The Foreign Service Journal, November 2008

two guides on the Foreign Service as a career. As in the past several years, a significant portion of our titles are self-published. Our primary purpose in compiling this list is to cele- brate the wealth of literary talent within the Foreign Service community, giving our readers the opportunity to support colleagues by sampling their wares. Each entry contains full publication data along with a short commentary. As has become our custom, we also include a list of books “of related interest” that were not written by FS authors. While many of the books listed here are available from bookstores and other sources, we encourage our readers to use the AFSA Web site’s Marketplace to place your orders. We have created a bookstore there with links to the books at Amazon.com (see p. 36). For the few books that cannot be ordered through Amazon, we have provided alternative links and, when the book is not available online, the necessary contact informa- tion. But enough crass commercialism. On to the books! — Susan Maitra, Senior Editor Policy and Issues Nights in the Pink Motel: An American Strategist’s Pursuit of Peace in Iraq Robert Earle, Naval Institute Press, 2008, $34.95, hardcover, 288 pages. This firsthand account of the 2004-2005 effort to reverse the negative consequences of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq offers readers a dramatic and comprehensive look at all of the conflicting factors that have made Iraq such an intractable crisis. The first historical account of the post–Coalition Provisional Authority era, Nights in the Pink Motel is full of unique details and insights that only an insider could provide. Retired FSO Robert Earle was recruited as a strate- gist by John Negroponte, the first U.S. ambassador to Iraq, sent to take over from the CPA in 2004. Earle recounts his experience helping to formulate the com- prehensive counterinsurgency strategy issued jointly by Amb. Negroponte and Multinational Force-Iraq Commanding General George Casey and analyzing the evolution of Iraqi politics. As a Senior FSO with USIA, Robert Earle received AFSA’s Christian A. Herter Award for Constructive Dissent in 1992 for outstanding leadership, initiative, creativity and energy in helping to advance U.S.- Mexican relations while minister counselor for public affairs in Mexico City. Following retirement from the Foreign Service, he served as a speechwriter for then- U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Negroponte and com- pleted his first novel, The Way Home (DayBue Publishing, 2003). He interrupted work on his second novel, set in the ancient Middle East, to take up the Iraq assignment. After the Taliban: Nation-Building in Afghanistan James F. Dobbins, Potomac Books, Inc., 2008, $24.95, hardcover, 192 pages. “Anyone who thinks diplomats are soft and diplomacy easy must read Jim Dobbins’ account of nation-building in Afghani- stan,” states former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage of After the Taliban . “Ambassador Dobbins gives a frank exposition of diplomatic achievement as well as lost opportunity. This read may not be pleasant for all, but it is a must.” In October 2001, the Bush administration sent Amb. Dobbins, who had overseen nation-building efforts in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo to wartorn Afghanistan to help assemble a successor government to the Taliban. In this firsthand account, Dobbins chronicles how the administration reluctantly adjusted to its new role as nation-builder, refused to allow American soldiers to conduct peacekeeping operations, opposed dispatching international troops and short- changed Afghan reconstruction. He also probes the relationship between the Afghan and Iraqi ventures, demonstrating how each damaged the other. Written by one of America’s most experienced trou- bleshooters, this book reveals how government really works, how diplomacy is actually conducted and, most important, why the U.S. has failed to stabilize either Afghanistan or Iraq. James F. Dobbins is a retired FSO and former assis- tant secretary of State for Europe, who also served as special assistant to the president for the Western Hemisphere, special adviser to the president and Secretary of State for the Balkans, and ambassador to the European Community. He was the Clinton admin- N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 17