The Foreign Service Journal, September 2019

84 SEPTEMBER 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL In Defense of the Tool of First Resort The Back Channel: AMemoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal William J. Burns, RandomHouse, 2019, $32.00/hardcover, $13.99/Kindle, 512 pages. Reviewed by Robert M. Beecroft In this engaging book by a master diplo- matic practitioner, Ambassador William J. Burns recounts, in fascinating detail, numerous highlights from his remarkable career from 1981 to 2014, including his years as Deputy Secretary of State, under secretary for political affairs, executive secretary of the department, ambassador to Russia and Jordan, acting director of policy planning, and National Security Council senior director for Near East and South Asia. The Back Channel is, however, far more than a memoir of Burns’ activities and experiences overseas and in Washington. It is also a powerful and timely advo- cacy piece for committed and informed diplomatic action in support of American interests and principles around the world. The son of an Army officer and Viet- nam veteran, Burns attended La Salle College in Philadelphia, becoming the first La Salle graduate to win a Marshall Scholarship for three years’ study at Oxford University. His first taste of the Middle East and diplomacy came about thanks to a high school friend who was the son of the legendary Hermann F. Eilts, then the U.S. ambassador in Cairo. Burns describes the summer he spent in Egypt as an 18-year-old as “a revelation.” In the chapters that follow, he takes us through the vagaries, surprises and frustrations of diplomatic life. In 1982, after completing the A-100 course (“a proces- sion of enervating speakers describing their islands in the great American policymaking archipelago”), he was assigned to Amman, while his A-100 colleague and wife-to-be, Lisa Carty, volunteered for Ouaga- dougou but was assigned to Singapore instead. They were married two years later. Throughout the book, Burns treats the reader to evocative, penetrating portraits of diplomatic counterparts and adversaries, from James Baker and RichardMurphy to Muammar Gaddafi and Vladimir Putin, and traces the ups and downs of U.S. foreign relations through the Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama adminis- trations. A few high points follow. Iran-Contra: Assigned at the time to the Near East and South Asia Directorate at the National Security Council, Burns takes an objective but critical look at the players and politics of the Iran-Contra affair, which he calls a “bizarre scheme … a strange story [that turned] into a full- blown scandal that nearly brought down the Reagan presidency.” He points to the uncontrolled expan- sion of the NSC staff, with little regard for the State Department and its historic role, as a major cause of poorly coordinated and badly executed American foreign policy initiatives in recent decades. End of the Cold War: In 1990 Burns returned to Foggy Bottom to serve as prin- cipal deputy director, later acting director, of the policy planning staff. He praises the visionary leadership of President George H.W. Bush, Secretary of State James Baker, Deputy Secretary Lawrence Eagleburger, Counselor Robert Zoellick and Undersec- retary for Political Affairs Robert Kimmitt at a challenging moment when “the tec- tonic plates of geopolitics began moving in dramatic and unexpected ways.” Burns states flatly and with unconcealed nostalgia that “the inter- section of skilled public servants and transforma- tive events that I wit- nessed in the Baker years at the State Department remains special.” His description of the Baker team’s textbook man- agement of the collapse of the USSR, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany within NATO—all without a shot fired in anger—is a highlight, as is his bittersweet summing-up: “Ours was a strategy that accepted limits, but also reflected confidence in the capacity of the United States to at least manage problems, if not solve them. …Many of the lessons we tried to articulate haven’t lost their relevance today, more than a quarter century later.” Yeltsin’s Russia: As political minister- counselor in the mid-1990s under Ambas- sador Tom Pickering (“the most capable professional diplomat for whom I ever worked”), Burns describes his dealings with an erratic President Boris Yeltsin (“a wounded figure, his limitations as a leader growing more and more apparent”) and the impact in Russia of intense debate in Western capitals about NATO expansion. Reflecting on visits to Moscow by Presi- dent Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Strobe Talbott and Richard Holbrooke, among others, Burns laments “the char- acteristically American tendency to think that the right process could solve almost any substantive problem.” He points ominously to the emergence of Vladimir Putin, armed with “a bill of particulars that he would use to justify his own efforts to manipulate American politics.” Leaving Moscow for Washington in 1996 to become executive secretary of BOOKS