The Foreign Service Journal, November 2008

istration’s special envoy for Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. He currently directs the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation. Crossroads of Intervention: Insurgency and Counterinsurgency Lessons from Central America Todd Greentree, Praeger Security International, 2008, $49.95, hardcover, 196 pages. Central America was Todd Greentree’s “first heart of dark- ness,” when he was assigned to the region as a young Foreign Service officer in 1981. He was often uneasy in his role, he says, having discovered “what [T.E.] Lawrence meant when he wrote in Seven Pillars of Wisdom about hitching the horses of evil to the chariot of good.” In this excellent study of the complex motives that drive irregular warfare, he provides a conceptual framework for understanding insurgency, counterinsur- gency, revolution and intervention. In the 1980s, Central American countries found themselves the sites of insurgency and superpower competition. Greentree examines the origins, strategic dynamics and termination of these conflicts from the points of view of the main players: the United States, the Soviet Union, Cuba, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Reflecting on the conflicts in Central America as a bridge between Vietnam and the current situation in Iraq, Greentree offers a fresh perspective on the histor- ical lessons critical to America’s future approach to irregular warfare. During his 25-year career in the Foreign Service, Todd Greentree’s personal experience with the political and military dimensions of irregular conflict extended from Central America to Angola. He is currently a vis- iting scholar at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and teaches national security studies and international politics at the University of New Mexico. He is a former professor of strategy and policy at the U.S. Naval War College. Common Sense and Foreign Policy John D. Stempel, The Clark Group, 2008, paperback, 197 pages. In Common Sense and Foreign Policy , the author brings his half-century of experience in the world of international politics and foreign relations — as a diplomat, naval officer in Viet- nam and a professor at the Uni- versity of Kentucky — to bear on the question of “how to under- stand foreign policy and partici- pate effectively to improve the public decisions that will deter- mine how we shall live with the rest of the world.” Appearing on the cusp of a new administration in Washington, when the U.S. confronts a plethora of international crises and problems, this volume should find a wide audience. A kind of primer on foreign affairs, it is written in a straightforward manner that is highly readable. It addresses six foreign policy issues: the problem of American primacy, the problem of intelligence, the problem of religion and diplomacy, the problem of terrorism and insurgency, Iran, and the problem of the foreign affairs establishment’s organiza- tion. The book has an extensive bibliography and help- ful glossary. A career FSO (1965-1988), John Stempel spent four tumultuous years as deputy chief of the political section of Embassy Tehran from 1975 to 1979. He is currently a senior professor of international relations and former director of the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. To purchase the book, contact The Clark Group at 1 (800) 944-3995. America’s Dialogue with the World Edited by William P. Kiehl, 2nd edition, Public Diplomacy Council, 2006, $19.95, paperback, 211 pages. This collection of 11 essays was born out of the Public Diplomacy Council’s 2005 forum on ways America can engage and commu- nicate with the world. William Kiehl has assembled some of America’s top experts on public diplomacy to contribute to a discussion of the substance of commu- nication between America and other nations and the ways in which that dialogue transpires. In the first half of the book, addressing the “sub- stance of the dialogue,” John Hughes explores the mes- sage of liberty as the “underpinning” of our public diplomacy, while Amb. Anthony Quainton argues that we should refocus the ways we talk about the main tenet of American rhetoric, freedom. In the second 18 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 8