The Foreign Service Journal, November 2020

32 NOVEMBER 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL In this illuminating account of Operation Eagle Claw, Justin Williamson delves into the details of a controversial rescue operation, including the reservations of some senior military leaders, the assembled operational plans and how Carter’s increasing desperation to retrieve the hostages ultimately forced his hand in April 1980. Operation Eagle Claw ended in disaster, with two of the transport aircraft colliding after a mission abort order was issued. But while the operation is remembered as a failure, it prompted significant military reform, and the author argues that “the extraordinary abilities of today’s U.S. Special Operations Forces arose from the ashes.” Justin W. Williamson is a Foreign Service officer who has served in Iraq, Mexico, Spain and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He has earned degrees from Texas Tech University and the University of Texas at El Paso, and is a recent graduate of the U.S. Army Command and Staff College. The Saigon Sisters: Privileged Women in the Resistance Patricia D. Norland, Northern Illinois University Press, 2020, $39.95/ hardcover, e-book available, 280 pages. The Saigon Sisters is the story of nine women who led double lives in war- time Vietnam. In one life they were mothers and teachers, humble and apparently ordinary. In their other lives, however, the women were underground revolutionar- ies, working with resistance movements to expel the French colonial government and American forces. In navigating their double lives, the Saigon sisters endured much as conflict swirled about them. They suffered long family separations, including from spouses who joined to fight but were never heard from again, or who were gone for so long they failed to recognize their wives upon reunion. Through decades of such hardship the Saigon sisters were driven by steadfast patriotism and unyielding devotion to their cause: the eventual liberation of Vietnam. The author gathered these stories in face-to-face interviews with the nine women, their families and other sources. Some struggled to share their perspective, whether from humility or the difficulty of recounting painful experiences. In recording the histories and putting them to print, Patricia Norland succeeded in capturing an important slice of history and the very personal story of exemplary women. The book is a volume in the NIU Southeast Asian series. Patricia D. Norland retired from the Foreign Service in 2016 after a 21-year career as a public diplomacy officer with multiple tours in Southeast Asia. Born into a Foreign Service family, she worked with the Indochina Project, a nonprofit promoting exchanges with Southeast Asia, before joining the Service herself. During that time, she translated a book from French, Beyond the Horizon: Five Years with the Khmer Rouge (St. Martin’s Press, 1991). To Build a Better World: Choices to End the Cold War and Create a Global Commonwealth Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, Twelve, 2020, $17.99/paperback, e-book available, 528 pages. Former Secretary of State Condo- leezza Rice and career diplomat Philip Zelikow, both scholars, have teamed up to assess the forces that led to the end of the Cold War, as well as what came next. The pair interviewed leading sources, combed texts in several languages and drew on their own firsthand experience to shed light on the choices that shaped our contemporary world. To Build a Better World explores how a world changed, states fell apart and new systems of governance were developed—all without ending up in war. As FSO Joseph L. Novak writes in his review of the book ( FSJ , June), “The larger point made by Zelikow and Rice is a vital one: the art of diplomacy is a serious business, and success (as shown in 1989-1991) requires coordinated policy planning, steadiness of purpose and tactical skill.” A former Foreign Service officer who was detailed in 1989 to the National Security Council, where he was involved in the diplomacy surrounding the end of the Cold War and German reunification, Philip Zelikow is the White Burkett Miller Professor of History and J. WilliamNewman Professor of Governance at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, both at the University of Virginia. Condoleezza Rice served as George W. Bush’s first national security adviser and was the first Black woman to serve as Secretary of State. She is now a professor at Stanford University and theThomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution.