The Foreign Service Journal, November 2010

Kissinger returned to Washington and learned of the controversy surround- ing Service’s career, he never followed up on the invitation. That same year, opponents of rap- prochement with Beijing renewed their accusations against Service. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, after the U.S. formally recognized the Peo- ple’s Republic of China and forged closer ties under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, assessments of Ser- vice’s record were still being punted back and forth by key political players on both sides of the China-Taiwan de- bate. A Forgotten Hero By the time Service died in 1999, he had won numerous honors and awards and was increasingly lauded as a hero by the foreign policy establish- ment. Ironically, however, even as U.S.-China relations have normalized in the last two decades, fewer and fewer people in either country know Service’s name. It is in times of crisis that fellow diplomats, journalists and scholars have returned to find meaning in Ser- vice’s story. For instance, it is no acci- dent that the most powerful commen- 58 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 Everyone who recognizes the value of learning about the political realities of the places we deem strategically important should know John Service’s story.