The Foreign Service Journal, October 2006

Missing the Point Speaking as a former ambassador to Bulgaria and Indonesia, and a for- mer coordinator of U.S. assistance to Eastern Europe, I found the discus- sion of transformational diplomacy in your July-August cover story surpris- ingly shallow (Shawn Zeller, “Trans- formational Diplomacy: A Work in Progress”). By concentrating on the question of how the program is to be carried out rather than whether it is feasible or desirable, your commenta- tor missed the point. Transformational diplomacy is not about where we put our people or how they are paid and protected. It is about what they do and what the orga- nizing principle of U.S. diplomacy is to be, at least for the remainder of this administration. President Bush defined that goal in his second inaugural address: “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” The goal of U.S. diplomacy is demo- cratic reform. And transformational diplomacy, in the words of Secretary Rice, “seeks to change the world itself.” Democratic reform is not about elections. That should be clear as a result of recent elections in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Palestinian Author- ity, Haiti, etc. Instead, what is re- quired is institutional reform — the long slog of nationbuilding, for which the U.S. has little appetite. Nation- building demands both plentiful resources and a long attention span. I know something about this because I was head of the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and chair of its provisional election commission from 1998 to 2001. Today Bosnia is on the eve of another election, which will leave the country divided and ungovernable even after we worked for more than a decade within a 55-nation coalition willing to spend money and put boots on the ground. I am afraid that we are not seeing the birth pangs of a new Middle East in Lebanon today, but rather the death throes of the old order. Democracy, or elections, may be the midwife of change, but at least in the short run it looks like change in the wrong direction — Islamism. Having used the leverage of democracy to get Syria out of Lebanon, we are denied the option of bringing them back in to curb Hezbollah. Given current views of the U.S. in the Middle East, send- ing our diplomats out to promote democratic reform would be counter- productive for U.S. policy and dan- gerous to them personally. In my experience, FSOs need little encouragement to get out from behind their desks and promote change and reform. But it is not a given that demo- cratic transformation will be a source of stability in today’s world. Robert L. Barry Ambassador, retired Washington, D.C. A Role Model I applaud AFSA for honoring Mort Abramowitz with its Lifetime Con- tributions to American Diplomacy Award. There can be no more deserv- ing honoree. The write-up on Mort was also very well done (July-August FSJ ). Mort was my ambassador when I was first posted overseas. He contin- ued to be a role model and mentor throughout my career, which ended in 2004 after three ambassadorial tours. I would like to share two stories in which Mort profoundly affected me as a man of extraordinary integrity and humanity. The first was when we were in Thailand, and he (along with Dick Holbrooke, then-Assistant Secre- tary of State for East Asian Affairs) took on powerful forces in Washing- ton to ensure the U.S. did the right thing in saving and then granting entry to hundreds of thousands of Indochinese refugees. Many of them would have perished without Mort’s intervention. The second event happened years later, when I was the U.S. ambassador to Bosnia-Herzegovina. Mort — already long retired fromState, but still active in the Balkans — advised me to reconsider the course the majority of my diplomatic colleagues were taking, one which would have been safe, pru- dent ... and absolutely wrong. As a result of his advice, I reversed course to pay due respect to the widows and chil- dren of the Srebrenica massacre and got my diplomatic colleagues to go along. Mort is smart, hard-working and in- spirational, but what made him so spe- cial to me and so many others was (and remains) his integrity and humanity. Tom Miller Ambassador, retired Woking, U.K. L ETTERS 6 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 6