The Foreign Service Journal, November 2021

44 NOVEMBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Until the World Shatters: Truth, Lies, and the Looting of Myanmar Daniel Combs, Melville House, 2021, $28.99/hardcover, e-book available, 400 pages. In Until the World Shatters , author Daniel Combs takes us deep into one of the most enigmatic places in the world. Without cell phones and ATMs until at least 2012, when the country began emerging from isolation, Myanmar holds enormous wealth in the form of jade, gold, teak forests and other natural resources. It is also the scene of the longest-lasting armed conflict in the world, a now 70-year-long civil war between the central government and its fringes involving complex and deep-seated ethnic, religious, ideological and economic divides, as well as shadowy private international actors and many secrets. To bring Myanmar’s history, politics and people into focus, Combs chronicles the lives of two individuals he met in 2017 and stayed in touch with through Myanmar’s three seasons—cold, hot and rain. One, Phoe Wa, a young photojournalist in the bustling city of Yangon, is pursuing his dream even as the government is jailing reporters and nationalist voices are on the rise. The other, Bum Tsit, a 30-year-old jade businessman in Myanmar’s far northern Kachin state, is caught between the insurgent army his family supports and the business and military leaders his career depends on. Daniel Combs is an award-winning author and international security professional who joined the Foreign Service in 2018. Earlier, he studied Myanmar’s ethnic conflicts. He has also lived in and reported from Ethiopia, the Congo, Vietnam and Israel. The former editor of the Asia Pacific Affairs Journal , he has appeared on NPR and written for The Diplomat and Asia Times , among other publications. America in the World 2020 Edited by Noel V. Lateef and Michael R. Auslin, Foreign Policy Association, 2020, $30/paperback, 128 pages. In conjunction with the 2020 presi- dential election, the Hoover Institu- tion and the Foreign Policy Associa- tion collaborated to put together this special edition of the publication that is the basis for the FPA’s annual Great Decisions program series to stimulate debate and discussion of U.S. foreign policy nationwide. This collection of essays is meant to spark informed debate on the path forward for America in a world struggling with the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic and profound geopolitical and technological shifts. Many of the contributors’ names will be familiar to FSJ readers: Ambassadors (ret.) Nick Burns and William J. Burns (no relation), as well as Larry Diamond, Niall Ferguson, Michael McFaul, Victor Davis Hanson, H.R. McMaster and Joseph S. Nye Jr., to name but a few. Born into a Foreign Service family, Noel V. Lateef graduated from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1978 and from Yale Law School in 1982. After a distinguished legal career, Mr. Lateef joined the Foreign Policy Association, where he is currently president and CEO. He is the editor of In Pursuit of Peace: Conflict Prevention and World Order (2016) and The Future of Higher Education in the Age of Globalization (2016). Michael R. Auslin is the Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He is the author of Asia’s New Geopolitics: Essays on Reshaping the Indo-Pacific (2020). American Ambassadors: A Guide for Aspiring Diplomats and Foreign Service Officers Dennis C. Jett, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, $34.99/paperback, e-book available, 321 pages. The original 2015 edition of this book had a slightly different title: Ameri- can Ambassadors: The Past, Present, and Future of America’s Diplomats . It focused on the nitty-gritty of the selection process, describing how Foreign Service officers become ambassadors by rising through the ranks, and why they typically make up about 70 percent of the total number of ambassadors. It also covered the other 30 percent: the political appointees who get the job because they helped elect the presi- dent by supporting him as a campaign contributor, a political ally or a personal friend. In his preface to the second edition, Ambassador Dennis Jett makes no bones about his chief motivation for returning to the subject: former President Donald J. Trump. “No, I’m not a fan of his. And one reason for this second edition is to discuss his impact on the appointment of