The Foreign Service Journal, November 2004

F O C U S N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 45 Engaging Africa: Washington and the Fall of Portugal’s Colonial Empire Witney W. Schneidman, University Press of America, Inc., 2004, $33.00, paperback, 312 pages. Based largely on primary sources, this book tells the story of one of the Cold War’s most intense con- frontations as successive administrations — Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford — tried to maintain the confidence of NATO ally Portugal while facilitating the process of decolonization in Angola and Mozambique. Witney Schneidman served as deputy assistant secretary of State for African affairs in the Clinton administration. Peace Corps Pioneer or “The Perils of Pauline” Pauline Birky-Kreutzer, 2003, hardcover, $20.00, 376 pages. Pauline Birky-Kreutzer co-authored the feasibil- ity study for Congress in 1960 on setting up the Peace Corps, supervised the first group of volun- teers in Pakistan, and then spent years training thousands of volunteers for service in various devel- oping countries. Her lively autobiography recounts the story. Birky-Kreutzer, whose grandson is a diplomatic security officer in Shanghai, lives in Green Valley, Ariz. Her book is available from Jade Creek Books, 123 N. College Avenue, Ft. Collins CO 80521, or by calling (970) 484-3019. This Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace Swanee Hunt, Duke University Press, 2004, $29.95, hardcover, 304 pages. Here are the first-person accounts of 26 Bosnian women of different ages and strata, interviewed many times over the course of seven years, on their experiences in the war that ripped apart their coun- try and in working to reconstruct their society. Hunt, the ambassador to Austria from 1993 to 1997, came to know these women through her diplomatic and humanitarian work in the Balkan states. She provides a narrative framework for the women’s stories that ties them together to make an instructive and inspirational whole. Fateful Decisions: Inside the National Security Council Edited, with introductions, by Karl F. Inderfurth and Loch K. Johnson, Oxford University Press, 2004, $29.95, paperback, 377 pages. Covering the period from 1947 to 2003, this book presents a selection of insightful articles, com- mentaries and documents drawn from a variety of sources that shed light on the creation, evolution and current practice of the National Security Council, the most important formal institution in the U.S. government for the making of foreign and security policy. Karl F. Inderfurth, professor of the practice of international affairs at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, served as assistant secretary of State for South Asian affairs from 1997 to 2001, and U.S. representative for special political affairs to the U.N. during the Clinton administration. Loch K. Johnson is Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia. The United States and Coercive Diplomacy Edited by Robert J. Art and Patrick M. Cronin, United States Institute of Peace Press, 2003, $19.95, paperback, 442 pages. What, exactly, is coercive diplomacy? How does it operate, and how well does it work? The analy- ses here of eight important post-Cold War cases in which coercive diplomacy was attempted adds sig- nificantly to an understanding of the uses and limi- tations of this strategy. Patrick M. Cronin is assis- tant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development and former director of research and studies at the U.S. Institute for Peace. Robert J. Art is a professor of international relations at Brandeis University.