The Foreign Service Journal, November 2005

mantling of cultural diplomacy. (Both political parties share respon- sibility for this state of affairs, for it was in 1999, during the Clinton administration, that the United States Information Agency was absorbed into the State Department.) If Karen Hughes, State’s new under secretary for public diplomacy, reads this beautifully written book, she will see that successful public diplomacy lies not in promoting democracy, but in allowing others to experience freedom of thought through the strength and diversity of creative expression in America. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. Rather, we need both to “tell America’s story” (in Edward R. Murrow’s phrase) and to listen to the stories of other nations. Cynthia P. Schneider is a Distinguish- ed Professor in the Practice of Diplo- macy in the School of Foreign Service, and the Pfizer Medical Humanities Initiative Fellow in Residence at the Public Policy Institute, both at George- town University, where previously she was an associate professor of art histo- ry. She was appointed by Presi- dent Clinton to serve as U.S. ambas- sador to the Netherlands (1998-2001). Lest We Forget In the Aftermath of Genocide: The U.S. Role in Rwanda Robert E. Gribbin, iUniverse, Inc., 2005, $23.95, paperback, 307 pages. R EVIEWED BY D ANE F. S MITH J R . Passivity in the face of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, in which Hutu extremists slaughtered over 800,000 Tutsis and “moderate” Hutus, re- mains a major blot on the record of the Clinton administration. In the Aftermath of Genocide: The U.S. Role in Rwanda , published under the aus- pices of the Association for Diplo- matic Studies and Training, is a major contribution to understanding that holocaust and its aftermath. Robert Gribbin has spent many years in East and Central Africa, first as a Peace Corps Volunteer and then as a diplomat fanatically committed to in-country travel. While he was not in Kigali during the actual genocide, he had three directly related Foreign Service assignments, as Rwanda desk officer (1977-1979), deputy chief of mission (1979-1981) and as ambas- sador (1995-1999). As Gribbin documents, the fact that Washington and Paris were working at cross-purposes in Africa hampered the international commu- nity’s ability to respond to the crisis. Deeply disturbed by the ascendance of the Anglophone-led Tutsi rebel force (the Rwandan Patriotic Army) over the Francophone Hutu regime committing the slaughter, France played an unhelpful, even malign role. The French National Assembly even went so far as to issue a report proclaiming that “American links to Uganda and the RPA lay somehow at the heart of the tragedy.” For his part, Gribbin dismisses Operation Turquoise, the belated French intervention in southwest Rwanda of June 1994, as having had little impact on ending the genocide (which was already winding down by then) and as allowing Hutu forces to escape into Zaire. As he scathingly notes, “less pretension and more honesty would serve [France] — and history — well.” Gribbin concedes that neither he nor other diplomatic experts on the region foresaw the Rwandan holo- caust. He also acknowledges his error in assuming that the Rwandan government that took power follow- ing the genocide would not carry out long-term military operations along- side rebel soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — formerly Zaire — whither the Hutu hard-lin- ers had fled. (In fact, that support enabled Laurent Kabila to seize power in Kinshasa in 1997.) Such welcome candor lends even more credibility to his well-documented case that the U.S. provided no assis- tance to Kabila or the forces sup- porting him, despite numerous accusations and press accounts to the contrary emanating from France and other quarters. Gribbin also aims heavy artillery at what he terms “the humanitarian industrial complex” — the Office of the United Nations High Commis- sioner for Refugees, the phalanx of NGOs concerned with refugees and human rights, and their patrons in the Department of State. His unhappi- ness stems from the unwillingness of the “complex” to work harder to N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 67 B O O K S u With welcome candor, Gribbin concedes that neither he nor other diplomatic experts on the region foresaw the Rwandan holocaust.