The Foreign Service Journal, September 2020

86 SEPTEMBER 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL what we wanted, “no political solution emerged from the end of the war … and, consequently, the war continued and arguably continues to this day.” After the war, Dunford on instruction presented the Saudi government with an invoice for $16.3 billion, payable to the United States for services rendered. (Kuwait was billed a similar amount.) When the embassy argued against the policy, Baker “accused Chas of ‘clientitis’ [a focus more on good relations than U.S. interests].” A resentful Kingdom made the payment, but “the seeds for the rise of bin Laden and al-Qaeda were planted and we eventually found ourselves in wars that cost us trillions of dollars.” These are startling accusations. Bill Burns, who served in Baker’s policy planning office, had quite a different view of Baker’s stewardship. Burns in his memoir acknowledged that Baker’s reli- ance on a small staff caused “predictable grumbling,” but over time, “career pro- fessionals were drawn in and exhilarated by Baker’s clout and success, which put State at the center of American diplo- macy.” The war aims of Desert Storm, according to Burns, were the removal of Iraq from Kuwait and the restoration of Kuwait’s legitimate government, in accordance with United Nations resolu- tions. The seeds for the rise of al-Qaida were planted not in 1991 but in 1979, the year of the Iranian revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by ultra- conservative Islamists. Dunford went on from Riyadh to serve, relatively uneventfully, as ambas- sador to Oman, his last post. He retired in 1995, but the State Department kept bringing him back. He returned to duty in 1997 to lead a multilateral team in an unsuccessful effort to build support for a Middle East–North Africa regional development bank, and again in 2003 to take charge of restructuring the Iraqi foreign ministry after the fall of Saddam Hussein. In Iraq, Dunford had to deal with State-Defense rivalries and chaotic, politicized decision-making, amid wide- spread, uncontained looting and rapidly rising levels of violence. He managed to organize a “steering committee” of Iraqis prepared to work with the United States to build a post-Saddam foreign ministry; by 2004, insurgents had mur- dered three of its six members. (Dunford and one of the survivors, Hussein Ghas- san Muhsin, are co-authors of Talking to Strangers: The Struggle to Rebuild Iraq’s Foreign Ministry .) When Dunford fin- ished his assignment and came home, no one from State or Defense bothered to debrief him. From Sadat to Saddam is marred by an excess of detail. The strictly chronological narrative moves, from one paragraph to the next, between events that shape history, events that shape a career and events that shape a weekend. A tighter focus would have helped. The final chapter, however, is a strong essay on the importance of diplo- macy. Here, Dunford and Bill Burns agree: Burns calls diplomacy “America’s tool of first resort”; Dunford calls it “the first tool out of the toolbox.” Both of these descriptions are now merely aspirational. Until the Department of State, its Foreign Service and its Civil Service, recover from the ruinations lately visited upon them, the aspiration will remain unfulfilled. Former Foreign Service Officer Harry Kopp is a frequent contributor to The Foreign Service Journal and a member of its editorial board. Around the Continent in 80 Years US Policy Toward Africa: Eight Decades of Realpolitik (An ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Book) Herman J. Cohen, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2020, $95/hardcover, $35/ paperback, $35/e-book, 280 pages. Reviewed by Steven Alan Honley The author of US Policy Toward Africa: Eight Decades of Realpolitik , Ambassador Herman J. Cohen (universally known as Hank), needs no introduction for most Foreign Service Journal readers. Suffice to say, as someone who spent virtually his entire 38-year Foreign Service career either serving in Africa or helping to direct our relations with the continent, Amb. Cohen is an Africa hand par excel- lence. Neither an academic study nor a memoir, the book reflects both the author’s command of the documentary record and decades of on-the-ground experience. Setting the tone are a brief preface, in which Cohen explains why he decided to specialize in U.S.-Africa relations almost as soon as he joined the Foreign Service in 1955, and the first chapter, “The United States and Africa: A Historical Perspective.” The author then employs a chrono- logical approach, but with a twist: Each chapter, starting in 1941 as Franklin Delano Roosevelt begins his third term, assesses a U.S. president’s record in deal- ing with Africa. This approach works well, with a couple of caveats. Developments in certain countries are harder to follow because they are spread out over several chapters. And many countries and issues don’t come up at all, due to the focus on major events and leaders.