The Foreign Service Journal, November 2010

COSAR Principle: A Revelatory Proposition,” which addresses the relationship between scientific discov- eries and revelatory information. J.J. Johnson joined the Foreign Service in 2001 as an information management specialist and has served in Islamabad, Rangoon and Moscow. He has also served on the Executive Secretariat’s Special Com- munications team in Washington, D.C., and with the Multinational Force and Observers’ Civilian Observer Unit in the Sinai. He is currently posted in Beijing. America’s Misadventures in the Middle East Chas W. Freeman Jr., Just World Books, 2010, $22.95, paperback, 232 pages. “He has given us a wake-up call. Let’s hope we hear it,” says Frank Carlucci, former ambassa- dor to Portugal and Secretary of Defense, of America’s Misadventures in the Middle East. “Chas Freeman is one of our country’s best prac- titioners of diplomacy, an art he argues we have ne- glected in favor of military options. With unclear goals, the latter has cost us good will and prestige around the world. Some will find Freeman’s indictment of our drift from our values too sweeping; all will find Freeman’s book thought-provoking and well-articulated.” In this collection, the author presents two dozen of his essays, many of them never before published, span- ning the two decades from 1990 to 2010. In 1990, as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Freeman helped plan and implement the massive, U.S.-led effort to liberate Kuwait from occupation by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq; by 2010, he had developed many thoughtful and well-in- formed criticisms of the policies Washington had pur- sued toward the region. The book includes consider- able new material on Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, as well as valuable information about the structure and politics of Saudi Arabia. “Insight leaps from every page of this remarkable volume,” says Jessica Matthews, president of the Carne- gie Endowment for International Peace. “No diplomat of his generation has a finer intelligence, a better ear to listen, as great a willingness to pierce self-deception or as gifted a pen as Chas Freeman.” 36 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 1 0 Buy all your travel guides, language books and pleasure reading through the AFSA bookstore. Buy the Amazon Kindle and download and read first chapters for free before you decide to purchase that new book. When you access Amazon.com through our bookstore all your purchases will benefit AFSA at no additional cost to you. Find State Department and AFSA Reading Lists Online at www.afsa.org/ads/books/ Start your purchase on our site: www.afsa.org/ads/books/