The Foreign Service Journal, November 2016

70 NOVEMBER 2016 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL attributing public diplo- macy failures in the Arab world less to the messaging andmore to the policies we were trying to promote. Although hanging an account of U.S. foreign policy on the WikiLeaks documents sounds like a good idea, doing so limits the time frame and sources. The WikiLeaks cables were stolen from the interagency- accessible data base, SIPRNet, which does not include captioned traffic, official- informals, classified or unclassified emails, or transcripts of phone calls and secure videoconferences between senior officials that cut out embassies entirely. In fact, WikiLeaks presents only a slice of what was actually being reported back “To the Secretary.” More significantly, the author does not explain how the Wash- ington interagency process makes policy, the role of State Department offices and officials, and how embassies and ambassa- dors can exercise influence in that process. Dr. Thompson-Jones also embraces the current orthodoxy that there is a chasm between “traditional” diplomacy (with its “black ties and limos”) and “expedition- ary diplomacy.” But, in fact, good FSOs seek levers they can use to advance U.S. interests, which usually requires engaging with and listening to both the elite and the street—not one or the other. The reader may get the impression from the leaked cables that serving in war zones or in tandemwith the military is something new that began 15 years ago in Afghanistan and Iraq. But FSOs played those roles in Vietnamdecades earlier, and have continued to do so in wartorn countries in Africa and elsewhere. As in any wide-ranging account, there are some questionable statements. It is not correct, for instance, that the U.S. govern- Embassy Voices Revealed To the Secretary: Leaked Embassy Cables and America’s Foreign Policy Disconnect Mary Thompson-Jones, New York: W.W. Norton, 2016, $27.95/hardcover, $14.87/Kindle, 384 pages. Reviewed By Damian Leader To the Secretary offers an overview of U.S. diplomatic life and practice, relying primarily on the quarter-million embassy reporting cables downloaded by a dis- gruntled soldier and published online in November 2010 by WikiLeaks. This book is not an in-depth account of the WikiLeaks affair or its fallout. Rather, the author’s purpose is to use these cables to offer nine “glimpses” into embassy reporting primarily from 2006 to 2010. These glimpses include anti-Americanism, colorful travel accounts, crises, biographic reporting, environmental issues and cor- ruption. Developing these themes requires many digressions to provide context, both on embassy work and on some of the events themselves (anyone recall what the 2009 Honduran coup was about?). The international WikiLeaks contro- versy led to a brief media fascination with a handful of those cables, although the repercussions for some embassy contacts continuedmuch longer. On the bright side, it also led to recognition of the overall high quality of embassy reporting. Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian described some reporting as “almost worthy of EvelynWaugh.” Dr. Thompson-Jones is especially interested in public diplomacy—her career track—and her book has interesting things to say about its practice in the field and Washington’s misunderstanding of what it can and cannot achieve. She is spot on in BOOKS ment “would like Americans to stay away from—at this writing— 37 countries.” Many travel warnings— such as that for Israel, for example— are for specific parts of a country, not the whole nation. Similarly, in 2008 Rus- sia invaded Georgia, not just Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where it already had forces in place. Dr. Thompson-Jones concludes with 34 pages on Secretary Hillary Clinton’s tenure. The subtitle, “The Good Enough Secretary,” sums up the author’s evaluation of Sec. Clinton’s time at State. The epilogue adds three “pleas”: first, that the “foreign policy establishment” include embassy voices in decision- making; second, that the under secretary for public diplomacy be a career officer; and third, that perusing WikiLeaks should not be off limits to people with security clearances. Hard to argue with any of those points. This book suffers by trying to cover several things at once, none in great depth: thoughts on reporting, descriptions of embassy practices, commentary on State Department policymaking and an evalua- tion of Hillary Clinton’s tenure at State. It might have been better had the author drawn on her considerable experi- ence and insight into public diplomacy and focused primarily on that. She could then have drawn more on the growing dis- cussion (much of it online) about public diplomacy and on the extensive collection of recently declassified cables and memos that go beyond Julian Assange’s data bases. n Damian Leader teaches diplomacy at New York University. An FSO from 1985 to 2013, he served alongside the 82nd Airborne in Grenada and worked on the Mozambican and Angolan peace processes, as well as on Eastern European and Russian affairs.