The Foreign Service Journal, November 2020

94 NOVEMBER 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Americans) shaping the course of Arab politics and events. What made the outcome in Tunisia different? Feldman posits two interrelated reasons for the political success there. First, Tunisian culture values consensus. Second, Tunisians exercised political responsibility, not just political agency. Therefore, he believes, the relatively successful Tunisian transition could be replicated elsewhere in the Arab world. Feldman’s reasoning in reaching this conclusion, however, is less convinc- ing. He gives short shrift to the factors that make Tunisia an “Arab anomaly, ” as Safwan Masri titled his 2017 examination of why the Arab Spring succeeded there (at least to a considerable degree) while failing elsewhere. By contrast with Feld- man, Masri is highly skeptical that Tunisia can serve as a model, because the factors that produced relative success there take generations to produce. Of those factors, the four most impor- tant for Masri are education, women’s rights, the role of religion and the strength of civil society. There are other significant factors as well: for example, the homoge- neous nature of society, the large middle class, the well-developed sense of national identity and an outward-looking political culture. All have contributed to Tunisia’s political progress since the revolution. Feldman offers an erudite treatment of the Arab Spring, taking a thematic approach focused on moral questions and political meaning rather than provid- ing a “first draft of history,” as he freely acknowledges. (Nonetheless, I should note a couple of small but relevant factual errors: Mohamed Ghannouchi was the long-standing prime minister when Ben Ali fled, not the vice president, a position that did not and does not exist in Tunisia; and Ali Laarayedh had served as minister of interior, not justice.) Those familiar with the momentous events of the last decade will profit by reading this book and may draw solace, and even hope, from Feldman’s con- cluding thought: “But after the win- ter—and from its depths—always comes another spring.” n Gordon Gray is chief operating officer at the Center for American Progress. A retired Foreign Service officer, he served as U.S. am- bassador to Tunisia at the start of the Arab Spring and as deputy assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs. Politics vs. Principle in Foreign Policy The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age Elizabeth Shackelford, PublicAffairs, 2020, $29/hardcover, e-book available, 304 pages. Reviewed by Edmund McWilliams Elizabeth Shackelford left the Foreign Service in 2017 with a succinct resigna- tion letter condemning the Trump administra- tion. The letter noted that over its first 10 months the adminis- tration had “failed to demonstrate a commit- ment to promoting and defending human rights and democracy.” Shackelford thus joined many fellow FSOs who found it impos- sible to serve the Trump administration and at the same time honor the oath sworn by all FSOs to defend the Constitution. She describes how, early on, “direction from Washington, which had always been minimal, dissipated entirely, as dozens of State Department leadership positions went unfilled.” Shackelford explains that she struggled with the choice to remain and “try to change things from the inside,” deciding in the end that it was futile. But The Dissent Channel is much more than a cri de coeur targeting the Trump administration. In the book Shackelford reveals the full tragedy of South Sudan, born in July 2011 in great hope after years of struggle against a ruthless Sudanese government—only to succumb two years later to the vicious authoritarian rule of President Salva Kiir. In July 2013 Kiir dismissed his entire cabinet, most significantly Vice President Riek Machar, bringing on the civil war that engulfed the country. The internal strife she describes, and in which she and the staff of the tiny U.S. embassy in Juba lived and worked, posed horrendous dangers for civilians caught up in the mayhem. The five-year struggle is estimated to have led to the death of 400,000 people, or 3 percent of the population. The Kiir regime conducted ethnic cleansing in the capital and elsewhere in South Sudan as it sought to eliminate challenges posed by Machar, the second-most- powerful figure in the new country. The countrywide civil war strained the small embassy staff, which sought to provide basic services to imperiled American citizens and others. Shack- elford presents a minute-by-minute account of embassy efforts to evacuate American citizens and others—efforts that she, as the embassy’s only consular