The Foreign Service Journal, December 2006

reliance on clandestine intelligence sources, which tends to produce skewed perspectives at the top, and not just on Iraq (e.g., persistent exag- geration of Soviet military capabilities during the Cold War). Both the sources of secret data and the agencies that oversee them often have their own policy axes to grind. Another common policy distortion comes from bureaucratic rivalries in Washington, where hyperactivist solutions to inter- national problems that look good on paper often prevail, but fail to serve either U.S. interests or those of the affected countries. Kiesling’s prescription is to resur- rect “realism” in U.S. foreign policy. But “realism” is no longer the classic Metternichean model of pragmatic, amoral pursuit of one’s own defined national interests. Now “principles matter.” So does an understanding of the perspectives of other countries that only the Foreign Service can pro- vide. Kiesling’s list of “lessons” consti- tutes a cri de coeur against a system that suppresses “realism,” suggesting a career trajectory that makes his even- tual resignation seem almost foreor- dained. Earlier, he details his passion- ate Dissent Channel messages over the sensitive issue of naming the newly independent Macedonia in 1992, and in 1993 over Washington’s initial re- fusal to be drawn into collective inter- vention in Bosnia (for which he and his co-drafters won an AFSA award for constructive dissent). Kiesling may not be the “possible new Kennan” that Ron Spiers labels him; for one thing, he doesn’t offer any geostrategic formulas. Nor is he an iconoclast, though he does have some interesting ideas for systemic change. One is to train new CIA case officers and FSOs together, so that they have a better understanding of each others’ missions. Another is to weaken the veto power of permanent U.N. Security Council members without actually eliminating it, so that no single veto can stymie action. The most important change he suggests, howev- er, is more than systemic. He declares that American leaders must be condi- tioned to make policy decisions only after listening to and absorbing foreign government concerns, rather than cooking them up in an interagency near-vacuum with little regard for world reactions (e.g., the Iran-Contra arms transactions). Scattered among Kiesling’s “les- sons” are some splendid vignettes with incandescent lighting from his person- al experience — the long saga of bringing the November 17 terrorists in Greece to justice; our vain efforts to control nuclear proliferation on the subcontinent (foreshadowing North Korea and Iran today?); and struggling with the Azeri-Armenian dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh and observing Ar- menian elections. Diplomacy Lessons is marred a bit by the ugly black marks of deletions, which Keisling deliberately left in to show the pointlessness of government editing. In almost all cases what has been left out is a transparent reference to an embassy CIA station. Kiesling could just as easily have written around those redactions without any loss. However, there is one intriguing deletion in Kiesling’s description of (at the time) Under Secretary John Bolton’s role in the dismissal of José Bustani as head of the chemical weapons treaty organization: “Judging from press reports about Bolton’s unsavory bureaucratic habits, I assume ... (deleted).” One wonders if what followed was classified or simply unprintable. One of the most refreshing aspects of the book is the author’s self-depre- cating sense of humor, which is a good antidote for an otherwise somewhat pretentious effort. I found the follow- ing explanatory note particularly appealing: “Defending my assertions more formally would require several books this same size. No one would read them.” He’s probably right about that, but what he has produced in the volume at hand is both readable and thought-provoking. Retired FSO Ted Wilkinson is chair of the FSJ Editorial Board. Art for Art’s Sake? Fallout Shelters for the Human Spirit: American Art and the Cold War Michael L. Krenn, University of North Carolina Press, 2005, $39.95, hardcover, 312 pages. R EVIEWED BY J OHN B ROWN The title of this book by Michael L. Krenn, a professor of history at Appalachian State University, comes from a quotation by Lloyd Goodrich (1897-1987), the art critic and ardent supporter of government support for the arts. In the alarming world of the Cold War, Goodrich wrote in 1962, “the arts provide fallout shelters for the human spirit vastly more essential, more urgently needed and at infinite- ly less cost than those for the human body.” But what kind of fallout shelters should these be? And whom exactly should the shelters spare from the threat of communist ideological radia- tion? These questions — the subject of much debate among Americans, both in and out of government, during the first 25 years of the East-West struggle — are at the core of Krenn’s penetrating monograph. Focusing on the complex, and often comic, story of 76 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 6 B O O K S