The Foreign Service Journal, September 2017

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2017 97 resilient. Both institutions have evolved profoundly, continuously enhanc- ing their ability to help maintain our nation’s security, advance its prosperity and promote American values. It should come as no surprise that many of the presidents and Secretaries of State who first questioned the loyalty of both institutions have left office impressed by the knowledge, determina- tion, energy and discretion of America’s career diplomats. Kopp and Naland quote Henry Kiss- inger, for example, who declares that he knew of no Secretary of State who did not come to “admire the dedicated men and women who supply the continuity and expertise of our foreign policy. I entered the State Department a skeptic. I left a convert.” Career Diplomacy reveals why. Ambassador (ret.) Carey Cavanaugh is a professor at the University of Kentucky’s Pat- terson School of Diplomacy and Interna- tional Commerce. During his Foreign Service career, Amb. Cavanaugh served overseas in Berlin, Moscow, Tbilisi, Rome and Bern, in addition to assignments at the State Depart- ment, Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. The Ambassatrix Speaks Dirty Wars and Polished Silver Lynda Schuster, Melville House, 2017, $26.99/hardcover, 321 pages. Reviewed By Donna Scaramastra Gorman Sixteen-year-old Lynda Schuster is bored at home in the Midwest, angry about her parents’ divorce and embarrassed by her mother, a dull suburban housewife. In search of adventure and eager to put some distance between herself and her mother, Schuster flies to London, osten- sibly to visit her father, then secretly buys a ticket to Israel, where she intends to volunteer on a kibbutz. But it’s the summer of 1973, and shortly after she arrives at the kibbutz, located near the Golan Heights, she finds herself in the middle of the Arab- Israeli War. Hooked on the fear, excite- ment and adrenaline rush of war, she ultimately decides to become a foreign correspondent, working in wartorn and otherwise dangerous locales as far from her suburban upbringing (and from her annoying mother) as possible. The early part of the book chronicles Schuster’s almost accidental entry into the world of journalism and her subse- quent adventures as a foreign corre- spondent in Central and South America, the Middle East and Mexico, where she writes mostly about war and terrorism. She meets, marries and loses her first husband, a much older war corre- spondent for a compet- ing newspaper, within the span of a year; the story of how they meet and fall in love takes up prime real estate in this section. Eventually the young widow meets another man, U.S. diplomat Dennis Jett, and begins a long-distance relation- ship with him. When he is assigned to Malawi as the deputy chief of mission, she decides to marry him and move her career to Southern Africa. Like many Foreign Service spouses before and since, she ultimately realizes she isn’t going to be able to hold on to both husband and career, so she quits her job to become a full-time diplomat’s spouse. Sound familiar? Foreign Service readers will nod their heads in recognition as Schuster chafes against the limitations placed on her by her position as the DCM’s wife. Some of the odd linguistic choices she makes, however, may jar the Foreign Service ear. For example, she calls the DCM the “deputy ambassador” and, after her husband is promoted, refers to herself as an “ambassatrix” and writes about attending what she calls “Ambassatrix School.” Perhaps it’s just a nod to her non-FS audience, but such word play might instead be a deliberate roast of diplomatic culture (or at least its buttoned-down caricature). The book is a curious mix of ridicule and respect for the Foreign Service spouses and employees she meets: ridicule when she encounters spouses who are trying their best to live within the confines of their diplomatic prisons and don’t seem as impressively fearless as her journal- ist friends; and begrudging respect for some of those diplomats and their spouses who work well within the system, surviving evacuations and war just as successfully as they survive boring dinner parties with their foreign counterparts. Schuster survives an evacuation of her own, from Liberia in 1989. It isn’t until she is ordered to leave her husband and dogs behind that she realizes that “in marrying a diplomat, I’d married the State Department, too, and ceded my independence.” Still thinking of herself as a tough war correspondent, she is surprised at the level of helplessness she feels as the fighting in Liberia inches ever closer to the capital while she is forced to stay inside, away from danger. “To be on the ground during a conflict as a civilian,” she writes, “watching the inexorable march of violence headed my way, is very different from watching—clear-