The Foreign Service Journal, November 2003

N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 37 hen Ellsworth Bunker accept- ed the invitation of his old Yale rowing coach and friend Secretary of State Dean Acheson to leave a successful career in the sugar business and take on the difficult assign- ment of ambassador to Juan Perón’s Argentina in 1951, nei- ther man anticipated that the appointment would lead to Bunker’s becoming one of the out- standing American diplomats of the Cold War decades. Already in his late fifties, Bunker initially viewed the Buenos Aires embassy as a brief stop on the way to a quiet, retired life, not as the start of a full- fledged, highly distinguished sec- ond career in public service. But before he finally left the diplomat- ic front lines in 1979 at the age of 85, he went on to become ambas- sador to Argentina, Italy, India, Nepal and, most famously, South Vietnam. As special diplomatic negotiator and trou- bleshooter, he helped resolve major challenges to U.S inter- ests in such far-flung places as Indonesia, Yemen, Panama and the Dominican Republic. When no diplomatic appointments were available, he served as the first full-time, salaried president of the American Red Cross. His years in diplomacy and public life climaxed with the complex nego- tiations and arduous domestic political effort that resulted in the signing and ratification of controversial treaties govern- ing the operation and security of the Panama Canal. Following his retirement, he became board chairman of Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, where he passed on his experiences and insights to younger generations. Acheson rightly called Bunker a “rara avis,” a natural pro- fessional in diplomacy, while Dean Rusk said that he con- sidered himself blessed to have Bunker’s services. Both of these Secretaries of State joined many others in the foreign policy world — not least seven presidents, from Harry Truman to Jimmy Carter — in prizing him as an accomplished diplomatic craftsman, perhaps the most skillful of his time. He won similar respect from foreign lead- ers as different from one another as Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India and President Sukarno of Indonesia. Foreign policy practitioners and observers alike hailed him as an icon of American diplomacy. The prominence of Bunker’s role as a “hawk” in wartime Saigon and the controversies that still sur- round it should not obscure the major contributions he made to the successful practice of American diplomacy. Many of his accomplishments in promoting U.S. interests in areas of continuing significance to our national security remain relevant now, almost a quarter-century after he retired from public life. In his assignments as ambassador and special negotiator, Bunker dealt with problems on four continents. Some of them seemed far removed from America’s confrontation with the major communist powers, the focus E LLSWORTH B UNKER : G LOBAL T ROUBLESHOOTER , V IETNAM H AWK M OST OFTEN REMEMBERED AS HAVING BEEN A “ HAWK ” IN WARTIME S AIGON , A MBASSADOR E LLSWORTH B UNKER MADE MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO A MERICAN DIPLOMACY FOR NEARLY 30 YEARS . Secretaries of State Acheson and Rusk are among many in the foreign policy world who have praised Bunker as an accomplished diplomatic craftsman. B Y H OWARD B. S CHAFFER W