The Foreign Service Journal, December 2013

94 DECEMBER 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL A Special Relationship’s Not-So-Special Ambassadors The Embassy in Grosvenor Square: American Ambassadors to the United Kingdom, 1938-2008 Alison R. Holmes and J. Simon Rofe, et al., Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, $95, hardcover, 392 pages. Reviewed by Dennis Jett This is a very useful book, and not just for those who have an interest in Anglo- American relations. The contributions by J. Simon Rofe, Alison R. Holmes and 11 other academics, nearly all of them historians, are extremely well researched, enjoyable explorations of the role of Washington’s envoy to the Court of St. James’s. Collectively, they illuminate how much has changed in American diplo- macy over the past seven decades—and how much has not. In the earliest years of the U.S.-U.K. relationship, many of the American chiefs of mission in London went on to the highest positions in government. Five would become president, nine were later Secretary of State, and four were both. Today, London is still one of the most prestigious U.S. diplomatic posts—but it has lately become a prized destina- tion for very rich, white, male political appointees (international experience strictly optional). The last four men to live in Winfield House each contributed an average of $500,000 to presidential and congressional campaigns, and “bundled” hundreds of thousands more from their friends. Yet while ambassadors to the Court of St. James’s are appointed by the president, few have been close friends of his. This has frequently led to a distant relationship with the White House, if not a prickly one. As Michael Fullilove documented earlier this year in Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraor- dinary Men Took America into the War and into the World (see the review in the Oct. FSJ ), FDR used a suc- cession of special envoys to bypass Joseph Kennedy once the ambassador decided Britain was going to lose World War II. In these less geopolitically fraught times, the U.S. ambassador still has many important duties, of course. For instance, now that anyone can hop on a plane at Dulles and be in London seven hours later, the embassy gets about 20,000 offi- cial visitors a year. Because of the wide array of important contacts to be made on their behalf, our man on the other side of the pond must handle endless social obligations and satisfy a constant demand for public diplomacy. Some political appointees in London have performed that function very well. Others, like John J. Lewis, the heir to the Johnson Wax fortune, disliked such tasks so much that it makes one wonder why he wanted the position in the first place. Another curious choice for the job was Robert Tuttle, who inherited an auto dealership and parlayed it into a job in the personnel office of the Reagan BOOKS White House. There he proposed an ideologue for every ambassador- ship and succeeded in raising the percentage of political appointees to a level not seen since the Hoover administration. Why someone with such obvious contempt for the Foreign Service, and government in general, would later want to run an embassy with a staff of a thousand is a mystery, but perhaps even used car salesmen worry about their resumés. This book is also a good reminder that even the best of friends often have profound differences. I got a taste of that when, as Argentine desk officer, I had to explain in a BBC interview why we were renewing military sales to Buenos Aires little more than a year after the Falklands (Malvinas) War. Given the importance and complex- ity of the Anglo-American relationship, one might wonder why we so often send ambassadors with little to recommend them besides the size of their bank accounts. Then again, perhaps I just answered my own question. n Dennis Jett, an FSO from 1972 to 2000, was ambassador to Mozambique and Peru, and deputy chief of mission in Malawi and Libe- ria, among many other assignments. Now a professor of international affairs at Penn State University, he is the author of Why Peacekeeping Fails (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001) and is writing a book on American ambassadors that Palgrave Macmillan will publish in 2014. Given the importance and complexity of the Anglo-American relationship, one might wonder why we so often send ambassadors to London with little to recommend them besides the size of their bank accounts.