‘psychological contract’ between the DCM and the ambassador.” What is our relationship? What do you ex- pect of me? What do I expect of you — and how are we going to conduct our relationship? I suppose these days management courses call that candor and transparency. That is a tremendous technique for all kinds of situations. When I was as- sistant secretary of EUR, I had all these deputy assistant secretaries and office directors who were wondering what I expected of them; and I, what they expected of me. And there’s noth- ing wrong with sitting down and talk- ing about it. And it was the same with George Shultz when he was Secretary of State. FSJ: That’s a good segue to dis- cussing your three ambassadorships. When you discussed your time in East Germany during your oral history, it sounded like there was no clear idea of what the department wanted you to do. RR: Larry Eagleburger, then under secretary for political affairs, called me in 1982 about going to the German Democratic Republic. I said fine and started preparing. This was during the first Reagan administration, and it was clear that the policy was that we didn’t talk to people in places like the GDR. They’re the enemy, the Warsaw Pact; so unless they’re willing to quit and join NATO, you don’t talk to them. When I paid my calls on East Ger- man officials I said, “This is what we want done: we want families reunited, we want claims paid, the Jewish claims paid, we want the paintings of Lyonel Feininger returned to his family…” And after I recited that long list, Erick Honecker and others said, “Suppose we did all that. What are you prepared to do for us?” I had to say “Not a thing.” And so I went back to Washington, and said to Larry Eagleburger: Look, if you really want me to solve these problems, you’ve got to give me some- thing to work with—whether it’s trade or the opportunity for East German of- ficials who are traveling in the States to come to Washington and meet with counterparts and go over issues, or to consult with us on the Helsinki Process. And Larry’s answer to me was, “Well, you know the view. You can go out there and if you can put something together, fine. But I leave it up to you to hear the sound of the saw on the limb behind you.” FSJ: So did you ever hear the saw? RR: No, mostly because I came back to Washington on issues before the saw could be sharpened. I still often lost in the Washington intera- gency setting, but I think I got people to understand that there was a balance here. For example, the Canadians walked away with all of our wheat trade in East Germany and Eastern Europe. They just came in with better interest rates on trade, and the rest. I can’t tell you howmany hundreds of millions of dol- lars of economic trade we lost because people said, “Well, they have to solve all these problems first before we can compete for trade with them.” And I said, “If that’s what you want to do, fine. But you should have both pieces in front of you: Here’s the op- portunity and here’s the cost if it’s not pursued. And if you are consciously accepting the cost to maintain the prin- ciple, fine. But don’t expect me to go out there and do both — seize this op- portunity and maintain this principle. It’s one thing or the other, a conscious choice. I think in some respects that’s what brought me to the attention of George Shultz. In my cables back to Washing- ton, I made my pitch for some of these packages of things. I lost, but I was try- ing to work these issues in a way that served U.S. interests. You can’t oper- ate with a whole long list of “You must” and nothing saying “We will.” You can’t operate that way. Yet we often still try that approach today; and when we do, problems remain unsolved. FSJ: And you believe that put you on Secretary Shultz’s radar screen. RR: Yes. At that time George Vest was the director general, but I don’t know what kind of conversation took place in Washington. I only know that I got a call, first from George Vest and then fromGeorge Shultz, about the as- signment as assistant secretary for European and Canadian affairs. I ob- viously accepted gladly since I knew that it was not going to be like the counselor job. And the next four years (1985-1989) were just incredible. FSJ: Did you plan all along to leave the Foreign Service after that, or were you hoping to find another job? 62 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 “Don’t ever take a token job unless you have a token mind.”