The Foreign Service Journal - November 2017

44 NOVEMBER 2017 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Flash Points: Lessons Learned and Not Learned in Malawi, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan Jade Wu, State University of New York Press, 2017, $24.95/hardcover, $14.72/Kindle, 302 pages. Both a salient critique of U.S. foreign assis- tance and a thought-provoking memoir, Flash Points illuminates the cross-cultural challenges that often undermine and betray the best intentions of policymakers comfortably situated in Washington, D.C. Jade Wu recounts her experiences as a U.S. foreign aid worker across the globe, where she found that her colleagues often failed to deal respectfully and effectively with host governments and their citizens. The results were often detrimental to American national interests. Jade Wu has worked on U.S. foreign assistance projects in Malawi, Kosovo, Germany, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Philip- pines. Her foreign affairs analyses have appeared in The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, The Hill, Washington Diplomat and Foreign Policy Journal . She currently lives and practices law in the Washington, D.C., area. In the Warlords’ Shadow: SOF, the Afghans and Their Fight Against the Taliban Daniel R. Green, Naval Institute Press, 2017, $29.95/hardcover, $16.17/Kindle, 304 pages. In 2010, U.S. special operations forces (SOF) in Afghanistan began an innovative program to fight the Taliban insurgency using the movement’s structure and strategy against it. The Village Stability Operations/Afghan Local Police initiative embedded U.S. Army Special Forces and U.S. Navy SEAL teams with villagers to fight the Taliban together. In this first-hand account, Green offers a long-term perspec- tive on how SOF stabilized the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan and its impact on the course of the war in Afghanistan. Daniel Green is a defense fellow at the Washington Insti- tute for Near East Policy and the author of Fallujah Redux: The Anbar Awakening and the Struggle with Al-Qaeda (Naval Insti- tute Press, 2014) and The Valley’s Edge: A Year with the Pash- tuns in the Heartland of the Taliban (Potomac Books, 2011). Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy Trita Parsi, Yale University Press, 2017, $32.50/hardcover, $16.99/Kindle, 472 pages. In his October Foreign Service Journal review of this book, former FSJ Editor Steven Alan Honley commented on what a daunt- ing task it is to write about a historic diplo- matic agreement, particularly one as complex and polarizing as the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, just two years after its signing. “This is even truer when one’s subject is the product of six years of intricate negotiations and maneuvering on an array of political chessboards, and remains so controversial that its durability is in serious doubt,” he stated, adding that the author possessed “in spades” the two skill sets required to meet the chal- lenge: substantive expertise and insider knowledge. Trita Parsi is the founder and current president of the National Iranian-American Council and was an informal adviser to the Obama administration’s negotiating team. Fluent in Farsi, English and Swedish, he has served as an adjunct professor of international relations at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, where he earned his Ph.D., as an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and as a policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. The Future of #Diplomacy Philip Seib, Polity Press, 2016, $19.95/paperback, $9.99/Kindle, 144 pages. A central premise of this crisp book is this: “The future of diplomacy is inextricably tied to the future of media.” As Philip Seib, one of the world’s top experts onmedia and foreign pol- icy, noted, today’s diplomats are increasingly obliged to respond instantly to the latest crisis fueled by a YouTube video or Facebook post. Among other consequences, that trend has given rise to a more open and reactive approach to global problem-solving. Reviewing the book in the March Foreign Service Journal , Dennis Jett noted some problems with Seib’s analysis, but praised it as “an interesting and useful read [that] clarifies the differences among digital diplomacy, e-diplomacy and public diplomacy. And he covers a wide range of topics in an extremely well-written book.” Philip Seib is professor of journalism, public diplomacy and international relations at the University of Southern California.