The Foreign Service Journal, November 2008

He predicts that the next phase of the fundamentalist jihad could well be fought in the back alleys of Western Europe and North America, between gang- sters and members and former members of al-Qaida over turf. Retired FSO Rafael Fermoselle was born in Havana and paroled into the United States as a polit- ical refugee in 1962 at the age of 16. Until recently, he has worked as a contractor for the Department of Defense. He is the author of It’s a Jungle Out There! Memoir of a Spook (Trafford Publishing, 2006). Why American Foreign Policy Fails: Unsafe at Home and Despised Abroad Dennis C. Jett, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, $79.95, hardcover, 197 pages. “ Why American Foreign Poli- cy Fails is a bracing read,” says Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. “But the overall mes- sage is simple: American foreign policy has become completely captive to American domestic politics, with- out regard for either the national interest or majority public opinion. Although many readers will find things to disagree with in this book, it is hard to avoid the force of Ambassador Jett’s argument or the imperative to do something about it.” The end of the Cold War, globalization and political partisanship have combined to create a dysfunctional policy process in Washington, Dennis Jett argues. This is a systemic problem, he adds, and, unless tackled, will persist no matter which political party wins the election. In this book, he explores the changes that have occurred and the way American foreign policy is actual- ly made, examines the roles of the primary actors, and assesses the potential for improvement. Retired FSO Dennis Jett served as ambassador to Peru and Mozambique. His 28-year diplomatic career included service on the National Security Council and assignments in Argentina, Israel, Malawi and Liberia. Ambassador Jett is currently a professor of internation- al affairs at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pa. Prior to that, he was dean of the International Center at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Fla. Amb. Jett is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Why Peacekeeping Fails (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001). History Hero of Hispaniola: America’s First Black Diplomat, Ebenezer D. Bassett Christopher Teal, Praeger Publishers, 2008, $39.95, hardcover, 206 pages. America’s first African-Ameri- can diplomat, Ebenezer D. Bass- ett, was appointed ambassador to “Hayti” in 1869 and served there with distinction dur- ing eight years of violent political turmoil. His work, writes author Christopher Teal in the first chapter of this book, forever altered U.S. foreign policy: “For the first time, a nation founded on the principle that ‘all men are created equal’ would have as the president’s foreign representative someone who had previously been less than equal under the law. This movement toward equality and democratization of international affairs would be neither quick nor perfect. But it proved to be a force that was impossible to turn back.” Yet by the end of his life, Ebenezer Bassett had been all but forgotten by history. Teal rights this wrong, assembling the details of this pioneering individual’s life and groundbreaking work in an engaging and insightful narrative. This first biography of Ebenezer Bassett not only celebrates his life but sheds light on an important chapter of American diplomatic history. FSO Christopher Teal has served for a decade on assignments in Latin America and Washington, D.C. He is the co-author, with journalist JuanWilliams, of the award-winning biography Thurgood Marshall: Ameri- can Revolutionary (Three Rivers Press, 2000). Dropka: Nomads of the Tibetan Plateau and Himalaya Daniel Miller, Vajra Publications, 2008, $25.00, hardcover, 133 pages. Drokpa: Nomads of the Tibetan Plateau and Hima- laya , with 108 evocative black and white photographs and insightful text, is a stunning portrait of Tibetan no- mads. Known in the Tibetan language as drokpa (high- pasture people), an estimated two million Tibetan-speak- ing nomads are spread over a vast area of the Tibetan Plateau and Himalayan region in Bhutan, China, India and Nepal. Yet we know very little about them. 22 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